.Mac

[Mel Pleasant]

On Friday, July 12, 2002, at 04:32 PM, Michael Brewer wrote:

> I understand that Apple is probably using the name to create confusion. 
> However, I don't see how there is a distinction between that and riding 
> MS's dirty coattails.
>
> On Friday, July 12, 2002, at 07:06 PM, Mel Pleasant wrote:
>
>> At any rate though, please do consider this form of strategic maneuver 
>> before accusing someone of riding coattails.  Most often that is not 
>> the intent.....

Poor wording on my part.....

Unfortunately, we're likely to get into the thick of it and we're all 
just speculating..... :-)

At any rate (try this on for size and see if it makes you feel somewhat 
better) - Not *everything* that MS has done has been bad for the 
industry.  Why not ride those parts of the coattail that you can agree 
upon as being good, given your definitions of the word good, and turn it 
into something better than what MS has done with it.  You know, build a 
better mousetrap?!?  MS has this problem - embrace and extend - at least 
most of agree that their concept of this notion is bad.  The "extend" 
part can literally blind them to a better approach in the long run.  
Given that their philosophical infrastructure is so engrained around the 
notion of extend, even when they decide to change up it won't be easy - 
changing underlying infrastructure is never easy - particularly when it 
is philosophical in nature (Most people have long forgotten the 
philosophy and just run with what has worked in the past - including MS 
employees.  Getting "the team" to act differently will mean causing them 
to unlearn that philosophy - Good f$%king luck !!!!)  That leaves the 
rest of us to consider the other angles e.g. something other than extend 
(in the MS sense).  So big deal?  .Net has introduced some new 
higher-order conceptual level of networking to the marketplace.  It has 
done so with the underpinnings of "extend."  If Apple can take the good 
part of .Net and go in some other direction and beat the #@$% out of 
MS's .Net, as far as I am concerned, more power to them.

Hmmm, given your question, maybe the distinction I was drawing and 
didn't make clear enough could be accomplished by dropping the word 
"dirty" and replacing it with "clean" e.g. the good parts.  Now, if you 
don't believe that there are any clean/good parts, well, ......


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