"Ron Seybold" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message news:a6qk5501703@enews1.newsguy.com... > Hello Friends: > > Greg Cagle writes that in 1989, Apollo's customer base showed > character by doing these things: > > "people bit the bullet, did what they had to" > > and went along with HP's plans to discontinue their product. > > What were the costs of biting, and that doing? Who lost work, spent > money earmarked for growth? The two above phrases don't begin to > suggest how much effort Apollo customers spent switching off their > systems, machines whose biggest sin appears to be "they weren't fast > enough." Even at that, it's a sin more serious than the 3000's -- > "you're not something we can sell in big enough numbers anymore," > says HP. Ron, the Apollo platform had another key issue that I didn't expand on. It was (drumroll) PROPRIETARY. It a fabulous windowing system and desktop, miles ahead of X11 and Motif. But it was PROPIETARY. Apollo Domain was a network operating system long before Sun claimed to be that. But it was PROPIETARY. THAT was the biggest sin. What were the costs? A lot of people had to go buy new hardware and software from HP. And Sun. And IBM. > It's 12 years after the Apollo elimination, and HP customers have the > Internet as a tool to gather as a group. Commodity computing is the > rage at HP now, but that is pitted against the advantage the Internet > brings to a customer. Commodity assumes you all pretty much want the > same product, so distinguishing models can be dropped. Your specific > needs are not as important as the needs of the many. > > Standing up for what you need is noble, too. Character can be > demonstrated in many ways other than laying down. Ron, people had jobs to do and work to get done. End of discussion. -- Greg Cagle gregc at gregcagle dot com * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *