Friday, March 27th, 11:54 AM EST
<bold>Win98 on G3: "closer to the truth..."
</bold> Yesterday, Rumors quoted an anonymous Microsoft employee,
speaking about the
"Windows 98 on G3" story, as saying "The funny part is they are closer
to the truth
than they could ever suspect."
Later that evening, another industry insider sent in an interpretation
of that quote that
made all too much sense:
What the Explorer guy is talking about is a Microsoft
acquisition of Connectix. Office already needs RAM
Doubler. Speed Doubler is an OK stand-alone utility.
(much of) Surf Express gets bundled into Explorer, both
in Win and Mac. Connectix QuickCam becomes Microsoft
QuickCam. And Virtual PC becomes Power Windows 98. The
icing on the cake is they get the debug version of
Virtual PC to write OSes with. Every other Connectix
product (except for one....) gets killed off.
Chances it'll happen? Who knows? It's not in Microsoft's
interest to act like they're interested. It's not in
Connectix's interest to act desperate.
Funny thing is, Virtual PC accelerated for W'98 is a
pretty minor part of any deal. The big thing on the
table would probably be the camera.
Look at his quote again:
"[Their] intention is to spread misinformation. The
funny part is they are closer to the truth than they
could ever suspect."
What he means is, he's pretty sure the G3 98 rumors are
completely bogus, but it's closer to the truth than the
people making up the rumors would ever expect, because
they're not thinking along acquisition lines.
While the original Microsoft source declined to comment on this (yet),
and all the little
rumormongers are now hard at work trying to dig deeper into this
possibility, the insider
also had this to say, on a cautionary note:
Just to clarify: as far as I know there will never be a
Microsoft-branded Win 98 for the Mac. And as far as I
know the odds of a Microsoft buy-out of Connectix are
slim. The only thing that makes me think it might happen
is those rumors you cited, coming from an MS employee.
Could Microsoft benefit from a Connectix buyout? Would it wait until
after the
Department of Justice had moved on to greener pastures to make such a
move? Is it all
just speculation on speculation about misinformation? Time will tell,
it seems.</color>
--
The real problem wasn't Internet Explorer,
it's the fact that people use
the Windows operating system. - Simson L. Garfinkel
<<> tbyars@earthlink.net <<>