Five Mega-Corporations Announce Support For Rendezvous, Praise Open Standards

by , 1:15 PM EDT, September 10th, 2002

Apple announced today that five more companies, all of them powerhouses to one degree or another, will be adding support for Rendezvous to products. Philips will be including Rendezvous support in its consumer electronics products, Canon and Xerox will each be adding support for the technology into some of their printers, Sybase will be adding building Rendezvous into its networking tools, and WorldBook will be making it easier for students to share research and bookmarks with each other.

Rendezvous is a networking protocol that allows devices on a network to find each other, without any help from the user. Networking has traditionally been an area of near-voodoo, and it is one that intimidates many users. Rendezvous literally takes the voodoo out of networking, and makes it possible for almost anyone to connect devices.

The fluff quotes Apple included with its press release all include statements of support on open standards, a reference to Apple's decision to open up Rendezvous as a standard. Microsoft typically chooses proprietary technologies that it controls for use in Windows, something that Apple criticized when Windows Media Player 9 was released. WMP 9 uses a proprietary format for multimedia files, while Apple and Real both adopted the open standard of MPEG-4. Each of the execs quoted in Apple's press release sing the praises of not only Rendezvous itself, but also of Apple's decision to go with an open standard. From Apple (fluff quotes included):

Developers are rapidly adopting Apple's innovative new Rendezvous™ networking technology for incorporation into everything from consumer electronics to printers, enterprise database management and educational applications. Today Philips, Canon, Xerox, Sybase and World Book announced support for Rendezvous in current or future products, joining previous Rendezvous adopters Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Lexmark.

Rendezvous uses industry standard networking protocols and zero configuration technology to automatically discover and connect devices over any IP network, including Ethernet and 802.11 wireless networking. Rendezvous is integrated into Apple's Mac® OS X version 10.2 "Jaguar" operating system, and dozens of companies are working to integrate it into their products.

"No one wants any one company to own or control the core networking technology for the home, school or office," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Rendezvous is becoming a prime example of how open standards can drive innovation and quick adoption in a wide variety of products."

"Apple and Philips share a vision for the future," said Gerard Kleisterlee, CEO of Royal Philips Electronics. "We both believe that consumers want devices throughout the home to talk to each other, so that, for example, the music stored in iTunes on your Mac can play through the Philips stereo system in your living room, or the photos stored in iPhoto can be displayed as a stunning slideshow on your Philips Flat TV. Rendezvous helps realize this dream. Philips is particularly pleased that Apple has adopted an open standard and architecture for Rendezvous, and we will support Rendezvous in future Philips products."

"Canon is adding our support to the growing adoption of Apple's revolutionary Rendezvous networking technology," said Amit Bagchi, Marketing director for Canon's printer products. "We're building Rendezvous into the new ImagePROGRAPH W2200, W7200 and W7250 color graphic and large-format network-enabled print products so they will automatically configure within office networks."

"Xerox Phaser network printers will be even simpler for our customers to use as we integrate Apple's Rendezvous technology into future products," said Rob Stewart, vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Xerox Office Printing Business.

"Rendezvous is an incredibly innovative technology that we are using to combine the best of both worlds -- Sybase's high performance, scalable database with Apple's legendary ease of use," said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Enterprise Solutions Division. "As the first enterprise company to support Rendezvous technology, Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5 for Jaguar Server makes client discovery and server configuration automatic, lowering the total cost of ownership to our customers.

"World Book's new 2003 edition for Mac OS X takes full advantage of Apple's Rendezvous technology by allowing students to automatically share their World Book research and bookmarks," said Michael Ross, executive vice president and publisher, World Book Inc. "Rendezvous is an incredible technology that is clearly going to drive innovative new products for education."

You can find more information on Rendezvous at Apple's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Apple really is hammering on Microsoft these days. This business about open standards was aimed squarely at them, and Apple clearly hopes to gain market share for things like QuickTime 6/MPEG-4 and Rendezvous by repeatedly delivering this message of how much better it is to support open standards. It's an interesting ploy, and one we hope works. Certainly there are enough companies out there who have been burned by Microsoft and its use of proprietary technologies that Apple can, and has, gained allies. We'll see if it pays off.