Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: next Big thing (was Mac does DHCP...)

Author:Dave Rogers
Posted:7/23/1999; 7:45:56 AM
Topic:Mac does DHCP...
Msg #:8678 (In response to 8660)
Prev/Next:8677 / 8679

What Apple gains from early adoption of standards-based technologies is the ability to survive in a cross-platform world. Wireless networking is a key effort in that regard. A missing piece is something like Thursby's Dave (I think I got that product name right) on every 'book with a wireless connection, or somehow encourage NT managers to support Mac services for their visiting Mac users.

I'd like to see Apple license Dave, but in any case it represents a tremendous opportunity for Thursby as these wireless lans are going to proliferate very rapidly now.

Just as USB has given Apple gamers access to a far-wider variety of control devices than ADB ever did, Firewire and AirPort will do the same. This lowers barriers to adoption for many, so it improves Apple's potential customer base, while at the same time reduces incentives for the existing base to migrate to the other platform for better peripheral support.

Applications remain a challenge, but we seem to be migrating to standards-based document formats which is a tremendous field-leveler for Apple developers. Apple may someday be too small a market for someone like MS or Corel, but it is a tremendously large market for someone like Nisus. If AppleWorks or Nisus can share documents seemlessly with Word users, who would care if Word weren't offered for the Mac? In my experience, it is the ability to share documents which drove the move to one particular application or another, not the feature-set.

Clearly we have the internet to thank for this development, as RTF was never embraced as a cross-platform ("cross-application?") solution to the document sharing problem. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out with Adobe's PDF standard (which is going to be part of Apple's OS X imaging model) versus MS's XML-based standard, but in either case, it should be good news for Mac developers.

Having just realized I may have stuck my foot in my mouth, someone tell me that MS's XML-based Office 2K document format is a documented "open" standard?

All-in-all, it's looking like much better times for Mac users.

Dave Rogers

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