3 ms·

The history section is depressing: a whole conga line of promised collaborations and technologies that Apple seems to have promised, and then completely dropped

The history section is depressing: a whole conga line of promised collaborations and technologies that Apple seems to have promised, and then completely dropped the ball on. (Even apart from the famous crash-and-burns of Copland and OpenDoc, don't forget A/UX 4.0! A/UX and AIX on PowerOpen! Mac OS 7 on DR-DOS! Netware on PPC Macs! Mac OS on the ANS! Okay, wait, MAE on AIX on the ANS! Whoops, no SMP on the ANS! Okay, now we're shipping Mac OS, A/UX, and NT on ANS!) It puts contemporary Apple's NIH complex in context.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 3y ago
> Mac OS 7 on DR-DOS! Seriously?
- II2II 3y ago
  I believe it is a reference to the infamous Star Trek project. I did not know of the Digital Research connection, but it sounds like it was another one of those collaborations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project The funny thing is, the industry knew that collaboration would be necessary back then, but it took open source models for it to become effective. (I guess direct business to business agreements made competitors to dependent upon each other.)
  - classichasclass 3y ago
    (author) Yes, exactly. Star Trek got a lot of heat at the time for being a bad idea and at the time it probably would have been a real strategic blunder (Spindler was right to kill it IMHO), but it really worked, and Marklar ended up being analogously the same thing.
    - KerrAvon 3y ago
      The biggest problem with Star Trek was that it didn't run existing Mac software, and you couldn't emulate the 68k ISA reasonably on x86 at the time. The key piece of Mac OS X on Intel a decade later was translation software for PowerPC binaries, so that your existing software still worked.
  - nxobject 3y ago
    I've always hoped that, since it was actually demoed, a copy still exists somewhere in the wild – even if it'll only boot the Finder...
minimaul 3y ago
The huge list of projects from that era of Apple really shows how aimless they were. I remember at the time how more and more irrelevant they seemed compared to the Wintel behemoth, and that really didn’t start to turn around until the G3 iMac, and later the iPod.
- krger 3y ago
  >The huge list of projects from that era of Apple really shows how aimless they were. Most of those projects involved active collaboration with other companies who were similarly aimless, so Apple was by no means alone in their aimlessness. It's truly wild just how much time, effort, and money the various companies spent smelling each others' farts back in the 90s.
  - fourfour3 3y ago
    I guess you can also draw similarities to the MS/IBM joint venture that was OS/2, but that actually released products - even if MS dumped it for NT.
    - lstodd 3y ago
      Oh, OS/2 Warp was fine. I even had it as my default OS for a while back then.
      - EricE 3y ago
        Team OS/2 Baby! I still wish I had the salmon polo from the Warp comdex push.
    - p_l 3y ago
      MS/IBM joint venture failed through Windows 3.0, which in turn apparently was kickstarted by one person in the company.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Yes, if I am not mistaken, this is one of the books that tells which person was it. "Undocumented Windows: A Programmers Guide to Reserved Microsoft Windows Api Functions (The Andrew Schulman Programming Series/Book and Disk" https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0201608340 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0201608340 Pity as SOM was much better alternative than COM, and OS/2 in general. However that wasn't the only issue that nailed OS/2's destiny, higher hardware resources and lack of proper management direction from IBM side also played a big role.
rodgerd 3y ago
And clearly a leadership/partnering-driven madness. They had the answer all along: A/UX, a MacOS UX on a Unix base, gave them what they wanted to get to (modern memory management, stability, multi-user security with a MacOS AI), and what they'd end up buying with NeXT. Instead at the time I was working at an Apple reseller and we were treated to hugely over-optimisic promises for MacOS 8 that included a Microkernel that could run Windows apps alongside MacOS applications.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 3y ago

> Mac OS 7 on DR-DOS! Seriously?

II2II 3y ago
I believe it is a reference to the infamous Star Trek project. I did not know of the Digital Research connection, but it sounds like it was another one of those collaborations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project The funny thing is, the industry knew that collaboration would be necessary back then, but it took open source models for it to become effective. (I guess direct business to business agreements made competitors to dependent upon each other.)
- classichasclass 3y ago
  (author) Yes, exactly. Star Trek got a lot of heat at the time for being a bad idea and at the time it probably would have been a real strategic blunder (Spindler was right to kill it IMHO), but it really worked, and Marklar ended up being analogously the same thing.
  - KerrAvon 3y ago
    The biggest problem with Star Trek was that it didn't run existing Mac software, and you couldn't emulate the 68k ISA reasonably on x86 at the time. The key piece of Mac OS X on Intel a decade later was translation software for PowerPC binaries, so that your existing software still worked.
- nxobject 3y ago
  I've always hoped that, since it was actually demoed, a copy still exists somewhere in the wild – even if it'll only boot the Finder...

minimaul 3y ago

The huge list of projects from that era of Apple really shows how aimless they were. I remember at the time how more and more irrelevant they seemed compared to the Wintel behemoth, and that really didn’t start to turn around until the G3 iMac, and later the iPod.

krger 3y ago
>The huge list of projects from that era of Apple really shows how aimless they were. Most of those projects involved active collaboration with other companies who were similarly aimless, so Apple was by no means alone in their aimlessness. It's truly wild just how much time, effort, and money the various companies spent smelling each others' farts back in the 90s.
- fourfour3 3y ago
  I guess you can also draw similarities to the MS/IBM joint venture that was OS/2, but that actually released products - even if MS dumped it for NT.
  - lstodd 3y ago
    Oh, OS/2 Warp was fine. I even had it as my default OS for a while back then.
    - EricE 3y ago
      Team OS/2 Baby! I still wish I had the salmon polo from the Warp comdex push.
  - p_l 3y ago
    MS/IBM joint venture failed through Windows 3.0, which in turn apparently was kickstarted by one person in the company.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Yes, if I am not mistaken, this is one of the books that tells which person was it. "Undocumented Windows: A Programmers Guide to Reserved Microsoft Windows Api Functions (The Andrew Schulman Programming Series/Book and Disk" https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0201608340 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0201608340 Pity as SOM was much better alternative than COM, and OS/2 in general. However that wasn't the only issue that nailed OS/2's destiny, higher hardware resources and lack of proper management direction from IBM side also played a big role.

rodgerd 3y ago

And clearly a leadership/partnering-driven madness. They had the answer all along: A/UX, a MacOS UX on a Unix base, gave them what they wanted to get to (modern memory management, stability, multi-user security with a MacOS AI), and what they'd end up buying with NeXT. Instead at the time I was working at an Apple reseller and we were treated to hugely over-optimisic promises for MacOS 8 that included a Microkernel that could run Windows apps alongside MacOS applications.