The Bitter Pill
The End of Mac Clones and the Future of Apple
>If Rhapsody/Intel is licensed broadly, but only Apple sells Rhapsody/PPC systems, it gives
Apple a distinctly superior user value, while not isolating them on an island. The OS will
live in both worlds, but will run faster and better on Apple hardware. Applications written
for Rhapsody will not only run on Apple boxes and Intel boxes running Rhapsody/Intel, but
will also run on Windows95, WindowsNT, and MacOS 8 systems. This is better than being
able to run multiple OS's on a single hardware platform -- it's being able to run
applications on ANY hardware platform and ANY OS. And Apple will still have an advantage by having the fastest and coolest hardware around, whose sales will continue to
subsidize the OS R&D.
Customer choice will be restored -- if you don't like Apple, buy an Intel clone. If you don't
like Rhapsody, use Windows. You'll still be able to run your applications. This is compelling
for users and developers. In fact, it's been shown in many cases that it's faster and easier
to write a Windows application by writing to the OPENSTEP (Rhapsody) APIs, and then
installing the OPENSTEP support layer on Windows, than writing it using conventional
Windows development tools. Imagine that! With the arrival of Rhapsody, it will be easier
to write a cross platform application than a Windows only application! And developers will
be able to distribute the Rhapsody API support layer for Windows free of charge. <
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