Rhapsody in Blue
by Richard Foxworthy, Editor
from the February 1997 issue of Australian MacUser magazine
By now, most readers will have heard the news - Gil Amelio and the crew at Apple Computer spent their Christmas break writing large cheques - totalling $US400 million - to acquire NeXT Software, the company launched by original Apple co-founder Steve Jobs after losing a 1985 power struggle with then Apple CEO John Sculley.
In a twist that will delight many and horrify some, Steve Jobs himself - the single person most responsible for the Macintosh - is part of the deal. He may only have returned to Apple in the guise of a part-time marketing and technology adviser to Gil Amelio, but he’s baa-aack.
To say the least, the Mac market has been turned on its head. The NeXT acquisition indicates a new focus for Apple, and a very different future for Macintosh. Hold on to your hats for a dramatic 1997.
Financially, Apple reported a larger than expected loss for fourth quarter 1996, causing a dip in its share prices, and prompting a promise of further restructuring from the board.
Technology-wise, Apple proposes swallowing whole a foreign OS, and blending it with existing Apple technologies to produce Rhapsody, an OS that will ‘set the standard for computing in the2 1st century’. Apple’s current OS strategy is to simultaneously develop the current Mac OS - which will be updated every six months until the end of 1998 at least - and a completely new OS built around the newly acquired NeXT technologies.
Rhapsody, scheduled for release a year from now, will support Mac OS applications through a native Mac OS compatibility environment. Apple is at pains to stress that this is not an emulation layer; rather, Mac OS will be ported to run on Rhapsody’s base architecture, Rhapsody will also incorporate a Java virtual machine, and will feature integrated TCP/IP capabilities, memory protection and multitasking.
The user interface will feature an ‘advanced Macintosh look and feel’ which will be familiar to existing Macintosh users, and incorporate some features from NeXT’s OS. According to Apple, users will be able to make the transition from Mac OS to Rhapsody at their own pace, and Rhapsody will run on current Power Mac hardware.
Apple has reiterated its commitment to the PowerPC Platform, and key Apple technologies such as the QuickTime Media Layer, OpenDoc, and MCF will also be included in Rhapsody.
What does all this mean for Apple? If successful, Apple will have performed a remarkable task in producing a high performance next-generation OS that retains what users have always loved about Macs - the ‘user experience’. The risk is that users, already disenchanted with long delays for the mythical Copland, will not be willing to wait yet another year for a best-of-both-worlds OS that presently exists only in the optimistic prose of Apple press releases.