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created 6 June 2000

Pondering a Microsoft Breakup

With the newest wrinkle in the Microsoft case, and writing this on the 56th anniversary of D-Day, I sat for a few moments and wondered a Microsoft breakup would mean to the Mac network administrator.

What would be the direct and long-term possible impacts from a two-paned window named Microsoft?

Short - term, not much. The Macintosh Business Unit is a big moneymaker for Microsoft, and one of the few divisions they can point to as an example of how they aren't a Windows-only company. In addition, the MBU gives them experience in one area that they may need a lot of if the breakup survives appeal: Writing applications that aren't a part of the operating system.
Think about this from Microsoft's point of view. For years, pretty much every Microsoft Windows application is not so much a program that runs on Windows as an extension to Windows. The Office programmers have been able to write for APIs that no one outside of Microsoft gets to see, and if they need to maybe have the Windows API altered for Office, well, no problem, make an internal suggestion, and see what happens. Even if it didn't work that way, the Office coders had access to the filesystem and OS at almost hardware levels. No other Windows application maker has that level of access, that easily.

And it's hurt Microsoft in a lot of ways. Because Office works as part of, instead of on top of Windows, it's been easy to get really good speed out of it. But the Office for Windows programmers have also gotten lazy with this. The best example is Access. There is no way that Microsoft is incapable of porting this application to the MacOS. The explanation that the Mac market won't support an application like Access is just as inane, as proven by FileMaker's deal with the Department of The Interior. So what's the deal then? Why isn't there an Access for MacOS, and along with it, a current version of Project, (which uses modified Access databases for its file format) for the MacOS?

Windows

Access, in its current form is so tied to Windows, that to do a quick port would require porting a huge chunk of Windows to the MacOS. Access just runs at too low a level to be a cross platform application. This means that if the Office folks can't get that juicy low-level Windows access without giving those same APIs out to the rest of their developers, and at the same time that the Office coders get them, they have two choices: Freeze Access where it is, and create a new, different low-end database, or, do the rewrite, get it above the OS, so that you don't have to give away the APIs for the low-level hidden Windows stuff. In either case, if you unlock Access from Windows, getting it onto the Mac is much easier.

Long - term, I think you would see most of Microsoft's applications needing the same type of rewrite. And this is where the Mac community could see some huge gains. Because guess who the current experts in getting Microsoft applications to work at a normal application level are?

That's right, the Macintosh Business Unit.

So now, things are looking a little better all of a sudden for the Mac, from the perspective of more Microsoft apps. Because they already know what issues are involved in running beasts like Word, and Excel when you don't have intimate access to the OS.

And from the administration view, there's some nice potential there as well.

Face it, for a company like Microsoft, the Linux market is a swamp. They may do okay, they may get corporate malaria from it. There's no way to ensure that the Linux you are coding Word for has anything to do with what it gets installed on. Filesystems, windowing environments, hardware, none of these things can be assumed with Linux. This is why you see so many commercial Linux products limited to a select few distributions on specific hardware, or like Corel, you run your own distribution for your apps to run on. No matter how you look at it, for Microsoft, it's not a pretty sight.

But OSX? Ah, there's a horse of a different color indeed, and it's green my friends. Here you have a Unix - based OS, with consistency that only a corporate admin could love. You know what your base hardware is going to be, the GUI is a thing to bet on, no worrying about the kernel version du jour, and it's based on a lot of open-source work!

All the benefits of Unix, and none of the headaches of Linux.

So now, the network management folks at Microsoft need a place to expand into, because WIndows is no longer locked tight for them....hmmm...What is the next logical target? A platform with horsepower, and a good user base, one that appreciates efforts towards ease of use and integration, one that Microsoft has experience with, yet isn't a threat to Windows?

What's that Trigger? M-A-C-O-S-X you say?

Again, these are nothing but opinions and predictions, and anyone can do no better or worse with a bowl of chicken livers. But the capabilities are there, the abilities are there, and the Mac has long been a fun little lab for Microsoft. And, if I had to decide on an additional platform for SMS, SQL*Server, IIS, Exchange, etc, because I needed to create a new revenue stream for those products, MacOS X would be looking pretty sweet. Using stuff you already have is always more effective than reinventing the wheel.

In any case, the computer industry hasn't been this much fun in a long time, and I think that Apple, and MacOS X have a good chance to reap some handy benefits from a Microsoft breakup.

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