Quote:
Originally posted by mbpark
The only thing that killed Star Trek was the fact that most of the Apple apps were using ASM. Therefore, the developers would have freaked and left the platform. Now, it's a different story, since they're using a common available codebase and development suite.
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Developer freaked anyway. The same reasons cited for not porting to x86 architecture are the same problems that Apple encountered when going to PowerPC. In fact, Apple gave developers almost nothing to make the transistion (a minicomputer based program that took days to execute) - mostly because no one in Apple apparently even thought about the transistion problem. It was a Toronto based company that made the transistion possible - discovered by Apple in a trade show, I believe.
No real reasons are provided for why Apple did or did not do many things in those days because most decisions made in the days of Spindler were quite muddled. Maybe it was corporate fear of Intel. Maybe it was fear that the Mac OS would be pirated. Maybe it was fear of clones. Maybe the OS was really only a reason to buy the hardware. Maybe - and this is one of the most likely reasons - it was fear of change.
At any rate, Mac OSes could have executed on Intel hardware and did so in a small team hidden from Apple's own people - in an office so secret that it did not even have signs. The x86 transistion would have been no more painful than shifting to PowerPC - another completely difference architecture from a failing 68x00 series. One common fact appears to be consistent in Apple decisions of those days - no one in top management could make a decision.
One of those Apple executives is a fraternty brother - a very calm and deliberate individual. Also, BTW, an MBA. However his futile attempt to get Apple to innovate (that right - the MBA was more innovative than the VP of engineering) actually resulted in a violent action. He threw his clipboard (?) down and stomped out of the room. Knowing him personally, that is extreme behavior especially for him. But Apple was that anti-innovative then. My friend left to become President of some other Silicon Vally companies. At one point, he was suppose to be selling Apple clones until Jobs foolishly terminated that effort.