>>>LOL. I'm not going to disagree.
>>>
>>>I will say something potentially provocative, though: I have a particular interest in a certain app that needs to run on multiple versions of Windows. VFP is the tool of choice and it has delivered flawlessly for 2 years. A parallel app written using, er, an alternative tool with major vendor support and regular staged minion orgasms isn't complete yet, and when pilots are deployed it is a complete PITA. At least you know where you stand with Apple and when you use the tools they decree on their devices, you aren't left feeling exasperated and resentful. And on that note, I say goodnight, sir!
>>
>>I confess I have no clue what you are talking about in the second paragraph, but I in no way believe the Apple model might not be a good thing for people who want to develop on their platform. I have no knowledge at all about that.
>>
>>But I lived in San Franscisco - and Silicon Valley for a long time and saw snake-oil salesmen of both technical and non technical stripes. Jobs' style ( and even more so that of his acolytes ) has never strayed far from its roots.
>>
>>Balmer looked like an idiot jumping around like monkey-boy shouting "Developers, developers" ( which made me feel like I needed a shower ) but when the suits from Armonk came a-callin' in Seattle in the early days he made a lot of people really rich by making the DOS deal non-exclusive. *That* was visionary.
>
>That was absolutely brilliant. That and licensing DOS to IBM on a computer-shipped basis and not on a computer-with-DOS-installed-shipped basis.
>
>A question, was Ballmer at Microsoft then? Or was that Bill Gates' negotiation?
My understanding is that he knew Gate's in the Harvard days (Ballmer actually graduated ) and was there for the negotiation with IBM in 1980 - the year he joined MS as a business manager. I have always heard Balmer credited as the one who inserted the negotiation point which IBM did not consider really important at the time and which probably ranks with the greatest business moves of the 20th century.
I
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
