bundling thoughts

[Paul_Melson@keykertusa.com]

>First.
>MacOS was the kick ass platform for graphic arts for years,
>because they had kick-ass software comapnies like Adobe, which was
>Mac-only for a very long time. When Adobe ported it gave people an excuse
>to leave the Mac platform not because the software ran better on Windows,
>and in fact it doesnt run as well, but because people could use Windows,
>thus you saw a huge shift in the platform people used for the task.

The thing you're not mentioning about the Adobe/Apple schism in the late 
'80s is the fact that Apple abandoned their 68k CISC chips for Motorolla 
PPCs and refused to develop backward-compatibility for older 68k apps into 
their OS.  Adobe's decision to develop for Windows/x86 was an attempt to 
cut their losses as their competitors (Quark, Corel, Aldus) scrambled to 
beat them to the new Mac platform.  Microsoft learned from Apple's 
mistake, and to this day you can run your old DOS apps from your 286 on 
the latest Windows release.  So it's not that Microsoft paid Adobe to 
cross-develop their products, but rather that Apple dropped the ball and 
didn't use their market share to build loyalty.  They thought they could 
dictate changes to companies that developed for their platform.  Microsoft 
has twisted that so that each such move is leveraged in their favor.  They 
don't give orders to other companies without some sort of 
punishment/reward scenario to tip things in their favor.

>M$ will happily bundle free software with their product, provided it is
>bug-free by their testing labs (costs money for testing, costs money for
>the dev tools, etc etc, all payable to M$) and you PAY them to bundle it.

I've never known Microsoft to be shy about releasing buggy software, why 
would it matter if it's free?  :-)

PaulM