By having a developer base that's been working with the Apple guidelines for more than a decade, you have a body of hardware and software that's unprecedented in the computer industry for the ability of the old to work with the new.

You could install the latest Mac OS, System 7.5.3, on an ancient Mac Plus. No color, no sound, no text-to-speech capability ... but it could be done. Try to slap Windows 95 on a '286 ... or even a '386 machine with "Intel inside."

Oh, and if you need to hook up a CD-ROM drive to an old Plus, or an SE or a Mac II without the 1.4 MB floppy drive, it can be done.

The emulation code for the new PowerPC Macs to run older 68000-code applications works fine, and third-party developer Connectix has written even speedier 68000 emulation software.

Machines of different ages running two systems (6.x and 7.x) coexisted in many small offices at the start of the 1990s. Try that with various versions of Windows.

In fact, just try to network machines running different versions of Windows. You'd better get a Windows NT server if you want to do that ... which leads me to the second point

In fact, it was easier to network a DOS or Windows-based computer into a Macintosh network at the start of this decade than it was to network a bunch of DOS machines, or integrate a Mac into a DOS/Windows network.

Just format a disk or change the name of a document to something nice and long on a Windows-based machine. Or open an unfamiliar document.

Macs still do all these things better, and have the added bonus of having had a consistent interface for a dozen years. Yes, it's getting older, but also better.

Stick a SCSI device on your office computer, then disconnect it, take it home and reconnect without being a system expert. The Macintosh made that possible from the first SCSI port on the Mac Plus.

Plug and play was a Mac concept ... Windows 95 gives a feeble echo of this.

I like to apply that to the Macintosh as well. You always have a sense of where you are in the Mac cyber-world. This gestalt could be seen as a part of ease of use or backward compatibility, but I like to think of it as a synergy between the Mac OS and you, creating a unique comfort zone that makes it easier to do any computing job.

Sure, Windows has made up some of this lost ground, but the Macs blazed the affordable sound, animation and 3D trail, and have yet to surrender the lead.

Yo, Microsoft: Can you say QuickTime?

The legacy of MacPaint and HyperCard still rules.

* The Mac SE30 has that classic Mac transportable design, a 32-bit data path. More than six years after its discontinuation, the SE30 makes a fine text or print server in many environments.

* The Mac IIci is a truly great box, which with an Ethernet upgrade card and direct slot upgrade to a PowerPC can still handle virtually any task or software written for the Mac in a modern office environment. It's versatile, compact, yet has three NuBus slots for expansion. Out of production for three years, it still has good value on the used computer market.

* The Quadra 650 is still running hot, straight and normal in many offices and homes two years after it was discontinued. It too has an upgrade path to a PowerPC, but came with built-in Ethernet and the ability to really load up on RAM to handle the big graphics jobs. (I must disclose that I use one every day at work, loaded with 56 megabytes of RAM.)

I haven't even mentioned the new PowerPC or AppleServer lines. To borrow Apple founder Steve Jobs' phrase, this is insanely great hardware.

So this may have been a bit of a rant, but I hope a good one for a great OS. The Mac OS will not fade away.

By Christopher J. Feola

It was murdered.

Nope, you're wrong. It isn't any of the people you're thinking of right now.

It isn't Microsoft Maximum Leader Bill Gates. Why would Gates kill the Mac? Rumor has it Microsoft makes more money off the Mac than its maker, Apple Computer.

And let's not even discuss the theory that the press is to blame because of the constant reporting on Apple's troubles. At least journalists should refrain from shooting the messenger, having been rewarded so often ourselves for bad tidings.

No, there's only one villain in this story.

It's ... Apple.

The irony is that Apple admits it -- is proud of it, almost. For proof you need only look to the ads a desperate Apple ran last year as the Windows 95 tsunami broke over it. The ads would list some aspect of Windows 95 -- long file names, say -- then point out that the very same feature was "Macintosh '89."

The ads had two problems: the half that wasn't true, and the half that was.

It is pointless to debate the value of the Windows 95 features that the Mac lacks -- menus on demand, right mouse button actions and so on -- because the problem lay in the part of the ads that was true.

The Mac had an almost insurmountable lead in '89. And what did Apple choose to do with it? It chose to gouge you for roughly 55 percent profit per machine.

Worse, Apple knew Microsoft was coming. The famous Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit was not over Windows 95, or Windows NT, or Windows for Workgroups, or Windows 3.X, or Windows 386, or Windows 286, or Windows 2.X.

It was over Windows 1.X.

So we've identified the killer. But how can we be sure the Mac is in serious trouble now, rather than taking yet another of its periodic stumbles?

The Mac isn't dead for any of the reasons you might suspect. It's not because Apple's next-generation operating system -- called Copeland -- is apparently being written by Godot. (The last news we heard on Copeland is that the operating system originally promised for 1992 will now be dribbled out in twice-a-year releases that will have the whole thing delivered by early 1998.)

It's not because Apple changes executives, directions and designs the way the rest of us change shirts.

It's not even because the company has lost something in the neighborhood of a billion dollars this year, though I would have loved to have had a CUSeeMe link to that briefing. ("The latest batch of PowerBooks runs for more than two hours on battery power before bursting into flames, and Godot says he needs another six months for the Copeland code." "Anything else?" "Yeah -- we seem to have misplaced the Gross National Product of Guatemala.")

No, none of that comedy of errors was enough to tell you to give up on Macs, though it did finish a close second for amusement value to Microsoft's "Today's Official Name for Our Object Technology" daily updates.

The real trouble surfaced in July, when a succession of companies that make Macintosh products announced that they had been hammered by collapsing Mac sales.

Since we're talking about companies in business to make money, rather than acolytes in the Church of Apple, they predictably announced their new business strategies: They're going to move to Wintel products.

The list is a Who's Who of Mac product companies: Motorola and IBM, makers of the PowerPC chip; Global Village Communications Inc., maker of modems and communications software; Micro Warehouse, a mail-order company that records half its sales from Mac products, and Macromedia Inc., which makes multimedia software.

Who cares? You do. Remember, the Mac is a software platform -- otherwise you'd be just as happy with the Amiga and the Stacy, both of which used the same processor as the Mac, but were plagued by the lack of native software.

It's the availability of software and peripherals that drives machine sales, not the other way around.

The Mac had always held enough market share to escape that fate. The downturn started a couple of years ago as mainstream software companies such as Lotus began to cut back on support for the platform, leaving -- in a delicious little irony entrée -- Microsoft and Maximum Geek Bill Gates as the primary Mac software company.

July's supplier stampede, however, leaves the Mac in real danger of becoming a boutique platform supported primarily by niche suppliers while major suppliers relegate Mac production to whatever resources are left over from their primary Wintel production -- if they produce Mac products at all.

No one knows if Apple will be able to turn this around. But unless you have more money than you know what to do with, you should postpone or cancel Mac purchases until this shakeout is over.

I'd like to end this with a word about computers and emotions.

I've used UNIX machines since 1983, and PCs and Macs since '84. I put my first Mac in a newsroom in 1985, built my first Local Area Network in '85 and then Wide Area Networked it to remote bureaus using the Defense Data Network/ArpaNet the same year. (Y'all call it the Internet nowadays.)

As far as I'm concerned, loving a computer system makes as much sense as loving a box wrench or screwdriver. They're all tools, nothing more.

And I have as much loyalty to Microsoft and Apple as they have to me -- it's strictly a financial relationship.

Apple thinks so. That's why it hit you for those sky-high margins when it had the chance.

But Apple's greed was its downfall -- it built cash rather than market share, and now it may not have enough market share to survive.

From THE COLE PAPERS, September 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.