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The Seven Year Itch (12/4/97)
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Meanwhile, there may be trouble in paradise for longtime lovebirds Intel and Microsoft, according to a Washington Post article. Barely twelve short months after they nervously asserted that network computers were impractical and no threat to their PC marketshare, Intel has announced that they are working on their own design for a low-cost "lean client" architecture.
Why does this signal a potential rocky patch in the Wintel marriage? Because these new Intel machines will run a variety of operating systems, without favoring Windows. Or, rather, Intel doesn't feel any particular loyalty to Microsoft's OSes-- anyone who wants to play can come and get it. IBM, for instance, is helping to make these new machine "operating system agnostic." And that could hurt Microsoft, unless they play their cards right.
Microsoft, however, is saying they have nothing to worry about, as things haven't changed; Microsoft wants Windows to be "the common link" between these new systems, and Intel wants their processors running at the center. They insist that there's nothing fundamentally different between the NC market and the PC market, except that the former is still emerging and is therefore not yet "well-defined." It'll be a couple of years, most likely, before we start to see the outcome. Who knows? Perhaps thin clients will flop altogether; it's entirely possible that, in real life, their benefits will be crushed under the weight of their drawbacks.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/4/97 episode: December 4, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)
Other scenes from that episode: 238: Iacocca, You-acocca... (12/4/97) Computer Reseller News may be calling it all bunk, but rumors have been flying that none other than Lee Iacocca may become the next CEO of Apple. It may sound farfetched, but there's a resonance to the story which propels its propagation, and as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. As far as we know, the story started last night when MacOS Rumors reported that Iacocca had been touring the Apple facility with Steve Jobs... 240: Rhapsodic Over VM/PMT (12/4/97) Gotta love that pre-emptive multitasking and non-half-assed (full-assed?) virtual memory scheme... While we haven't heard of anyone trying this stunt on a Powermac running Rhapsody DR1, MacNN has a neat item about some basic stress tests of the Intel version...
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