Re: Did Microsoft BUY Apple?? Virtual PC GAMES.

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Stephen DeVore, Seattle, WA (fx_at_sadsongs.org)
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: 23 Feb 2005 07:15:55 -0800

2/23/2005

Thank you folks for your replies (through Feb. 20, 2005).

Wow. Lots of technical details.

Just for the record, I'd like to make some clarifications to what I
wrote:

First, my intent in the Subject line was to generate interest rather
than promote a conspiracy theory. That said, none of the replies to my
post seemed to generate the KIND of response I thought that it might
get (like, "Yeah, How did the FTC overlook that!?"). In fact, the
responses seemed more defensive of VPC (and even of Microsoft) than I
imagined would appear here in an Apple-related forum! Even one post
suggests that the CEO of Apple computer, Steve Jobs, KNEW about it,
could have stopped it (maybe), and let it go!

Since I'm at it, I guess I'll mention that I overheard someone say that
Microsoft bought out Apple long ago! (My internal reaction: WHAT??) I
guessed that he was referring to all the stocks of Apple that were
bought; or was it some sort of cash infusion into Apple? Whatever. It
kept the one OS that was still standing tall and that still posed SOME
kind of threat (at the time) ALIVE; that of course made it so Microsoft
could argue that Windows DID indeed have a competitor in the OS market.
(That was before Linux was perceived as a major threat, I think.) OS2
was like a long-ago dream. NeXT and NeXTStep were not an issue. Same
with Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Amiga, Atari, BeOS, and
others. And of course mainframe computers were a different market,
though the Windows platform DID taking away a lot of their business!

Does the FTC even get that?? Windows machines took away business from
most of those platforms, OSes, and companies.

My reasons for posting what I did -- which was my very first post here
in Virtual PC (VPC) -- were, I suppose, that it was one of the first
things that came to mind after reading a REVIEW of VPC7, one that
clearly stated the game-playing limitation as related to VPC's 16MB of
RAM. I don't recall it saying anything about 3D this or that.

Now to some quotes:

> If you want to play PC games, then buy a Windows PC.

I have one. Thanks.

> That kind of defeats the whole purpose of Apple having their own OS.
If the Mac can run Windows software so "easily" (and it wouldn't be
that easy to do), then why would anyone bother to write Mac versions of
their software. We'd all end up using only Windows software...

Interesting. Some have said that -- until recently -- Apple was mostly
a HARDWARE company! I didn't entirely agree, even then, but if Apple
can make money selling their own hardware, AND their software, why not.
Kind of goes with what someone else said--that Microsoft might not care
WHAT computer Windows gets run on, as long as they can sell another
copy of Windows!

> a fairly silly idea since they make their money from the Windows OS
and not the hardware anyway.

Well, some have vaunted the theory that Microsoft and Intel are in
things together.

> Besides, read this article and you'll see that Microsoft is on the
way out.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/story?id=88655&page=1

Um. I skimmed it very quickly. Doesn't seem to be the right article.
But I saw a link there to an article that maybe was what you meant:

Silicon Insider: R.I.P. Microsoft?
After Dominating the Technology Industry for Years, is Microsoft Poised
to Collapse?
Commentary by MICHAEL S. MALONE
Feb. 10, 2005 -- Is Microsoft dying?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/story?id=508399&page=1

> That's the biggest bunch of bs I've ever heard and it isn't funny.

Now that's more like the response I thought I'd get. Sorry if you were
offended (if you were even referring to me! and not to the other person
you argued with).

> Maybe developers don't spend money in creating games for the Mac the
same reason they don't do for linux? Its not that there are no tools,
there is no marketshare.

Yes. That's what I meant by saying that they may think that they do not
have enough "resources". I meant money, not tools. And I meant money as
it relates to sales, which as you indicate relates to market share. On
the other hand, if I were a developer/programmer, and could sell my
game to a few million people (Mac or Linux), or even a few thousand, I
THINK I'd consider doing that!

> I'm pretty sure that the next version will be able to use the
Graphics card directly.

That would be cool. Others in this thread doubt that, but such a
technical challenge might have been some programmer's dream of a claim
to fame. In any case, time will tell.

> Increasing VMAM [sic, VRAM] doesn't increase performance.

I doubt that is correct, but I'm not a complete expert.

> Video RAM is irrevelant. The major issue is performance.

I agree that CPU speed/performance is major, major.

> What the heck are you talking about. VPC was limited to 16mb long
before Microsoft bought it.

Some people.... (Amazing how some people interpret and/or read into
things.) After MS bought VPC, they kept it at 16MB, thus limiting it,
whether they designed the limitation or not.

> Besides, the card they emulate is not even a 3D card. Magically
giving it more RAM would not change the fact that it's not a 3D card
and therefore STILL won't be useful for games.

Nice to know, the 3D emulation stuff. More video RAM can be good all
around. (Except in the case of having 256MB in the G5. The two cards
offered BOTH block one of the PCI slots! If Apple does nothing else, it
should be to immediately move those slots away from each other so that
the slots do not get blocked.)

About the various comments that the amount of VRAM is not very
pertinent? I'd almost wager a bet that if you took the FASTEST Intel or
AMD CPU machine (running Windows), and put in a 16MB card (or, let's
make it 4!), and tried to run the biggest, baddest games which seem to
be ravenous for Video RAM, that 1) some games would not run at all, and
2) the games that did run would run much more slowly. Even if a CPU is
fast enough, some applications just REQUIRE a minimum amount of Video
RAM. But, I'll bite, if the CPU emulation is only, say 300MHz as one
suggested, or 500MHz, as I glimpsed elsewhere, then even if you had,
say, 256MB of Video RAM, then YES, many games would simply crawl, if
they ran at all! Okay. I bit it.

> If you want to play PC games, take that $250 you would have spent on
VPC & Windows XP put it towards a cheap PC or a game console instead.

I don't want to play, but thanks for the advice.

> Money is money after all, and if Bill can sell Windows to Mac users,
who care what machine they run it on...

Could be true. Don't know if MS gets anything from their partnering
with Intel.

> Thank you SO much, guys, for all the laughs I'm getting out of this
thread.

You're welcome. That's kind of what I'd hoped would occur.

> Microsoft did NOT develop VPC. Connectix did. And they did one HECK
of a job.

Agreed, mostly.

> How many of you guys could conceive such an idea and implement it?

Don't know how it compared with SoftPC or SoftWindows (which I owned
and tried in the late 1990s). But SoftWindows came first.

> ... they did one HECK of a job.

Okay, now the not-so mostly. When Virtual PC was FIRST talked about --
before it was even released -- it was said that it would be NEARLY as
fast as the real thing. Don't know what happened to that claim. but if
VPC7 even compares with, say, 1GHz, that's still only about 25% of the
current fastest CPU out there! Doesn't sound like "nearly" to me. Makes
me wonder just what happened to that original claim made by someone.

> Will it be able to support high end games? Probably not. Why? It was
never intended for that purpose.

Neither were PCs! -- back at the same time when VPC was first
introduced, that is. The computer gaming-machine market niche pretty
much came into being sometime after that. Once gaming started being a
target market, it certainly COULD have become a focus for VPC. It's
sort of ironic that the Mac was ignored by early programmers because it
-- being so GRAPHICAL and not so command-line oriented (and for other
reasons) -- seemed like more of a TOY or a GAME machine than a
"serious" computer! Businesses bought this garbage (from whom?). And
the PERSONS in Personal Computing were also poisoned with various
comments about the Mac vs. PC. The Mac was graphical for nearly half a
decade before Microsoft got Windows 3.11 for Workgroups out the door.
And of course, Windows 95 came out MORE than a decade later.

> The real problem is that the graphics languages the two need to
support are different. If you don't know, the Mac uses OpenGL. The PC
uses DirectX, latest version, 9. Totally different. Can you make a
"virtual" Direct X, so 3D games written for Direct X would play in Open
GL? It would be a BLEEP of a job, translating all of this, but maybe.
It would then run at about a frame a second.

Interesting. I wonder how OS X and Classic (OS 9) -- can BOTH access
the hardware at the same time. If those can do it, then, with a little
help from the Apple folks, I suppose VPC could do it. But, there is the
difficulty of different protocols. Might need a video card that can
handle both OpenGL and Direct X calls at once, or two video cards
(ouch, expensive). But WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT, this is really too
techie for my blood. I've said not enough, and I'm sure too much.

But I'll throw down one more gauntlet that the FTC might want to take a
closer look at.

Dear FTC,

Virtual PC (VPC) is very much LIKE an operating system. It's not really
an OS, but it's similar to one.

Why would you allow Microsoft to buy it? I thought you were looking
sideways at Microsoft to see whether they were a monopoly or not. I
guess buying one more market niche didn't seem like such a big deal.

And, dear FTC, why did I hear some person quip that Microsoft bought
out Apple long ago? Did it have something to do with Apple stocks that
were bought? or some sort of cash infusion from Microsoft to Apple? Was
it on the one hand to keep certain folks AT Apple making money while on
the other it struck one more damaging blow against the Apple market
(niche or otherwise)?

I'm curious, FTC, was this really a wise choice?

But what do I know? I'm just a computer USER (Mac and PC). I guess if
Apple didn't mind (a-hem), I don't mind.

The last thing: Recently, as I was standing in an Apple Retail Store, I
heard a prospective Apple customer ask, "Will I be able to run (my)
games?" (Like Doom 3, I think.) "No."

"Well, I guess I'll have to KEEP my PC then."

And, in the future, if the Macintosh still doesn't run Doom, uh 12, by
the time he, a gamer, has gaming children of his own, he'll have to
face the same questions then.

Only this time, perhaps, with a wife, and a bigger mortgage on a larger
house!

What's another $1,000 to $4,000 anyway.

Cheers, Stephen
HalleluYah! Praise Yah!
©2005. All rights eternally reserved.

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