What is the official availability status of A/UX

[Alan Tobey]

In article <1793 at louie.udel.EDU>, garrett at udel.EDU (Joel Garrett) writes:
> In article <1819 at ssc-vax.UUCP> benoni at ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) writes:
> 
> >This must be a clever Apple marketing ploy...seriously Apple just
> >doesn't seem to take A/UX seriously ... this is the most ridiculous
> >distribution scheme I have ever heard of! Couple this with the A/UX
> >on a disk controversy ... are these people for real?  Are they
> >making life a living hell for those that want A/UX hoping that these
> >people will move on to MacOS...
> 
> Is thise really the case?  There has been a lot of skepticism in the MacPress
> about Apple's intentions with A/UX (So you want to buy a Mac II, and your
> boss says it has to run Unix?  Yeah, we can do that! But 
) why would you want to

I think an instructive analogy here is the way DEC has dealt with unix
via its Ultrix version.  DEC, like Apple, was dragged kicking and screaming 
into the unix world by finally realizing it couldn't ignore the potential
market, even though its entire strategy has been to push its own proprietary
operating system.  Both companies' management loathe unix;  
Jobs absolutely refused any consideration of a unix version 
(essentially killed the lisa version that Unisoft did for them), 
and Ken Olsen, president of DEC, can be relied on to make at least one 
"piss on unix" speech a year -- recently he described unix as "snake oil."  
DEC's explicit strategy (I've seen internal memos) is "if you 
can't possibly sell the customer on VMS, then sell Ultrix."  
And both Ultrix and A/UX, I predict, will continue to lag
in the introduction of interesting new "outside" unix technology while
they work to "proprietize" the product -- DEC was 2 1/2 years late with
NFS.  etc., etc.

Bottom line:  don't expect too much from Apple, despite constant public
pronouncements about "vital to our overall strategy" and the like, and
despite lots of committed and talented people in the A/UX group.
Unix just doesn't fit the culture.

P.S.  The joint Apple-DEC mutual connectivity announcement, from this
perspective, seems like a marriage made in heaven.  Now they can both
reinforce each others' proprietary strategy:  note that their grand
product scheme involves (at bottom) connectivity between Mac OS/Appleshare
and VMS/DECNET.  If you ask either company about UNIX connectivity,
the answer is "Huh?"