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

To: Alomex who wrote (16048)	7/29/1998 4:56:00 PM
From: Gerry Hurley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213182

Hi Alomex (and Scott, Basiji) With apologies for delay in responding ... dinner time here! Fair point - there WAS a change to a stated strategy and the problem need not have arisen in the first place, but ... what's now proposed offers best of both Rhapsody and "classic" MacOS. It allows retention of current APIs and provides option of writing to the new Yellow Box APIs. More important than that though, is the much better match between audiences and message : - developers are offered good technology, with choice of entry points based on importance of their legacy code (or absence thereof). - users get straight-line of succession rather than fork in the road. This is very important in considering the "one year delay" issue, because even Rhapsody shipping as promised during 1998 would never have gained the market acceptance that MacOS X is effectively guaranteed through being "just the latest version of MacOS". - marketing folk get to play in big pond rather than little pool. Imagine the task facing a software company which needed people to change to this Rhapsody thing just to run their software, unless and until Rhapsody had clearly supplanted classic MacOS. Doubt over adoption rate would kill Rhapsody companies before they could get off the ground. You fear that my scenario will happen "a year too late" but remember it might never have happened at all if Rhapsody as a minor server/power-user product had limited compatability with older apps and unclear future role. So, while I'd have been thrilled to hear MacOS X story and 1998 ship date, whats being done makes sense and gives a better long-term story. As for trying to sell a "better Windows than Windows", look where that strategy got IBM with OS/2. To my mind Apple are right to retain their OS values but let hardware make the headlines. Basiji, I take your point about wanting to get to market, but your Windows market is available now and even MacOS X Server will have higher 1998 sales than Rhapsody would have, as noted above. Hope this helps in investment/planning context. Gerry Hurley