===========================
The RhapsodyOS Report
Issue #9 / 29 March 1998
===========================
The RhapsodyOS Report is a free weekly summary of Apple Computer's Rhapsody
Operating System news, software releases, rumors, Internet resources and
related topics compiled by Raven Zachary <raven@rinzai.com>.
THIS WEEK'S NEWS
----------------
A WEALTH OF INFORMATION FROM THE MARCH BANG MEETING. At the Bay Area NeXT
Group's (BANG) March meeting in Cupertino, Jordan Dea-Mattson , Senior
Partnership & Technology Solutions Manager, Apple Developer Relations and
Ernest Prabhakar, Ph.D. , Apple's Rhapsody Product Marketing Manager were
present to discuss Java integration within Rhapsody. Java was not the only
issue on-hand, however, as both Dea-Mattson and Prabhakar provided some
information about other areas of Rhapsody. The development of Rhapsody is
"coming along nicely". The development team working on Rhapsody is three
times larger than it was for OpenStep/NeXTStep at NeXT, Inc. The project is
well funded and the developers are very dedicated to the Rhapsody project.
Java on Rhapsody will remain 100% Java. Apple will be offering tight
integration of Java with the Yellow Box with all of Objective-C being
accessible to Java. This will allow programmers to write a module using
both Java and Objective-C. The Yellow Box framework will be officially
supported on Rhapsody, Windows NT, Windows 95/98, and MacOS. Yellow Box
programs will be able to run across all four operating systems without the
use of individual builds or even FAT binaries (Compile once, run many). The
QuickTime Media Layer (QTML) has been fully integrated into Rhapsody, and
will be followed soon by ColorSynch. Applescript will be fully supported in
the Yellow Box. Upcoming support for Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) was
mentioned, but no details on a release were given. BANG meetings continue
to be a source of excellent information, and we highly recommend that you
attend if you live in or near the Bay Area. The link to the original review
is listed below in the Rhapsody Articles section.
MORE NEWS FROM APPLE - CR1 AND NUBUS SUPPORT. Jordan J. Dea-Mattson at
Apple Developer Relations posted two interesting messages to the Rhapsody
Discussion List this week regarding Rhapsody. The first is that Rhapsody
CR1, the first commercial release, is on track for release in the second
half of 1998. The second message is that Rhapsody will not be supporting
NuBus Power Macs. When asked about DR2, Jordan replied: "Apple hasn't
announced a second release of Rhapsody to Developers, so I cannot comment
on rumors of its existence or shipping date."
APPLE EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT ON CONSUMER OS. Two more Apple employees have
recently posted interesting information to the Rhapsody Discussion List
regarding Rhapsody as a consumer OS. The first, a controversial post by
Mark Gavini, Apple's Evangelist for Digital Audio, Games, and MIDI, to the
Mac Games Discussion List stating "Rhapsody will never be a consumer
oriented OS. Period." This was in reply to the discussions of John
Carmack's comment on Rhapsody DR1 and its potential use at id Software as a
development platform. This stirred up the list quite a bit, resulting in
two people stating that their contacts within Apple said "this individual
was out of line to make such a misleading comment". Gavini, in a post
directly to the Rhapsody Discussion List, replied that his comment was
taken out of context and that it was intended to stop discussion of
Rhapsody as a games capable consumer OS, which he understands will never
come to pass. Peter Bierman, Rhapsody Installer Engineer, posted that while
Rhapsody might never be a consumer OS, consumers in three years might be
different.
MORE TIDBITS FROM SEYBOLD. Scott Ripley posted a Seybold report on
thessaSOURCE and had a chance to see Rhapsody up close. The version on
display included tear-off menus, which were in great demand among
developers after the release of DR1. The demo station used by Ripley was a
G3 PowerMac with 64megs of RAM. At one time, there were ten applications
open, including the Blue Box, and it still "ran fast". A local reseller of
Avid software mentioned that Avid expected to release Rhapsody versions of
their video software, but they were still waiting for more information from
Apple before continuing (most importantly, QuickTime and multi-processing
support).
...AND FROM CEBIT. According to a combined report on CeBIT by The Macintosh
News Network and macnews.de, Rhapsody DR1 was being demonstrated at the
Apple booth. However, no information about the release of DR2 could be
obtained other than it was suspected for WWDC, but this was not definitive.
It was stated that consumers would be able to buy CR1 in July or August and
that it is intended to be marketed against Windows NT and therefore will
cost more than MacOS. Attendees reported an overall lack of Rhapsody
knowledge among Apple employees at the booth. According to an Insignia
spokesperson, the development of SoftWindows for Rhapsody was more or less
complete but they were waiting for more news from Apple about their OS
strategy.
ADDITIONAL DR2 CONFIRMATION, AND NEW BOOT KEYS. In a post to the Rhapsody
Discussion List, Paul Marcos of Apple posted that due to the fact that a
great number of people own "soft" caps lock keyboards, the reboot mechanism
to go from MacOS to Rhapsody in DR1 was a failure. He is now much happier
with the way it works in DR2. Peter Bierman, also of Apple, listed the new
boot keys as <option>, 'M', 'C', or 'R'.
DISPLAY POSTSCRIPT NO MORE? In the March Adobe Developer's Association
Monthly News Bulletin, it states that Adobe no longer supports or
distributes Display Postscript. This seems to confirm an earlier report
from MacWeek's Mac the Knife that Adobe may "ditch" development of Display
Postscript during a technology housecleaning.
MOZILLA FOR RHAPSODY PROJECT UPDATE. Developers are on schedule for the
source code release on Tuesday, March 31st. Steve Dagely from Netscape
reports that the Mac source code would require CodeWarrior Pro 2, 96megs of
RAM, and about 150megs of hard disk space. We have no information at this
time about the UNIX source code requirements. The Mozilla for Rhapsody team
is getting ready to begin the project full force. The mailing list itself
will be moving to the object.foundation sometime in early April to pool
resources in a single location.
LATITUDE AND CODEWARRIOR FOR RHAPSODY. David B. Hempling, CodeWarrior
Latitude Technical Lead at Metrowerks, posted a message to the Rhapsody
Discussion two weeks ago that we had misplaced. David states that
Metrowerks is using Latitude to bring CodeWarrior IDE to Rhapsody. They now
have the same source code base for their Mac, Solaris, and Rhapsody
releases. Metrowerks has seen 350,000 lines-of-code apps go from Mac to Sun
or SGI platforms in as little as five days using Latitude. Hemplings states
that, on average, there is about a 60 to 75% time savings using Latitude
opposed to a build from ground up. Once an application is ported over with
Latitude, it can be expanded to take advantage of native services. Latitude
does not stand in between the developer and the system, it merely handles
all of the services the application's Mac code expects to be there. Adobe
Photoshop 3.0 and Illustrator 5.5 on Sun and SGI boxes, Premiere on SGI's
O2, Avid's Video Workshop on SGI and Sonic Solutions Sonic Studio on SGI
have all been built using Latitude.
RHAPSODY ARTICLES
------------------
Communigate Pro Preview
Avi Cherry / RhapNet
<http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/previews/communigate.shtml>
Give It Away! Part 2
Oliver Dueck / RhapNet
<http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/editorials/oliverdueck/980324.shtml>
March BANG Meeting Recap
Jim Benster / BANG
<http://www.bang.org/recap.html/>
One Fox Two Fox, Yellow Box Blue Box
Andrew Stone / RhapsodyOS.com
<http://rhapsodyos.com/editorial/stone/ST00002.html>
The Pace of Technology: Will Rhapsody Survive?
Ben Garland / The Macintosh Opinion
<http://www.macopinion.com/weekly/>
Seybold and the Big Apple
Scott Ripley / thessaSOURCE
<http://www.thessasource.com/features/seybold_feature.html>
[NOTE: There is a factual error in this piece about something I was
reported to have said. It has not yet been corrected - but the author has
stated that it will be as soon as the webmaster is available to change it.]
SOFTWARE RELEASES
------------------
TCPWrap v7.6.0.2
Rhapsody framework for tcp_wrappers
Rex Dieter <rdieter@math.unl.edu>
<ftp://ftp.next.peak.org/pub/rhapsody/Developer/Frameworks/TCPWrap-7.6.0.2-PI.b.
tar.gz>
PowerPC and Intel
THE RUMOR CRITIC
----------------
MACOS RUMORS SPEAKS OUT ON MACOS/YELLOWBOX STRATEGY. In a report this week
by MacOS Rumors, a "reliable Apple source" provides an outlook for Apple's
strategy to migrate its MacOS developers to the Yellow Box. In the Allegro
(8.5) release of MacOS due this Summer, Apple should provide the Yellow Box
APIs and promote the Yellow Box as the preferred development environment
for the Mac. Sonata (MacOS 9.0) due to ship in early 1999, will be a true
"Yellow MacOS", they claim. Sonata should use a Rhapsody code-base with a
kernel, protected memory, and preemptive multitasking with continued
support for MacOS applications. Sonata is rumored to also be available for
Intel machines, only sacrificing support for MacOS applications in the
process. More "let's wait until WWDC" material.
YELLOW BOX FOR SOLARIS? Another MacOS Rumors report states that "more than
a half-dozen" Sun employees have written in to voice their support for a
Solaris Yellow Box. Since NeXT has had releases in the past for the Solaris
platform, bringing Yellow Box to Solaris would not be a "from the ground
up" project. Interesting, but unlikely that Apple will push for this. If
anything, it'll come from Sun's initiative.
INTERNET RESOURCES
-------------------
WWW:
The RhapsodyOS Report
<http://www.rhapsodyos.com/report/>
Stepwise
<http://www.stepwise.com>
RhapNet
<http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/>
RhapsodyOS.com
<http://www.rhapsodyos.com>
Rhapsodic!
<http://www.mediabox.net/rhapsodic/>
MacCentral: Rhapsody Roundup
<http://www.maccentral.com/features/rhapsody_roundup.shtml>
The Rhapsody User
<http://www.kagi.com/inai/rhap/>
MacOS Rumors
<http://www.macosrumors.com>
MacWeek
<http://www.macweek.com>
thessaSOURCE
<http://www.thessasource.com/>
The Macintosh News Network
<http://www.macnn.com>
MacInTouch
<http://www.macintouch.com>
FTP:
PEAK
<ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/rhapsody/>
<http://www.peak.org/openstep/rhapsody/>
Peanuts
<ftp://ftp.peanuts.org/peanuts/>
Apple's Rhapsody FTP Developer Site
<ftp://dev.apple.com/devworld/Rhapsody/>
Mailing Lists:
The RhapsodyOS Report
<rhapsodyos-report-request@thenerve.com>
(subject or body) subscribe
Rhapsody Discussion
<join-rhapsody@clio.lyris.net>
Rhapsody-Talk
<listproc@omnigroup.com>
(body) subscribe rhapsody-talk firstname lastname
OpenStep/WebObjects Newsletter [NOTE: covers Rhapsody, as well]
<newsletter-request@lists.best.com>
(body) subsingle
Rhapsody Developers
<listproc@omnigroup.com>
subscribe rhapsody-dev firstname lastname
Rhapsody User Interface Discussion
<rhapsody-ui@lightbulb.com>
(subject) subscribe
Rhapsody Database Discussion
<rhapsody-db@lightbulb.com>
(subject) subscribe
WebObjects Discussion
<listproc@omnigroup.com>
(body) subscribe webobjects firstname lastname
Rhapsody Jobs Mailing List
<majordomo@ensuing.com>
(body) subscribe rhapjobs
Newsgroups:
[Note: There are several NeXT newsgroups but only the three below are
getting Rhapsody traffic. Until Apple releases a product name for their new
operating system and new newsgroups are created, the NeXT groups will be
the best source for information.]
comp.sys.next.advocacy
comp.sys.next.announce
comp.sys.next.misc
comp.sys.mac.advocacy
IRC:
#RhapsodyOS
on any EFNet IRC Server
ABOUT THE RHAPSODY REPORT
--------------------------
The RhapsodyOS Report is a free weekly summary of Apple Computer's Rhapsody
Operating System news, software releases, rumors, internet resources and
related topics compiled by Raven Zachary <raven@rinzai.com>.
The RhapsodyOS Report. Copyright 1998, Raven Zachary. All rights reserved.
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CREDITS: Mara Collins for editing services. Robert MacKimmie for providing
the BANG meeting information. The Nerve Internet Service for providing our
mailing list. Jason Mortis and everyone else at RhapsodyOS.com for
continued support.
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5 April 1998.
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