===========================
The RhapsodyOS Report
Issue #12 / 19 April 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
----------------
WWDC SESSION SUMMARIES PROVIDE CLUES. Apple has posted session summaries
for the upcoming WWDC conference in mid-May. While there is no significant
news in the descriptions themselves, several interesting Rhapsody sessions
will most certainly provide a glipse into the future. One session,
"Rhapsody & Yellow Box in 1998", is described as follows: "1998 will be a
year of great achievement for Rhapsody as a server platform and as a Yellow
Box development platform approaching the first customer release. Rhapsody
also contains important keys to the future of Mac OS. This session will
detail the direction that Rhapsody and the Yellow Box will take this year."
There will also be sessions dedicated to Rhapsody driver development,
utilizing the BSD 4.4 shell, the Blue Box, scripting in the Yellow Box, and
one devoted to the Apple Cryptographic Architecture for Rhapsody and MacOS,
which sounds very exciting. For a description of the WWDC sessions, please
visit the WWDC web site at
<http://devworld.apple.com/wwdc98/conference.html>.
APPLE POSTS $55 MILLION PROFIT DURING SECOND QUARTER. Apple announced this
week that it has posted a $55 million profit during the second quarter.
During last year's second quarter, Apple posted a $178 million loss [NOTE:
Including charges, this amount was actually $708 million]. Revenues for the
quarter were $1.4 billion, down from $1.6 billion from the same quarter
last year. Power Macintosh G3 sales accounted for 51% of total unit sales.
This is the first time Apple has had consecutive earning quarters since
1995.
WEBOBJECTS FOR ACADEMICS - $99. Apple is making WebObjects Enterprise 3.5
Academic (M6407LL/A) available on its educational price list for $99. The
development tools require Windows NT or OpenStep for Mach. The deployment
version is available for use on Microsoft NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and
OpenStep for Mach. The commercial version of WebObjects Developer is $1499.
As reported earlier, a future version of WebObjects will be available for
Rhapsody. More information on WebObjects is available from WebObjects web
site at <http://www.apple.com/webobjects/>.
RHAPNET READER SURVEY. RhapNet is hosting a reader survey on their web
site. To take part, please visit <http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/survey/>.
MOZILLA FOR RHAPSODY PROJECT UPDATE. Chris Toshok from Netscape
Communications has agreed to serve as the back-end technical lead for the
project. He is currently working on porting a set of code to Rhapsody to
allow the development team to begin their work.
RHAPSODY ARTICLES
------------------
Apple Developer Connection: Still A Deal
Andrew Stone / RhapsodyOS.com
<http://rhapsodyos.com/editorial/stone/ST00006.html>
Apple's Developer Program: Better or Worse?
Oliver Dueck / RhapNet
<http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/editorials/oliverdueck/980414.shtml>
FrontBase: A new database for a new millennium
Malcolm Crawford / Stepwise
<http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Reviews/Frontbase.html>
Goodbye Windows, Hello Rhapsody!
Mark Anthony Collins / The Macintosh Opinion
<http://macopinion.com/columns/macman/macman4f.html>
How Apple Can Again Rule the PC Industry
Scott Lopatin / MacOnCall
<http://www.maconcall.com/applerule.html>
Killer, man ... Applications for Rhapsody
Charlie Saeger / MacOS Daily
<http://www.macosdaily.com/contributions/killerapps.shtml>
RhapNet Reader Views: Targeting Rhapsody
RhapNet
<http://www.macnn.com/rhapnet/readerviews/980414.shtml>
Rhapsody in Yellow
Jason Sims / MacOS Daily
<http://www.macosdaily.com/sims/rhapinyellow.shtml>
Writing Objective-C Classes with Java in Mind
Andrew Platzer / Stepwise
<http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Technical/WritingObj-CForJava.html>
SOFTWARE RELEASES
------------------
EggTimer v2.5beta
Short-term reminders application
Wassim M Jabbi <jabi@acsu.buffalo.edu>
<http://libra.ap.buffalo.edu/www/Software/>
PowerPC and Intel
THE RUMOR CRITIC
----------------
APPLE TO LICENSE RHAPSODY? In a recent report, MacOS Rumors states that
Apple will be licensing Rhapsody for Intel and is even considering
licensing Rhapsody for PowerPC. While the options for licensing remain wide
open for the Intel version of Rhapsody, only one MacOS licensee remains,
UMAX, and their licensing agreement is set to expire this Summer. Would
Apple grant UMAX a license for Rhapsody while taking their MacOS license
away? An interesting thought, but weird and unlikely. Expect a fair number
of Rhapsody for Intel licensees to be announced along with the release of
CR1 this year.
YELLOW BOX DR1 FOR MACOS TO BE PRESENTED, RELEASED AT WWDC? MacOS Rumors
reports that a developer release of Yellow Box for MacOS will be presented
at the upcoming WWDC, and may even be given to developers at this time. As
reported last week, the Yellow Box is expected to ship with the Sonata
(9.0) release of MacOS. It is unlikely that the Yellow Box for MacOS will
be shown or given to developers at WWDC. Why? We continue to stand behind
our belief that the Yellow Box will never be released for the MacOS - at
least what we know as the MacOS today. It makes far more sense for Apple to
base System 9.0 on top of a Rhapsody core with an integrated Yellow Box, as
had been rumored previously.
OPENBSD CODE TO BE ADDED TO RHAPSODY? A rumor from several sources
regarding OpenBSD <http://www.openbsd.org/> code being included in Rhapsody
is an interesting one. This rumor started in October, but more recent
information has made this item believable. Sources say that Apple contacted
the OpenBSD project last October to use some of their code for the
BSD-based utilities which will be included in Rhapsody. However, more
recent sources lead us to believe that the project is wider reaching than a
suite of utilities. MacOS Rumors posted a letter from the OpenBSD
maintainers recently giving permission to Apple to integrate a portion of
the OpenBSD code base into Rhapsody. A source close to Theo de Raadt,
OpenBSD project coordinator, told us this week that Theo has indeed been in
contact with Apple about source code inclusion. What would compel Apple to
utilize OpenBSD source code? OpenBSD is commonly regarded as the most
secure and compliant UNIX operating system available. Another important
strength is that OpenBSD supports binary emulation of most programs from
Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, BSDI, SunOS, and HP-UX. Whether or not Apple could
actually take advantage of binary emulation is unknown.
SOFTIMAGE|3D, ELECTRIC IMAGE COMING TO RHAPSODY??! SOFTIMAGE|3D, the
award-winning 3D animation software may be coming to Rhapsody/Yellow Box,
according to MacOS Rumors. This information was gained from the NAB
convention held last week in Las Vegas. We give this rumor very little
credibility. SOFTIMAGE is owned by Microsoft and it is likely that their
future direction will actually include phasing out future SGI Irix releases
in favor of Windows NT. As for the end-note in the same report by MacOS
Rumors regarding ElectricImage eyeing Yellow Box development, we believe
this is likely. ElectricImage is currently a MacOS only software
development firm, although their recent merger with Play, Inc. will change
this. The ElectricImage web site indicates that "The Macintosh will be
treated as an equal platform for the ElectricImage product line." Don't
expect Rhapsody releases by ElectricImage until their products hit Windows.
MERCED BUILD OF RHAPSODY? MacOS Rumors states that Apple has already begun
work on a version of Rhapsody for the upcoming 64-bit "Merced" chip from
Intel and HP. For almost a year now, we've been hearing from various
sources that Steve Jobs believes the future for Rhapsody may be in the
Merced chip. However, employees at Apple have done their best to downplay
this rumor and turn our attention to the fact that Apple makes its money
from hardware sales which use the PowerPC chip. Even if Apple intends to
create a 64-bit clean version of Rhapsody/Intel for the Merced chip, this
doesn't change the reality that Apple's Rhapsody focus will be for the
PowerPC.
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>
Apple's Rhapsody Developer Site
<http://developer.apple.com/rhapsody/index.html>
Rhapsody.it [NOTE: In Italian.]
<http://www.rhapsody-it.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:
USENET
[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
USENET II
net.computers.os.unix.rhapsody
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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