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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George von Dassow who wrote (10717)	4/2/1998 9:45:00 AM
From: L.Gardner	Respond to of 213176

Rhapsody can't possibly be more than a piece of the Apple strategy (in fact, I'd be willing to bet that Quicktime is a more important piece in many ways). Instead, Apple's got to make its sales over the next year by making a better box and by advertising it better than they have in the past, and I think they are doing that. I'm happy to see them ditch a lot of stuff to focus on that. Very good postings from you (albeit a little long-winded). I'm not sure I agree with you on Rhapsody. I don't have your programming expertise, but from the anecdotal information I have on Rhapsody, it has serious potential as a streamlined core Unix shell for corporate networking applications ("enterprise," as they say). I think network computing in general will be the major source of computer-related revenue in the years to come, as stand-alone "boxes" gradually become obsolete. This is a long-term issue of course, but aapl seems well positioned to be a player, INMHO. . . Short-term, very cautious. Long-term, strong hold. . . L.G.

To: George von Dassow who wrote (10717)	4/2/1998 5:47:00 PM
From: Hugues	Respond to of 213176

Thanks a lot George and rhetOric for your posts. From these, I derive the following advantages of rhapsody over Java as a development environment: Pros: - Write code once. Needs specific compilation for each OS platform targeted (each flavor of Yellow box) - More services inside the yellow box than in Java: less time-consuming than to write an app in pure Java - Better portability in the targeted platform (so far MacOs, NT and Windows 95/98, and probably Sun Solaris), due to the diversity of JVM implementations - Faster: java libraries native in yellow box Cons: Minor - no portability outside the above mentioned platforms: Keep out of small appliances (pda, webphones, webtv, and so on). Handicap for Internet applets Major - Need to learn Objective-C to design powerful applications at lowest cost So the bottom line is very in favor of a rhapsody environment and make it a viable choice for many developer. As for whether Rhapsody as an OS must be considered crucial for Apple: I think so. NT will become more and more present and is considered more stable than MacOS 7.x and possibly 8.x. It is also more powerful for networking. These are two important factors in the long term. Apple won't be able to increase its market share in enterprise market and maintain it in consumer market if it doesn't improve on this two points. That's why Rhapsody is absolutely necessary. Hugues

To: George von Dassow who wrote (10717)	4/2/1998 9:23:00 PM
From: Idomeneus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213176

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