SWAINE'S FLAMES

Name that Millionaire

Michael Swaine

Here's a little quiz to lighten the load in one of the least-loved months of the year.

  1. His company is giving away the SDK for its main product royalty-free, license-free.
  2. After nine years, he was ousted from the company that he cofounded.
  3. He has announced that he expects to take his company public within about a year.
  4. He says that the processor wars of the '80s are over and that the '90s will be the decade of operating system warfare.
  5. His company is being sued by Texas Instruments for patent infringement.
  6. In order to concentrate on networking and cross-platform connectivity products, his company recently sold off its media tools.
  7. He let it slip recently that his company may begin bundling application software with its machines again.
  8. He expects to put samples of his company's new processor in the hands of strategic partners IBM and Apple by year's end.
  9. His company will shortly be entering the database market on the Windows and Macintosh platforms.
  10. His company's product won't be viable until it has been scaled down, both in cost and in size.

A. Bill Atkinson, General Magic

B. Rod Canion, Compaq

C. Les Crudele, Motorola

D. Mike Dell, Dell Computers

E. Bill Gates, Microsoft

F. David House, Intel

G. Steve Jobs, Next

H. Reese Jones, Farallon Computing

I. John Sculley, Apple Computer

J. Dave Winer, Userland Software

Answers:

1. J; the Frontier SDK includes sample programs, source code, and documents to aid developers in adding IAC (interapplication communication) "wires" to their applications, so they can communicate with other IAC-aware applications and drive Userland's Frontier system scripting product. 2. B; last year the company's sales dropped, and losses were significant; the board apparently freaked. 3. G; most observers doubt that it will happen; at roughly the same time, the company laid off five percent of its workforce. 4. F; Intel won the former and will profit from the latter no matter how it goes, in his view. 5. D; Compaq is also suing over Dell's advertising comparing the two companies' machines. 6. H; Jones parlayed a trick involving unused bandwidth on home and office phone wire into a major network products company on the Mac and is developing some credibility in the PC market. 7. I; just one product, and that uncertain: AccessPC, a PC emulator. 8. C; the PowerPC RISC chip is expected to be used in computers from $1000 high-volume machines to 500-SPECmark workstations. 9. E; the Windows version is apparently close; not so the Mac product. 10. A; the personal communicator (cellular phone, modem, and network link) is intended to be hand-size, not tablet-size as the prototype is, and is intended to be affordable to a wide audience, which the current cost of parts won't permit.

Copyright © 1992, Dr. Dobb's Journal