Adam, thank you for elaborating.
But I get the impression that your opinions are based on feeling rather than on technical information. You've expressed frustration about having personal difficulty using Apple's products. While from my experience this is not the norm, I concede that this must be a frustrating situation and I respect your reasons for doubting Apple's ability to bounce back. If I had the same problems you have, I might feel similarly.
Certainly, Apple's plan is a considerable undertaking, and reading your description made it sound hurculean and confusing. In truth Apple would need a large, well-integrated team of OS developers who are familiar with the technology to pull this off. How fortunate that they just bought one!
So what is Apple planning, exactly?
"http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1997/q2/970107.pr.rel.macos.html"
From the Rhapsody press release, they plan to have a DR version in mid to late '97, so that developers can use OPENSTEP on their Macs. Basically, this is a port of the existing NeXT OS to the PPC. It doesn't sound at all unreasonable for them to complete that within the year. A Swiss company (Quix) ported the MacOS to IBM's Power Reference Platform in 1995, so your argument about "runing a OS not made for that box" holds no water. And they did it in 6 months with only 6 engineers and a 24 year old president.
Quix story:
"http://www.macworld.com/q/@344781xtfbrd/pages/october.95/News.1412.html"
After developer release, a premier release and a unified release are to follow. The major additons will be some changes in the interface and the inclusion of a MacOS compatability box. If you figure another year for these steps, that doesn't sound unreasonable either - it's a port of the MacOS to the Rhapsody base. Apple already has experience porting the MacOS to a UNIX system in its MAE product. Not the same thing, certainly, but it shows that systems are ported all the time, and Apple has done it.
"http://macos.apple.com/macos/safe/compat/maetech/maetech.html"
Any developer who wants to can begin developing in OPENSTEP now and will have a head start on developing in the new environment. This is a big advantage over using a completely new OS that developers have limited access to prior to release. Like your example of Win95 for instance. So there will be software for the new OS. In fact, most existing software will continue to run in the MacOS compatability box, which will even support current MacOS extensions - something Copeland didn't plan to do.
>Msft was 2 years late with win95 and trust me msft didn't wait
>just to call it win95, it takes a LONG time for the code to
>work with older lines of data.
I'm not sure how a "line of data," applies to OS development, but Microsoft is not a good example to use for a leader in OS technology.
-James |
