IBM Corp responded to a piece published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal by saying it is not currently considering abandoning its own operating system software in favour of Apple Computer Inc’s Mac OS. Trink Guarino, manager of software communications issues at IBM, told Reuter We’re constantly talking to Apple about ways to optimise our technologies, but she said, as far as switching to Apple’s Macintosh operating system we don’t have those plans at this point. Conspiracy theorists will pounce on the at this point to suggest it means that the Wall Street Journal story is true, but that IBM is not ready to announce anything yet. The Journal also said IBM made a bid for Apple in September of 1994, with Lou Gerstner personally initially offering $40 a share or about $4,500m, but walking away when Michael Spindler he ld out for $60 a share plus lavish golden handshakes for Apple’s top brass. The paper also says IBM wanted to license the source code of Mac OS so that it could alter it so that it would work better with OS/2. According to Apple co-founder and chairman Mike Markkula, Apple is now pressing IBM to mesh Mac OS with the OS/2 server software, so that both Apple and IBM could sell complete client-server networks with Macs and Mac clones working with OS/2 servers. The paper also believes that IBM considered a bid for Novell Inc but decided against it.
