Oct 97 Viewpoint
Volume Number: 13
Issue Number: 10
Column Tag: Viewpoint
by Eric Gundrum
A Bit About Boston
Just a few weeks ago, as I write this, Steve Jobs made a number of significant
announcements at Macworld Expo in Boston. As is usual with Steve's comments, they
had a euphoric affect on the audience. In this case, the audience was much larger than
the few thousand people listening live. It included Wall Street investors and probably
the entire community of Macintosh users.
The general feeling around the show floor was very positive. Steve's announcements
may have caused this feeling. Expo attendance was solid, and, more importantly, Mac
users were spending a lot of money at the show. Whether they had extra money to spend
because Apple's stock price nearly doubled or because they were excited about Mac OS
8 is hard to say. Nonetheless, attendees showed their support for Macintosh by buying
Macintosh products. Many of the venders who chose not to attend should be kicking
themselves for missing out on a great chance to market and sell their products.
Rhapsody Andante Pianissimo
Almost as important as what Steve Jobs said at Expo is what he didn't say. He did not
talk about Rhapsody, and this had many people asking questions. His failure to mention
Rhapsody seems to have been a calculated move. There has been some concern within
Apple that at the last WWDC Apple's marketing machine had once again hyped a
technology beyond what Apple engineering could possibly deliver on the schedule
created by executives. As is typical of WWDC, many developers bought the hype.
Apple seems to be working to reduce the hype, and, hopefully, focus our attention on
what Rhapsody really will deliver. Rhapsody was intended to be the long term solution.
Mac OS 8 is the technology that will be paying the bills for some time to come,
especially in light of its recent success. Apple also may be getting the message from
developers that what we see in the developer release will determine what resources we
put to Rhapsody development. No developer wants to be trapped again basing a product
on Apple's promise of a new technology. Developers will judge their first experience
with Rhapsody carefully, and if Rhapsody doesn't live up to Apple's promises, most
developers will not look at it again until the next major release. Apple wants to get it
right the first time.
I don't mean to say Rhapsody won't be a great OS. Frankly, I won't be able to say one
way or the other until I have a chance to work with it. I am anxious to work with it.
The idea that I can build applications five times faster than I do now, and with greater
reliability, appeals to me greatly. I expect the developer release to demonstrate how
Rhapsody will improve developer productivity, even if we don't realize that
improvement right away. (Most of us have a lot to learn before we can be proficient
building Rhapsody applications.)
There are other things I expect from the Rhapsody developer release: I expect it to look
a bit like the Mac on the surface, but not to feel much like one underneath. Apple hadn't
planned to release the Advanced UI in the developer release, anyway, so they can have
more time with it. (In my opinion, the user experience in Mac OS 8 suggests that
Apple has forgotten what the Mac experience is all about, but that is for another
column.) I expect the Rhapsody developer release to be slow, possibly slower than Mac
OS. I also expect it to be riddled with bugs, but hopefully not in the core OS. Apple is
releasing an early version of Rhapsody to developers so we can begin to learn how to
build applications in the dramatically different programming environment. I expect
Apple to give us an OS we can use to accomplish that task without the bugs and
performance problems getting in the way. If they can meet that goal, I will be
forgiving of other limitations of this preview release.
There is another reason Steve Jobs did not mention Rhapsody during his keynote
address: the unexpected success of Mac OS 8. Apple's new OS has moved off store
shelves so quickly, and carried along so many other products, that resellers are
starting to think Macintosh users might actually have enough money to interest them.
Many "multi-platform" resellers have reported Mac OS 8 sales to rival the dollar
volume of the release of Windows 95. Consequently, Apple would like developers to
stay focused on delivering new and better Mac OS applications. Mac developers know
how to do this and do it well. The number of Mac OS customers will dwarf that of
Rhapsody for at least the next two years, so maybe we developers shouldn't be too hasty
to abandon it.
Rhapsody likely will come along a bit more quietly and slowly than we were led to
believe in the first half of this year. Apples claims the server market is one area that
will immediately benefit from the new technology. Others think higher education will
be drawn to the strengths of unix hidden underneath. There may be merit in all these
claims, but the first market will be the early adopters.
Rhapsody should be in developers hands around the time you read this, or very soon
after. I expect we will soon see a wave of many new and ported shareware and freeware
applications built just for Rhapsody. These are our first generation Rhapsody
products, built as we learn the ins and outs of this new OS. As developers discover the
leverage offered by the rich toolkits built into Rhapsody, we will see more
sophisticated applications coming out. We already have several
NEXTSTEP-turned-Rhapsody developers showing us what they have been doing all
these years. If the dreams bear out, we should see some revolutionary software enter
the market during the coming year. It may ultimately be the plethora of exciting new
software that drives users to Rhapsody, not the technical superiority of the OS. Only
time will tell.