The problem with mac clones in the 90s was that it didn't increase mac market share. Compounding that issue was the fact that the clone makers were making models like this that were taking sales away from the higher end macs at the time.
That’s the popular narrative (I think Steve Jobs said that when he pulled all the clone licenses).
The clone makers thought they were taking away Apple sales , but were expanding the Mac market.
As a Mac purchaser in the 90s (actually a clone, a power computing model) the 10% or so savings off real Apple hardware made a difference. macs /clones weren’t cheap, but having some other manufacturers at least make them made it seem like Apple was more viable and you were getting decent value for your money.
Of course having motorola making clones and the CPUs made for weirdness, as well as the company writing the os for clones making competing hardware. Apple wasn’t doing well and I think they were trying anything to survive.
Steve Jobs sent a Rolodex card and welcomed power computing users (Like me) to Apple when they pulled the plug.
Apple’s problem at that time was their dreadful supply chain and glut of models. How were people supposed to know whether to buy a Performa 5200 (my first computer), or a Performa 6200, or a Power Mac 7200, or an 8500, or a 9500, or... one of the dozens of models in between all those?
I loved my Performa 5200 and I miss that computer like crazy, but Apple made a huge mistake with all of those models and they paid the price for it by having to write off huge amounts of old inventory.
It’s funny. Apple’s biggest weakness in the early 90’s has been transformed into their greatest strength today. Talk about learning a lesson!
Apple is (and has always been, really) a systems company. They sell hardware that may or may not run other system software, but they sell it as a bundle. Interestingly enough, Jobs' move ending licensing of MacOS to third parties is a lesson learned by IBM a couple years earlier, not with their PC, but with their mainframes. Their mainframe OS is licensed in terms similar to Apple's macOS: it can't run on non-IBM hardware. IBM did this at the point they realized others, such as Amdahl, could build mainframes that ran IBM software faster and cheaper than IBM hardware. IBM would be giving up a sizable portion of their profits if they allowed that and thus they didn't. The last ancestor of z/OS you can run on non-IBM hardware is MVS 3.8j.
Controlling both hardware and software roadmaps allows IBM to use one as a force-multiplier for the other.
The death of the mainframe has been predicted since the 80's and doesn't seem to be any nearer now than it was then.
It'd be fair to point out that Jobs could have learned this lesson without IBM's help - as NeXT was failing, it wound down its hardware business to sell its OS and other software to run on other hardware and operating systems. At that point, it couldn't innovate like they did with their workstation with MO storage (which was a bad idea) or the built-in DSP (which was a good one). They would have to differentiate on software alone, something that's much, much more difficult to do.
The problem was that Apple's deal with the clone makers paid them a fixed amount per MacOS license, since the people who negotiated the deals assumed clone makers would get into a low-end price war like the PC clones.
Instead clone makers ate Apple's high-margin, high-end, machines. So Gil Amelio, CEO at the time, bumped the MacOS version to 8 in order to renegotiate the deals (which were all for MacOS 7.x) to pay Apple a %age of the value of the machines instead, so that even if someone sold a high-margin machine instead of Apple, Apple would still make a profit on the deal.
Gil Amelio got ousted by Steve Jobs, who contrary to popular belief, actually attempted to continue the clone license negotiations, but even he failed. In the end, only UMAX got a MacOS 8 license, and the program died out.
acomjean|5 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation
As a Mac purchaser in the 90s (actually a clone, a power computing model) the 10% or so savings off real Apple hardware made a difference. macs /clones weren’t cheap, but having some other manufacturers at least make them made it seem like Apple was more viable and you were getting decent value for your money.
Of course having motorola making clones and the CPUs made for weirdness, as well as the company writing the os for clones making competing hardware. Apple wasn’t doing well and I think they were trying anything to survive.
Steve Jobs sent a Rolodex card and welcomed power computing users (Like me) to Apple when they pulled the plug.
https://www.macworld.com/article/2998000/clone-wars-when-the...
And Wikipedia has more:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Licensed_Mac...
chongli|5 years ago
I loved my Performa 5200 and I miss that computer like crazy, but Apple made a huge mistake with all of those models and they paid the price for it by having to write off huge amounts of old inventory.
It’s funny. Apple’s biggest weakness in the early 90’s has been transformed into their greatest strength today. Talk about learning a lesson!
rbanffy|5 years ago
Controlling both hardware and software roadmaps allows IBM to use one as a force-multiplier for the other.
The death of the mainframe has been predicted since the 80's and doesn't seem to be any nearer now than it was then.
It'd be fair to point out that Jobs could have learned this lesson without IBM's help - as NeXT was failing, it wound down its hardware business to sell its OS and other software to run on other hardware and operating systems. At that point, it couldn't innovate like they did with their workstation with MO storage (which was a bad idea) or the built-in DSP (which was a good one). They would have to differentiate on software alone, something that's much, much more difficult to do.
karlshea|5 years ago
Of course then a couple years later all the new Macs were Intel.
kalleboo|5 years ago
Instead clone makers ate Apple's high-margin, high-end, machines. So Gil Amelio, CEO at the time, bumped the MacOS version to 8 in order to renegotiate the deals (which were all for MacOS 7.x) to pay Apple a %age of the value of the machines instead, so that even if someone sold a high-margin machine instead of Apple, Apple would still make a profit on the deal.
Gil Amelio got ousted by Steve Jobs, who contrary to popular belief, actually attempted to continue the clone license negotiations, but even he failed. In the end, only UMAX got a MacOS 8 license, and the program died out.