% fortune -ae paul murphy

Microsoft to dump Longhorn, license MacOS X

Boy, take two days off and what do you get? Sun buys Storagetek, and Cnet reports that Apple really will go Intel! So what's the next loony headline to be "Microsoft to adopt GPL"? "SCO funds Groklaw"? "Torvalds takes reins at CA"? Did April 1st become a systems project and run a little late this year?

There are actually two loony tune headlines I can think of that might make some sense: "Intel to fab PowerPC for Apple" and "Apple to sue IBM for commercial malfeasance." Both depend, of course, on things I don't know - specifically on what's in the details of Apple's contracts with IBM and Freescale.

I'm not that good at taking time off, so I spent most of Friday afternoon working on a commentary about the OS decision developers face these days. IT's still only a draft, but here's a related bit:

Without presuming to know anything about the detail of the contracts involved or the temper of the players, it seems obvious to me that IBM's actions in developing both a 3.2Ghz, 3-Core, PowerPC derivative for high volume use in Microsoft's X360, and an Altivec equipped eight-way, 3.9Ghz, PowerPC derived, grid on a chip for its own use are inconsistent with its protestations that technical difficulties, and technical difficulties alone, have prevented it from meeting Apple's expectations with regard to the G5.

So what's the bottom line? Well, I don't think it's April 1st, so I'm certainly going to be tuned in when Steve Jobs makes his pitch at the Apple Developers Conference tomorrow. Maybe, after that, we'll all know something -because right now, I know nothing - except, maybe, it might be fun to predict another headline: "EMC wins takeover battle for Storagetek"...


Paul Murphy wrote and published The Unix Guide to Defenestration. Murphy is a 25-year veteran of the I.T. consulting industry, specialising in Unix and Unix-related management issues.