Published March 01, 2000
Early 1990s, Apple Computer was years ahead of IBM regarding personal computer programming. IBM wanted in, and Apple wanted the association with the prestigious IBM-icon.
The agreements that followed were broad reaching and included Motorola’s involvement. As mentioned (last week), IBM, Apple and Linux each had operating system software that were superior to Microsoft. The cooperative development of competing companies unleashed the PowerPC chip.
The deal was considerably broader in scope than just hardware. IBM was financially hurting, having misjudged the market’s direction. They had seen Apple being different from the rest of the industry, maintaining its market for 20 years.
The alliance of Apple, IBM and Motorola (AIM) would spin-off some of Apple’s creative innovations into new companies co-owned and co-controlled. One of them, Taligent, combined Apple’s already implemented object oriented code (software) with IBM’s under-developed theories.
IBM took Apple’s Project-X universal scripting for multimedia and Personal Digital Assistant into separate entities, Kalieda and General Magic, respectively, which were short-lived due to neglect.
Neither company would commit to out-of-house designs partially controlled by the other. Both IBM and Apple contained and constrained little kingdoms within their respective companies that fought one another. Yet they devotedly defended their common turf from external market forces.
Taligent was the operating system that never was. In the early 1980s—seems so long ago now—Apple developed MacApp, a program that created other programs faster for developers.
Competing departments within Apple worked in parallel on divergent approaches for the next MacOS. One was to improve features of System 6; the other for a new object oriented operating system.
The Apple vice president in charge tracked the competing projects used pink and blue sticky notes. One became called Code Pink and, yes, the other Blue. Pink was one of Apple’s contributions to Taligent; IBM supplied mostly money, concepts and their name.
NeXT Computer was to be a hardware company, like Apple. But their innovated operating system was a powerful business on its own, outweighing the value of another hardware platform. From inception in 1986 until the 1990s, Steve Job’s NeXT, breakaway enterprise from Apple, had made its mark.
IBM and Apple took notice of the emerging newcomer, NeXT-STEP, later named OpenStep. Programmers loved its power and easy to write code.
Sadly, once spun-off, Taligent never focused itself, and the politics of both parents separately ensured its doomed. Neither would accept the working code that was generated. Although an ideally suitable project with money thrown at it from both Apple and IBM, neither business culture would commit to a mutual goal. It was a classic case of death by bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, NeXT was moving ahead. Being a much smaller operation, it was more efficient, free from in-fighting, although lacking marketing and platform penetration.
As circumstance would have it, Apple acquired NeXT. With the new feature-rich and mature operating system, Apple was in total control and for less money than the Taligent experience.
AIM pressed forward with OpenDoc, a paradigm reversal of process. Instead of launching an application first to work on a document, OpenDoc turned that around so data was entered into the document directly from the desktop. It was supposed to operate on IBM’s OS/2, the MacOS and Windows, allowing programmers to write once and distribute it anywhere. However, cooperation between and among the AIM partners didn’t jell.
More true than ever is the familiar adage: “Snooze, you loose.” The fact is, IBM is very slow, and Novell is (some say) incompetent. Struggling Novell tried to hide it’s no-progress in two years, while Apple was advancing nicely on it’s segment of the project. IBM took over Novell’s assignment, but considerable time passed and the momentum waned.
By then the fickle computer industry was loosing interest. Java, from Sun Microsystems, was emerging as the promising cross-platform language diminishing the need for OpenDoc. IBM and Apple were each ultra protective of their own developments. Java was completely different, and Sun was not part of the AIM alliance.
The Kalieda company’s progress was also ultra slow, so that spin-off of AIM was still born. Apple continued on their own projects.
The Apple-created HyperCard used card stacks for customized multimedia presentations. Their QuickTime software caught streams of multimedia data (sound, video, pictures, text, animation). They decided to merge them into a single interactive multimedia program that any computer system could adopt, calling it QuickTime Interactive (QTi).
The newly available QuickTime-4 handles movies with the needed interactive experience. Apple is committed to its support, leaving behind the AIM software alliance.
Smaller, independent companies succeed usually because they’re adaptable, focused, light on their feet. Sibling spin-off companies are generally susceptible to their parent company’s politics more than technical merit.
Apple emerges prosperous despite being partner to AIM. Yes, they wasted considerable resources via their brand of artistic chaos. Apple possesses outright a superior Object Oriented Operating System with Rhapsody (OpenStep), the optimal Multimedia standard (QuickTime), and the innovative Personal Digital Assistant and lightweight communication software (formerly Newton).
Apple’s continued history of product innovation has again prevailed, even if pundits only remember their alliance to AIM’s failures, not the finish-line first places.