what if apple had actually went bankruptcy in 1997,what would be different today - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: aqarwaen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 07:00:19 pm
content: so i was reading that article..what kind would would be world today,if Microsoft had decided do not help and instead enjoy watching apple going bankruptcy.www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-what-happened-when-microsoft-saved-apple.html

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 07:45:05 pm
content: That $150M investment was a symbolic gesture that made no difference to Apple’s actual survival, since Apple’s financial situation wasn’t actually that dire. The part of the agreement thatwascrucial was Microsoft’s promise to continue making Office for Mac for 5 years.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 09:03:50 pm
content: Quote from: MasterTech on August 16, 2020, 07:56:28 pmMan, I would have hated having to switch to windows, especially back then. I still prefer Mac, but the windows of today is far more tolerable.Quote from: MasterTech on August 16, 2020, 07:56:28 pmYes, the terrible ambition of wanting to eliminate diseases that kill or maim millions each year. The gall!

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 09:27:58 pm
content: Quote from: MasterTech on August 16, 2020, 09:07:46 pmDo you mean M$ Windows? Then I agree.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 10:56:13 pm
content: I read that if a vaccine causes problems, you can't sue the manufacturer. Not sure how true that is but if it is, it should be changed so that the anti vaxers would have one less argument against vaccines.Quote from: MasterTech on August 16, 2020, 07:56:28 pmLinux started to become usable for everyday use not too long after that time. It just didn't catch on since Windows 2000 and Windows XP were pretty decent.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 12:25:17 am
content: Apologies for derailing this thread though, it's a bad habit of mine.It's hard to speculate what would have happened if Apple had gone bankrupt. Maybe NeXT would have caught on? Or BeOS? It's possible Linux would have filled some of that gap, or maybe somebody would have actually succeeded in resurrecting Amiga. With mature computing platforms there seems to be room for about 2 major platforms in the market. I'd hate to have only one choice regardless of how good it is

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 01:13:07 am
content: We would still have physical newspapers to read today.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 05:37:20 am
content: QuoteNo iPhone.No "posted with tapatalk" bullshit.No 4k photographs of scope screens.People too dumb to reinstall Windows every month out of the Internet.Quote from: tooki on August 16, 2020, 09:19:21 pmExcept societies subjected to these experiments exhibit extinction behavior and record rates of autism.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 08:50:33 am
content: Another one to the list of locked threads right?With the upmost respect is this thread about what would Apple be if Microsoft didn't help or is another one that starts on topic, derails into politics and how bad your country compared with mine and social differences that is going to be locked because it derail into offtopic?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 12:55:53 pm
content: Quote from: magic on August 17, 2020, 05:37:20 amThe very first iPhone was made by Infogear.

author: GeorgeOfTheJungle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 04:14:13 pm
content: QuoteThe Teslas would have real gauges and buttons instead of that silly iPad :-)

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2020, 10:41:03 pm
content: Quote from: aqarwaen on August 16, 2020, 07:00:19 pmBy end of 1998, Microsoft splitted (aka antitrust case) into 2 companies Micro- and Soft-.Micro- went to buy Texas Instruments and Soft- has implemented hard-time DOS for MSP430.After Micro- acquired ARM for a peanuts, the company renamed into Microarm.In 2000, new hard-time BASIC born to run on 64kB MSP430+ MCU.Twenty years later (2020) everybody forgot what C is all about. BASIC became a ruler of the embedded world.Soft- eventuality bought by IBM, and WINDOWS been disassembled into FRAMES, GLASS and SCREWS.<EOF>

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 05:36:12 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 17, 2020, 12:25:17 amWTF people, just stop it. How hard is it to stay on topic for HALF A PAGE before turning a thread about Apple into a vaccination debate. Seriously, just stop it.I have deleted all the off-topic posts.Just ignore people like Tooki who deliberately start this sort of thing. It could have died right there if no one took the bait and replied.There is too much of this crap on the forum as of late, and I don't want to have to start locking threads, warning or banning people, or deleting posts.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 09:01:14 am
content: Computers are just tools for doing work.If Apple did not exist, or disappeared at some point, nothing much would actually change. Windows works fine but it is just an OS. What matters is the application software. Going back say 15-20 years it was true that most graphics design software was available for Apple only, and this produced a "graphic designer = always Apple" fashion culture, but that changed a long time ago.The world would carry on just fine without Apple.The whole Iphone fashion is just a fashion. It doesn't do more than an Android phone. And in the end a smartphone is just a thing for making calls, messaging, and running applications.Re off topic stuff, I run a forum also in my spare time (not in electronics) and we have had the same there. There are lots of people who are basically frustrated with life and are looking for outlets for mischief. It makes a mod's job harder.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 04:49:34 pm
content: Quote from: peter-h on August 18, 2020, 09:01:14 amApple were first, by over a year, Android was a "me too" product. It took Apple to get the Smartphone into existence. There had been PDAs before, there had been cellular connected PDAs (including Psion, Palm and Newton), there had even been mobile phones built around the whole idea of digital connectivity (Nokia 9000) but none of them got the formula quite right until the iPhone. Every smartphone since has essentially copied it. It may seem obvious now, but many innovative products seem obvious once someone has made the first one. There is no guarantee that someone else would have come up with a design that hit that sweet spot had Apple not have been there to do it.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 09:03:02 pm
content: Of course we cannot prove this one way or another but Steve Jobs was not the only visionary around.He had the idea of putting a phone in the Ipod (the then music player). That was a fairly obvious step, made possibly only around that time by technology. I am sure it would have happened.Generally stuff that is (a) obvious and (b) possible gets done pretty quickly.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 09:13:06 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 18, 2020, 05:36:12 amYou missed the initiator: Reply#2.Thanks for banging on the table.

author: leham
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2020, 10:58:51 pm
content: no pixar maybe

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 05:23:20 am
content: QuoteI don't know. The Apple/Microsoft Rivalry was probably one of the best things to ever happen to computer users. It probably didn't hurt anyone that they both wrote such showy, hurried and inefficient software that it pushed chip manufacturers as well.Perhaps, without Apple, it would have been Xerox, Next, or even Sun, that filled in the gap and pushed GUIs along. Trickling down from commercial workstations to home users. Eventually.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 03:13:22 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 18, 2020, 05:36:12 amWhat are you talking about? I didn’t deliberately start anything. (If I ever do start something, it’s NOT deliberate.) I’m not the one who brought up vaccination. Please point your vitriol at the person who actually injected the off topic BS.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 04:08:26 pm
content: Quote from: peter-h on August 18, 2020, 09:01:14 amThe thing about Apple is that it established many of the user interface conventions we now take for granted. For example, Apple didn’t invent the mouse or the GUI as such, but the earlier GUIs (like the Xerox Alto and Star) used the mouse in fundamentally different ways than we do now — every GUI on the market now essentially uses the Apple conventions for fundamental interaction. Apple set the standard for mouse GUIs, and then they set the standard for touch GUIs.I mean, nothing in the original iPhonehardwarewas custom. It was essentially state of the art, but off the shelf, hardware brought together by radically innovative software. The iPhone’s multitouch interaction model pretty much instantly obsoleted every other touch GUI model.So while it’s certain that we would have eventually gotten a better smartphone than what existed pre-iPhone, it’s not likely to have resembled what we think of as smartphones today.Apple has a unique knack for really understanding how to put technology to use. (They cultivate that skill internally, but also readily acquire it when they spot it elsewhere, hence hiring talented designers like Mike Matas, buying up companies with promising hardware, etc.) This is in no way to say that nobody else has any talent in this, that’s absolutely not the case. But Apple does have an unusually high share.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 04:28:05 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 19, 2020, 04:08:26 pmSome Apple conventions, fortunately, have been tossed on the dustbin of history, such as single button mice.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 04:34:19 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 19, 2020, 04:28:05 pmYes and no. There’s a really sound reason behind that*, which is why Apple’s mouse and trackpad buttons still default to single-button, though they can be configured to two button, with full software support.*to avoid the problem that befell Windows and many *NIXen: many developers putting essential application functionalityonlywithin the context menus. By telling devs “go ahead and create context menus, but assume your users may not have access to that, so make sure the commands are all housed properly in the menu bar, too”, they ensured this won’t happen. (But don’t get me started on Apple’s Ive-era descent into command hide-and-seek with so much hidden under hover events and gestures. Completely antithetical to much of their earlier user interface guidelines....)

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 04:35:46 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 16, 2020, 09:03:50 pmBack then MS had Windows NT, which was a much better OS than Mac OS of the time. Remember, OSX didn't come out until several years later and the old Mac OS was a cooperative-multitasking OS with no memory protection or separation where you had to explicitly allocate memory to each application. Reboots were de rigueur several times a day. I remember those days well and I think many remember Mac OS as a better OS than it actually was.I'll agree that Mac OS was generally better than the consumer versions of Windows (Windows 95, 98, and ME), but it was not as good as NT.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 04:59:59 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 19, 2020, 04:35:46 pmWell there are two layers to the issue, really: the user interface and the software architecture. From a UI standpoint, I’ve always preferred Mac to Windows. NT and the DOS-based Windows shared the same UI I didn’t like. That alone was enough to keep me off Windows.From an architecture standpoint, there’s absolutely no question that among classic Mac OS, DOS-based Windows, and Windows NT, it was Windows NT that had the best architecture. By a wide margin. Had NT not had to support the myriad hardware configurations possible in the windows world, it would likely have avoided most of the (comparatively few) crashes it did have.I still remember classic Mac OS fondly, as there are still some aspects of its UI that I consider to be better thought-out than in any OS before or since, including today’s macOS. As for stability... I mean, I was able to get it to work pretty well. But other than in carefully curated server configurations, it was categorically impossible to achieve truly long uptimes with it. Certainly not multiple crashes per day if configured decently, but not the weeks or months of uptime easily achieved with Mac OS X or NT. I routinely kept it up for perhaps a week at a time, using sleep instead of shutdown.But allocating memory manually, and having to configure system extensions to load in the right order to get them to play nice... that I don’t miss at all!!! (I used to do that for a living, in fact: I worked as an on-site Mac consultant back in 2001-02, and did it a little bit on the side for a few years after that.)DOS-based Windows was much like classic Mac OS in that a carefully tuned system could work well, but any misbehaving program could freeze it up.Oh yeah, one thing I can say with confidence after working as a Mac tech during the classic Mac OS era: the choice of hardware made a huge difference in stability. While pretty much everything from the Power Mac G3 (mid 1997) on was stable if configured halfway decently, man were there differences before. Some architectures, like the 75/85/9500 series, were great. Others, like the 52/6200 series, were awful. I was not impressed by the stability of any PPC603/603e system Apple ever made. I suspect part of it may have been that the low end systems in the early-mid 90s used IDE instead of SCSI, and at the time, Apple was far, far more experienced with SCSI at that time. By the late 90s Apple had figured out IDE properly and was able to use it on pro hardware, too.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2020, 04:29:11 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 17, 2020, 12:55:53 pmWell, the first product named iPhone was, but of course it was 100% unrelated to the iPhone line everyone now thinks of.