CompuServe Messages

[continued] '60's. I'm going to boot-up my crystal ball here: – Apple's rumored announcement of QD-based printers in March '90 will likely not incorporate Microsoft's end of the PDL. – System 7.0 release may be delayed as much as 4 months due to glitches in doing the "hooks" to MS's code. – Adobe will launch an anti-trust suit against the alliance shortly before roll-out of any "AMs" PDL-based product. Capturing a market with proprietary technology is one thing, but it's another thing altogether to form alliances with competitors in order to take market from a third party. – The "AMs" PDL will find rough going in the professional, high-res arena due to the market saturation by PostScript (and clone) engines that will likely occur during the "AMs" gestation, debug, and acceptance (and lawsuit!) period. – "AMs" will likely become another OS/2 – "established standard" on a proprietary platform with few supporting applications for an indeterminate period of time. – The former "simple & user-friendly" Macintosh will drown in a cesspool of competing standards in which only the "techies" will have a full grasp (job security?) – shades of MS-DOS! High-end users will embrace the NeXT box, if only out of simplicity. The wheel has been invented, and it is round, rolls well, and just plain works. The Apple/Microsoft deal will only confuse everybody and turn the user community against Apple. (Who really _likes_ Microsoft?). …mm