George: I have to disagree somewhat with you, because I think Rhapsody is a very big part of Apple's strategy. I agree that a great OS alone won't turn things around, but this Rhapsody OS has teeth in hidden places.
First of all, with Rhapsody, Apple is not really expecting to target end-users directly, like they have been doing with the Mac. Rhapsody is targeted squarely at developers--write once, run anywhere. If the rumors that Microsoft has added/is adding the Yellow Box APIs to Windows 98, and NT 5.0 are true, all the better for Apple. In essence, Rhapsody may have little effect in the first year or so from an end-user standpoint, but if Apple starts gaining developers with it, then this will gain them a lot of power down the road.
Secondly, both versions of Java (Sun's 100% version, and Microsoft's version) will run natively in Rhapsody--there will be no virtual machine per se, because it'll all be built into the operating system, effectively eliminating a step, and running Java faster (natively). Also, the fact that programs written in Java will be able to use Rhapsody's Objective C libraries as well, should solve many current limitations of Java as a language. Rhapsody has the potential to be THE Java platform.
All of this, of course, depends on how Apple markets it. They could screw it up bigtime. But at least they have some key technology elements and ideas now, which bodes well for their future IMHO.
Paul Arthur |
