19 May
1998
19 May
'98
6:39 a.m.
This is kind of off topic, but Microsoft didn't "cut off" PowerPC... IBM
did. Windows NT was discontinued for the PPC after IBM announced they were
dropping their PPC machines. By that time, nobody besides IBM was, or is,
making PREP (PowerPC Reference Platform) compatible boxes. PPC NT was
discontinued simply because there were no machines to run it.
Apple chose to make their PowerMacs proprietary instead of PREP compliant
(and that's a Motorola/industry standard that has nothing to do with
Microsoft, BTW).
Kai
Not true. IBM still makes a large number of PowerPC's capable of running
Windows NT. The AIX boxes IBM still sells as the 43P, 41W and a number of
others were still being sold as AIX boxes long after IBM stopped supporting
NT. The truth was Microsoft wanted Motorolla and IBM to kick in with
$$$ in order to support Windows NT past 3.5 and Motorolla and IBM didn't
see enough reason to "pony up the money" to Microsoft. DEC's Alpha
was left as the only machine outside of the Wintel platform for NT.
MIPS (then just a part of SGI) was dropped as a result of SGI not wanting
to pony up the $$$ after the ACE consortium fell apart.
Realistically, Microsoft want you to run their stuff with someone else
providing the support and services needed to aid the user.
There's a trade off in supporting Microsoft NT if you've got less than a
high volume business in NT boxes. DEC seems to have enough in Alpha
to keep supporting it at the Desktop and Enterprize levels...
(or as some people feel -- they sold their soul to MS)
Bill