Power Computing: Requiem

Apple today announced a $100 million license buyout from clone manufacturer Power Computing, which will cease making MacOS machines on December 31. Power reportedly plans to carry on with its intent to manufacture Pentium class "PC" machines. Apple announced it has no other plans at this time to extend any existing licensing agreements, or to license CHRP to the Mac platform.

As much as I have written in the past about the celebrated "Mac Clone Wars", I would now instead like to make a personal statement about my feelings about this turn of events and my personal plans for the future.

I am not going to attempt to argue what others should do or how they should feel. I have withheld pages of my own analysis and opinion from this web page in the last two weeks to see what Apple would do. Others, notably Ric Ford of MacIntouch and Adam Engst of TidBITS, have done excellent analyses of the problem. It is too late for all that now.

As a Mac user for twelve years and proud new owner of both a PowerBook 3400 and Power Computing Power Tower Pro as of this year, I'm absolutely devastated that Apple killed the wonderful clone licensing horizons it opened up a little over a year ago. Engst succinctly stated some time ago that such a move would be "tantamount to corporate suicide." Never say "never", but things can never be the same again.

Like so many others of us, I'm heavily invested in existing architectures and software for the next few years. On the other hand, I can't afford to purchase two or three more machines in the next three years just to stay current with CHRP platform configurations, Rhapsody, unix, and whatever else the future may hold in store for the Mac.

It seems a fait accompli that Apple has mortally wounded the fragile alliance of users, clone manufacturers, and third-party software vendors. I felt this alliance, combined with the Next/Rhapsody technology, had at least offered a possibility of a major Mac inroad into corporate Wintel turf. I had only recently seen a chance it could have succeeded beyond its boosters' wildest dreams.

With the alliance shattered, there is no reason to hope that Apple can even stay where it was in 1990. Rhapsody, blue box, yellow box -- none of this makes any sense at all without extensibility and strong cross-platform development. Without the clone manufacturers and strong support from third party software houses, not only is this not going to happen, but we are going to lose much of what we had.

Mac users who rely on their machines only for built-in software and functionality, and who have never owned a clone, may be relatively unaffected by this for the time being -- assuming volatile Apple and the Mac survive.

People who depend on the Mac for cross-platform work and third-party technology like linux, the Microsoft Office suite, and the family of Metrowerks compilers, who have a bona-fide need for an upgradable and extensible MacOS box, will be in for some rude shocks. The viability of Mac in personal computing is very uncertain for us.

Mac Owners need the platform and software stability enjoyed by larger OS platforms. Even though our investments may only be $2000, $3000, $4000 or $5000, we depend on Apple just as surely as do Adobe and Power Computing for stability and a future upon which we can make long-range plans.

I'm no longer in the business of making any predictions about Apple's prospects for a return to corporate stability. I can no longer afford to invest in Apple technology -- machines, software, or hardware or software upgrades. I invested heavily in all these areas based on the assumption of a rationally predictable future. I invested thousands of dollars, and thousands of hours of study and learning new skills, in the possibility of a payoff for my career and my future.

The fact that this investment now seems to have dead-ended doesn't mean I have to pour more money and time into it. I do not believe, cannot believe, that Apple has factored in serious consideration for its loyal user base in its corporate decisions within the last year or two. The assumption that our user base is a "captive market" has been thrown open to question as never before.

I decided two weeks ago to suspend all personal Mac software purchases and upgrades until a firm and favorable resolution of the clone conflict was reached. The worst has now officially been confirmed by Apple and Power Computing, and I have no reason to change my mind. I can "ride out" a waiting period of one, two or three years on my existing Mac software. But the decision which affects my future has been cast.

A "no buy, no-upgrade" software policy will free up a tidy amount toward a next-generation machine purchase. I truly regret that my Power Tower Pro, which I had hoped could last me (via upgrades) through the year 2000, now promises to be both extinct and non-upgradable within a year, maybe less. What, if anything, Apple intends to do with its new purchase besides scavenge its assets is a moot point. A captive clone brand is a no-brainer.

Not only am I deeply saddened by this turn of events, not only am I financially hurt by it, I am frightened by the realization that persistence in trying to stay exclusively on the Mac platform has become financially irrational for anyone who has to depend on strong cross-platform performance. Given my current investment in RISC, MacOS, Mac applications, AppleScript, ethernet and even unix, not to mention a high-end clone, I can no longer even know how to plan intelligently for my future.

Even families primarily concerned with getting for the kids the most worthwhile experience with "Arthur's Teacher Troubles" may have to re-think the long-range investment strategy which best promises an education in mainstream personal computing.

Mac users live in a troubled, war-torn territory.

Right now, it just wouldn't be smart to for me to intensively study programming the Mac Toolbox in C or C++, nor to try to set up MKlinux on my Mac clone, nor to invest heavily in Mac software should new generations of upgrades still become available. While Apple would honor warranties for existing Power Computing purchases, it would be stupid to think they would offer upgrade paths which could defer or delay new machine purchases -- from Apple.

Fortunately, I'm in a position where choosing not to have to be dependent on the Mac platform is relatively easy for me. C and unix run on any box. I know Windows already, and work in a 100% Windows environment, so getting corporate and peer support is certainly not a problem. The "core software suites" all come in Mac and PC flavors. All I lack at this point is the Wintel box itself, which is the easy part. Heck, we're already a Mac/PC household. I've been planning a cross-platform independence of any one manufacturer for years.

You could say quite fairly that I took a chance when I bought Power Computing in January 1997. That's correct, I did. I assumed there was a certain assessable chance Power Computing could fail. I never assessed the possibility that Apple could say, "we're sorry, but it was all a big mistake. We've changed our mind." I never anticipated Apple pulling the plug on Power Computing.

In my own mind, it would have been inconceivable that Apple could launch and bless a successful clone program, and then leave an estimated 200,000 new machine owners high and dry. I guess that's my fault. I failed to reckon with Apple's history with its own Apple-branded products.

My own "brief statement" is that everyone has to draw their own lines. No matter what corporate Apple is doing, life will and must go on.

For me, this must be the proverbial last straw. Starting roughly with the introduction of Microsoft Office '97, on which I depend heavily at work and home, I expect my new software purchases will most assuredly run on a Pentium box, which also unequivocally runs unix. I will keep my Macs for many of the wonderful third-party applications I enjoy so much right now, which regrettably are mostly unavailable now for the Wintel machines.

Not all readers, including many friends in the Mac community who go back many years, will understand the personal and professional importance I attach to a stable and predictable platform. Fewer will understand that I have feared for years that this day could come to pass, and still fewer will understand how non-negotiable such personal decisions become when finally made. I think that's what "last straw" means, doesn't it?

Much of the energy I actively invested in the Mac community over the past seven years will inevitably be diverted to learning the intricacies of one or even two other operating systems, the software and programming languages which support it, and in bringing myself "up to speed" in -- for me -- a brave new world. I have no plans to leave the Mac community, though my own diminished role in it will be increasingly uncertain. I do hope, in time, to be able to bring to the PC community some of the attitude, software critique and high expectations which once made the Mac so "insanely great".

More than ever before, we do not know what store the future holds for us. Only fools and tyrants demand absolute certainty, but ordinary citizens who live in unpredictable chaos can hardly be faulted for seeking a more stable environment elsewhere. From my perspective, that's the whole problem in a nutshell. You can't say Apple couldn't have seen this coming.

If you'll forgive one final opinion, I think Apple forgot, somewhere along the line, that the average American family, power user and corporation alike all have good reason to view their personal computers as an investment. I mean this as their own investment, not Apple's, with certain express and implied rights and expectations attached. I know few Mac people who haven't, at one time or another, expressed anger with Apple for having jerked them around on a major machine investment. At a different point for each of us, perhaps, it stops becoming a question of understanding and forgiveness, and starts becoming a question of what our plans are to do something about it.

"Freedom from uncertainty" is never guaranteed, but uncertainty will remain with us, to a degree we don't deserve, for a long time to come. Do you trust Apple as much as you did a year ago? Five years ago? Each of us will be expected and required to act differently in the face of the same adversity, but this much is certain: things will never be the same again.

Of course, if Apple actually makes Power Computing a direct marketing arm of Apple, and if Apple actually manages to keep my Power Tower Pro "supported" in an upgrade path over the next few years, then I can waffle over what to do with my clone machine just as long as Apple can.

A wise friend wrote me last month: "Don't confuse Apple and Macintosh. There's a difference."

I think that I shall always love the Mac. I would like to think we have more choices in life than stewing over whether we can ever forgive Apple. Let the new world begin, with Apple, or without it.

©Alex Forbes 1997.