Horizons, Issue 43, May 1998

Apple drops Newton - keeps Rhapsody under wraps

Apple Computers Inc have announced that they will discontinue all development of the Newton operating system, and drop the Message Pad PDA format in favour of the clamshell eMate running a version of the Macintosh operating system. "When they arrive Mac OS-based devices will be superior to the Newton devices", said Mitch Mandich, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. In explaining the decision, Fred Anderson, Chief Financial Officer of Apple, said: "We feel were better off putting the wood behind one arrow -- the Mac OS -- and we don't want to divert from that".

In just over twelve months Apple have transformed themselves from being a widely diversified computer manufacturer with an antiquated operating system, MacOS, first released in 1984 and with only one new version, System 7, released in 1991, and interests in monitors, printers and PDAs as well as Macintosh computers, into a much more tightly focussed and leaner organisation.

With the purchase in December 1996 of NeXT Inc, instead of Be Inc, Apple gained not just a new operating system, OpenStep, now codenamed Rhapsody, but also the return of their founder, Steve Jobs. Most of the slimming programme came about after Jobs took the position of "interim CEO" last August; no new CEO is yet in sight. Jobs had famously castigated Newton at the Macintosh World Wide Developers Conference last May as "that scribble thing".

In discussing MacOS for the future devices, Apple are including Rhapsody under that banner: "Rhapsody is a key to our future and will play a vital role in the future of the Mac OS market" said Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Marketing.

Rhapsody may look like just a new operating system for Macintoshes, but it may have considerable impact on PC users. A version of Rhapsody is available for Intel PCs, and Apple are issuing the developer releases of this at the same time as the Macintosh versions. Programs written on one version of Rhapsody run on the other version with no changes, from the same executable file. Apple also have the rather cumbersomely named "Yellow Box", which is the Rhapsody development environment ported to run on Windows NT and 95. Rhapsody applications can be recompiled to run immediately on NT as equal opportunity NT applications. Minor changes may be required to make best use of the NT user interface.

Members of the Apple Developer programme for Rhapsody have been releasing simultaneous updates to Rhapsody and NT versions of their applications.

Apple have announced that they are porting the same APIs to run on new versions of the current MacOS, and to encourage developers to work for Rhapsody, have announced that applications can ship with the Rhapsody run time code included and for no extra per seat charge, including products developed to run on NT.

Apple have already passed the announced date for the "Premier" release of Rhapsody, due in the first quarter of this year, but developers are pleased with its potential: "Yellow Box allows small teams to write world-class applications and deploy them on all major platforms", said William Shipley, President of Omni Development, a Rhapsody developer.

If Rhapsody goes the way Apple want it to, we may all find ourselves running more Apple software than just QuickTime.

Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: March 11, 1998