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Transparent Much? (5/21/98)
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Well, after today's court request in the ongoing antitrust flap, the name of "Microsoft" will be permanently married in our minds to the phrase "unmitigated gall." (Not that the two terms were fantastically separate in the first place, but still.) You are, of course, aware, that the whole point of the timing of the current Department of Justice suit is to try to obtain a preliminary injunction, before Windows 98 ships in volume, requiring Microsoft to allow manufacturers to install Netscape on Windows 98 systems if they choose to do so. That's why it's so incredible that Microsoft is now requesting more than seven months to file its first response to Justice's request for the injunction. An Associated Press article has more.
Microsoft lackey Mark Murray states, "We obviously want to get this issue resolved as soon as possible." Oh, obviously. Because a seven-month delay on the injunction-- during which Windows 98 could ship as planned, tied to Internet Explorer via the licensing contracts-- is certainly not what Microsoft's after. It's just that they would really need seven months (what they call a "reasonable amount of time") to respond to this filing, and the fact that such a long delay would give them plenty of time to continue growing IE's market share is purely coincidental. Hoo boy.
On another note, it's possible to interpret Microsoft's request as a sign that they expect the injunction to be granted. Apparently quite a few legal eagles agree that Justice's case against Microsoft looks pretty solid, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article. And in this land of litigation, if Microsoft loses the DoJ suit, you can bet that there will be plenty of private plaintiffs filing their own lawsuits against Microsoft, using Justice's case as a precedent. Microsoft's costs, according to the Inquirer, could potentially run into the billions. America loves a winner... unless that winner happens to own the ball. And the stadium.
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SceneLink (724)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/21/98 episode: May 21, 1998: Microsoft asks for seven whole months in which to respond to a request for a preliminary injunction, fooling absolutely nobody with their transparent attempt to ship Windows 98 unfettered for half a year. Meanwhile, BYTE magazine stands by their benchmark results, which show that the G3 really is twice as fast as a Pentium II, and Mac wizards Newer Technology jump into the USB/iMac game...
Other scenes from that episode: 725: From the Horse's Mouth (5/21/98) "Up to twice as fast..." That's the claim that Apple's been making about the speed of the G3 versus the Pentium II. If you know how to squint really well to read fine print at the bottom of commercials on TV, you may have noticed that Apple's speed claim is based on the results of BYTE magazine's BYTEmark tests... 726: Newer To The Rescue (5/21/98) Nary a week ago, we talked about the rumor that some major Mac manufacturer was working on a USB hub for the iMac that would provide a set of standard Mac ADB, serial, and SCSI ports. You may recall that we voiced our hope that the "major Mac manufacturer" in question was Newer Technologies, probably best known these days for their killer G3 upgrade cards, but engineers in days past of lots of nifty docks for Apple's PowerBook Duo series...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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