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

To: J R KARY who wrote (13565)	5/13/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: Richard Habib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

Below is an excerpt from Realities report. Jobs said Mac OS X would be "directed" at the G3 which would lead me to believe "optimized". I don't think anyone knows yet. Likewise, all the reports on Rhapsody as a continuing program are logically inconsistent both with what Jobs said and with descriptions of OS X. OS X is Rhapsody according to Jorg Brown with a "Grey" box (Carbon) added. Why would you continue two OS's one with grey, one without. Makes little sense. Jobs seemed pretty clear that Rhapsody 1.0 would be the last since OS X is Rhapsody 1.0 but who knows at this point. Jorg Brown's view of a yellow, grey and blue box (To run existing Mac OS apps) seems very ungainly. Does that mean that you will have to run various apps in different environmental windows as per the original blue and yellow boxes? Does this mean essentially 3 slightly different user interfaces as per original blue and yellow? Does this mean no drag and drop between different environmental windows - only cut and paste? If any of these are the case Mac OS X is not suitable for the average user. My impression from the speech was it would be a unified environment but I'm not sure now and I doubt anyone else on this thread is any better informed. Quote MacOS 10 G3 Only? Will MacOS 10 (MacOS X) be G3 only? Sorry to say, but it looks like it from what Steve had to say. However, MacOS 8.x/9.x with the Carbon libraries (Sonata) will run on all, or almost all, of the PPC line. Users will be able to take advantage of all the hard-core features of MacOS 10, just no Yellow Box and MacOS 10's underlying features. Apple has still yet to confirm what kind of hardware Mac OS X will require. It is still possible that MacOS X will run on the higher end 604e systems. However, Jobs speech makes us think otherwise. Unquote Rich

To: J R KARY who wrote (13565)	5/13/1998 4:27:00 PM
From: Goetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

>Have read that Mac OS 10 is "optimized" for the G3 leading to the >"assumption" it works on other PowerPCs - no certainty yet though. I do not know any details about the PowerPC architecture (but I know PA-RISC), I would think the statement that a new OS can run more optimal on a newer version of a RISC CPU makes sense. Newer RISC processors have introduced features like branch prediction, and other features (like variable page sizes and doing virtual to physical addressing in blocks rather than page by page) that help to get better hit rates on the cache(s) or avoid extra cache loads or flushes. I assume that even applications only interfacing with the Carbon API (read the 'legacy' code) will still get a better performance on Mac OS X, since the Mach kernel will bring a much better virtual memory system to the whole system, regardless of the actual PowerPC CPU being run on. It is another guess of mine that the Mach kernel is done with a compiler that will generate code that runs faster (not the MHz) using some of the above features, while that same code could still run on 'older' PowerPCs. And finally they might have a very few selected assembly routines in the kernel, that not only know which CPU the OS runs on, but also use the enhanced features if they are available. I think this OS X strategy makes a lot of sense, it is not only intellectual and manpower investment protection for the developers, it will also save the user community a lot of dollars. If the work to 'tune' an existing OS 8 application to get ready for OS X is small, the update fees should also be small. BTW: starting to look into options, can someone advise about the difference between VAAAG and LAAAG ? I reckon the latter are leaps, which imply longer 'lifecycle' ? Forgive my German ignorance, but there appears to be big differences in what options get traded in Frankfurt (the ones for Apple have names of Goldman Sachs KOS97/1.10.98 [GRPA] or Citibank(CNIY], instead of the ones I can lookup at CBOE. Can you trade options through online brokers like Etrade ? My German online broker does not offer that (yet), but I think since the trading volume is much higher for options in the U.S. it might be a good idea not to even start this in Germany (other than for German stocks). Send private message if you think it's too off-topic, thanks, Goetz 'feeling somewhat behind'