What's Next for Macintosh?
by David M. Cole
Whether you have just a few Macintoshes sprinkled around the newsroom or you've just committed the entire company to the Mac, you probably thought the news around the turn of the year was pretty grim: Apple decided not only to abandon its next-generation operating-system development, but also to buy Next Computer Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., and use that company's NextStep as a core component of the Macintosh operating system.
Oh, and the company lost another $100 million in the last quarter.
People are calling me left and right, all saying that this (either the OS shift or the financial loss) is the sign that Apple will soon be dead--within months if not weeks.
Sorry, folks, but you couldn't be more wrong. These situations do not foretell The Grim Reaper, but rather the second coming (or is it the third?) of Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.
Fresh Leadership
What the new administration at Apple, led by Gilbert Amelio, found in the company's operating-system world apparently shook them to their tootsies: years of development of a system that had no hope of being backwardly compatible. That meant that owners of machines as new as Power PC-based Macintoshes probably wouldn't be able to run the OS being envisioned in the company's labs.
So Amelio and his technology lieutenant Ellen Hancock (at one point she was in line to run IBM) decided to buy some technology that would allow not only backward compatibility (so all those copies of QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator you own would continue to be useful), but also give the machine the ability to handle three features for which sophisticated customers have been clamoring: pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory and a better file system.
Multitasking, as any computer weenie knows, allows an operating system to run multiple applications simultaneously. Apple's System 7 has multitasking, but it's only pretend multitasking--it can't pre-empt the execution of a lower-priority application if a higher-priority application needs computing resources. This is why when you switch from application to application on a Mac, things just sit there for a second or two; the operating system needs a moment to change its mind, thank you.
On a system with protected memory, when an application hits a bug and crashes (I know, it's an odd analogy, but work with me here), then just that application crashes. Under System 7, the entire machine crashes, hence the desire for protected memory--you wouldn't have to reboot your machine as often.
Updated Operating System
The System 7 file system was part of the original Macintosh design. At 13 years old, it's a little long in the tooth. If you're doing something like putting pictures into (or taking them out of) a database, the old file system is a dog.
An operating system designed around the NextStep layer will solve all of these problems. Yes, there was some discussion that Apple would buy the Be operating system, but it was too expensive (both in terms of money and what Apple would have to give the Be founders), and it is an immature OS. Next brings almost eight years of maturity to the party--it's probable that most of the bugs have been ironed out.
But the real issue here is immediacy: Apple is not going to release this new operating system anytime soon; hell, knowing Apple, despite its assurances that the new OS will come out in early '98, I'd be willing to take bets that we won't see a full, tested, robust version until '99.
And the company plans to continue to upgrade the venerable System 7, bringing new features and look-and-feel to it, over the course of the next couple of years.
Lastly, because of this, developers will continue to release System 7 versions of applications for many, many months. Some are actually planning to have both System 7 and Next versions of their programs available in the '98-'99 time frame.
Promising Future
So, actually, there is little to worry about: your investment in hardware will continue to have value, your applications will continue to run and the company you have come to love (well, OK, like a little bit) will still be around.
But what about those financial losses? Imagine that someone started a whispering campaign in your community. The paper--your paper--is about to go out of business. Maybe it's going to be sold, maybe it's just going to be shut down, the rumors say, but it won't be here for long.
The same thing has happened to Apple.
What's next for Apple? There are tough days ahead, but the company has great technology, great products and now, it seems, a great new operating system. So stop sounding the death knell--Apple shall rise again.
Cole is a San Francisco-based newspaper consultant and editor of The Cole Papers, a monthly newsletter on technology, journalism and publishing. E-mail, dmc@colegroup.com; phone, (415) 673-2424; fax, (415) 673-2449. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily TechNews or NAA.