Re: FW: OT: Microsoft drop more Itanic support

From: JF Mezei (jfmezei.spamnot_at_teksavvy.com)
Date: 11/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:02:01 -0500

"Main, Kerry" wrote:
> IBM (Power), MIPS and Compaq (Alpha) dropped Windows as they did all the
> more painful OS porting work

Politics. Fact is that Windows NT was available on MIPS and PowerPC and
support was widthdranw. You say it was SGI for MIPS and IBM for Power
(why not Apple ?), I say it is Microsoft. It doesn't really matter who
really made the decision and who made the announcement, fact is that
support was widthdrawn, partly because it was never high enough volume.

MS isn't about to support and pay for continued support on a platform
that isn't growing and expanding its market niche.

> As far as I know (but wiling to be corrected), IA64 and x86-64 are the
> first 64bit platforms where Microsoft is doing the Windows OS
> down-n-dirty porting work.

Maybe. Maybe not. When you consider the type of sweet deals Intel gave
Digital/compaq to kill Alpha and port VMS to that IA64 thing, do you
reall think that Hp/Intel didn't give MS some sweat deal to contribute
to porting Windows to that IA64 thing ?

What is probably happening here is that the Intel subsidies for Windows
on IA64 are running out, so MS is pulling out of that platform which
isn't strategic or making enough money for MS to bother with. In the
end, if MS could make tons of money and grow Windows on IA64, it would
do so and would market the hell out of that platform and not allow HP or
Intel to spread rumours about IA64's market potential being limited only
to super computers.

Last year, when HP and Intel started to send strong messages that IA64
just wouldn't be "industry standard" and would have limited market
niche, you can bet that Microsoft was already fully aware of what was
really going on. And look at how quickly MS announced that Windows would
support the 64 bit 8086 at about the same time.

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