Momentum The Tale of Missed Opportunities By Natalia Usselman			ALL THROUGHOUT the 80s the computers in Russia (where I am from) had a strange operating system not many people in Canada have heard of. It was called Norton Commander, ran on top of DOS and basically made you press F-keys on the keyboard to move, copy and delete files. I was trying to be on top of the progress and when my girlfriend in Moscow said that she was learning Windows, I became incredibly jealous. "What's Windows?" I asked. She could not explain. "Lots of windows" - she shrugged. And then I got a job as a secretary in a rich company that was selling cash registers. My workstation consisted of a Pentium computer and , of course, Windows 3.1 on it. Oh, pleasures of drag and drop! It was so simple and pretty, that, as always you would be wondering ""How come no one had come up with something like that before?" Little did I know that someone did come up with something like this before. There was another operating system, even prettier and easier and with a lot more multimedia capacity than Windows 3.1 and it was available long before the Windows. It was called Macintosh OS. And then I finally came to Canada, saw my first Mac, started to hear all these rumours. The image of evil Bill Gates stealing the idea of Graphical User Interface from Apple emerged in my mind. I felt so sorry for the underdog Apple that I was ready to buy a Mac just to support the good guys. Until I started to learn facts like these: 1. Microsoft was Apple's software developer long before introducing Windows. One of the most successful products for Macintosh was Microsoft Access. 2. Bill Gates wrote Apple a letter proposing to license Macintosh operating system for PC computers. He emphasized the importance of creating momentum or "critical mass" of Macintoshes, necessary for the technology to be considered long-term contender. Apple declined. 3. There was a numerous number of projects on Apple itself ranging from licensing the hardware out (making "Mac-compatibles" along with IBM -compatibles) to making the Mac software run on Intel chips. The projects were killed one by one. One of the reasons of Apple management stubbornness was that Mac OS would not run that smoothly on a "foreign" chip - which was true. Second - Apple executives believed that they were making a better personal computer than anyone else (which was also true) and did not have to fight for the market share. A very similar story happened in 70s to the VCR tape formats, where Sony Beta tape had better quality and better reproduction abilities than VHS format, but it was extinguished by VHS because the latter was an open format. In other words everyone could make VHS tapes and VCRs that played VHS tapes. That was not the case with Beta and consumers that bought Beta players soon found that there were not many cassettes to play on them. Apple management was afraid that if they license any part of their technology out, they would have to compete not only with IBM machines but with independent makers of Macintoshes as well. But at the same time it is independent makers that provide the critical mass. Then, the more computers appear on the market, the more software gets developed for them. Then the cycle repeats and everyone in computer industry gets richer. Microsoft caught the momentum. Apple missed. Macintosh did not become a standard of PC. And my first "wow" at so called "Graphical User Interface" was about operating system "Windows". My name is Natalia Usselman. I saw my first computer when I was 22, in Russia, during Computers for Psychology class. It had black and white monitor and still unknown to me OS. I remember typing some Basic on it, but what for - no idea. I bought my first computer when I was 25, in Canada. It was the best computer you could get then - Pentium II, 233 MHz processor. I fell in love with enormous possibilities of it immediately and instead of becoming a film director decided to become a multimedia producer. So here I am, in SAIT. Source list Jim Carlton, Apple . The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders. Random House, N.Y. 1997 back >>

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