Yawn!, so what? Rumours of an Apple buyout by everybody from Sun to IBM have been around for years. Even a Larry Ellison buyout rumour is nothing new, and this particular buyout rumour has been making the rounds since his San Jose Mercury News story. So why is this suddenly such a threat? After all he is anti-Microsoft, how can he be more of a threat to Apple then windows?
The problem is his stated intentions for Apple. According to an interview he gave to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun (AKA Nikkei). In this interview Larry Ellison outlined his plans for Apple if he was to gain control. Ellison does not want Macintosh, or not as it is presently. He just wants Apples brand name and market support. Ellison wants to use Apple to make Network Computers (NCs).
What are NCs? These are cheap computers with no hard drives that have to be connected to more powerful server like computer from which all programs, including the operating system, have to be downloaded to run. It's an idea being put forward to bring down the cost of PCs in large offices. For those people with unix experience, it's a not-so-dumb dumbterminal, in that the NC has some processing capabilities, but still requires a server to store applications, documents etc.
Ellison has publicly stated that he wants to get rid of Apples current Executives and replace them with hand picked executives. He also wishes to change the current Macintoshes from the Personal Computers (PCs) they are now, to NCs. Basically, Macs would then become truly dead, just the Macintosh name would live on to give Larry Ellison's NCs market respect.
Ellison's Apple would no longer support PCs. Your Macintosh would get no new OS updates, no new models will become available for you to replace your current Mac, your options would be a cheap NC that would use your current Mac as its server, not exactly what I'd call an "upgrade", or an expensive NC server, that may, or may not, run MacOS, it could just as easily run Unix, as Unix already has NCs in the form of dumb terminals, and is an operating system easily available that is state of the art, and built specifically for this type of operation.
As you see, windows only threatens to so out compete MacOS as to force it from the market place, Ellison threatens to just kill it off the Macintosh platform.
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