What's NeXT? Archive

Variations on a Shaky Melody

It's been one week since Apple pulled the plug on Power Computing's Mac OS license, sending large portions of the Macintosh community into a tailspin, groping for answers as to the future of Mac OS licensing and Mac clones. Aside from the fact that Apple will not certify any CHRP-based Mac clones, nor build any of their own soon, they still haven't resolved the question of licensing Mac OS 8 or Rhapsody to the clone makers.

Don't expect answers to your questions or resolutions to these problems any time soon. Steve Jobs is clearly calling the shots here, and his reputation for showmanship and subsequent spin-doctoring of his own events leads me to believe that if he explains anything at all, it won't be for some time. But it is disturbing that so soon after installing a new Board of Directors, the Board would allow Jobs to become the de facto CEO and make decisions without being subject to the same scrutiny as a real CEO. Whether you think he's a brilliant businessman or just plain arrogant, this is a dangerous path for any corporation to allow. I don't know what is going on inside the Infinite Loop, but it looks increasingly like something that has taken place before at another computer company: NeXT Computer.

After several years of trying to generate mass-market sales for their hardware and software platform, NeXT determined that they were not going to be successful in this strategy, especially since their hardware was more expensive than existing Macintosh and Windows systems of that era. No, the key buyers of NeXT hardware and NeXTSTEP were corporations doing in-house development, and while they loved NeXTSTEP, they didn't like the need for proprietary hardware to run it on. So, in early 1993, NeXT announced that it would cease manufacturing hardware and focus on developing industry-standard software for ÒmainstreamÓ computers; i.e., Wintel machines. NeXT changed their name to NeXT Software, and soon we had OpenStep, which is essentially a multi-platform version of NeXTSTEP.

Since Apple purchased NeXT Software last year so they could use OpenStep as the basis for their upcoming Rhapsody OS, they've been very vague as to their ultimate plans for the rest of the NeXT enterprise. One indication of their plans may be in their renaming of NeXT Software to Apple Enterprise Software. The corporate enterprise market is one in which Apple has never been very successful in penetrating, but NeXT was. By absorbing NeXT, Apple may plan to use it to gain a foothold in this lucrative market for Rhapsody, running on Wintel machines. If so, then the key question for everyone, including current Mac and Power Mac owners is this: How much will it cost? If Apple intends to charge the kinds of prices associated with OpenStep ($799 for the User version, up to $5000 for the Developer version), then many people will be shut out from using Rhapsody, or choose to live with their existing setup.

This Wintel-Rhapsody scenario seems increasingly likely. Avie Tevanian and his staff shouldn't have much difficulty, since OpenStep already works on Wintel, and Rhapsody is based on OpenStep. If that's the case, then the Board should take responsibility for the actions of Steve Jobs and announce their intentions instead of hiding behind a front man with no real accountability to the shareholders. That's the least we should expect.

But if this happens, that means more reliance and market dominance by one chip manufacturer: Intel. Apple, IBM and Motorola jointly developed the PowerPC chip architecture to be superior to anything that Intel has or will have for quite some time. They're cheaper, faster, and have more room for growth than Intel's Pentium family or anything else Intel has to offer. If the Mac OS or even Rhapsody runs on Wintel machines, this would mean a great decline in sales of the superior PowerPC system, and perhaps, ultimately, it's death. A better alternative would be (or have been) the proliferation of CHRP-based systems capable of running multiple operating systems, including Mac OS and Rhapsody. User and corporate buyers can be sold on these systems based on their initial cost, cost of ownership and maintenance (clearly lower for Macs) and multiple OS capabilities. But Apple screwed that up.

Perhaps a larger question in all of this maneuvering is the issue of trust. Apple has a history of breaking promises to Mac developers and owners, and now to their licensees. Now that they have reneged on their commitment to licensing, developers and owners need to ask themselves whether or not Apple can ever be trusted. You may not like your answer.