Avie Tevanian On Mac OS X 10.1, The MHz Myth, And IT

Avie Tevanian, Appleis Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, is the subject of an interview in I.T., a technology magazine in Australia. The interview, which was conducted during MACWORLD Expo New York, covers such issues as Mac OS X 10.1, the MHz Myth, and Appleis profile amongst IT professionals. From the article:

"Thereis no magic button," he said. "Just a lot of very hard work. Mac OS X 10.1 is so much faster and better now. A lot of effort has gone into achieving that."

Even so, competing against the Intel/Microsoft monster isnit easy. "Weire getting the word out on the megahertz myth," Tevanian said, "but Iim not sure the general public will ever fully absorb it. In general, (the mass of) people have no idea about it. They are looking for a simple way to tell what is what and what is performance."

"Whereas if you look at the professionals, they very much know that it is not just the number on the chip but the balance of the performance - the balance of the software and the hardware and the integration of the applications with the platform - the optimisations and the overall workflow performance that matter. The professionals understand that," he said.

He agreed that Mac OS X and its Unix kernel was attracting considerable interest from the professional market, an area in which Apple did not have a high profile. "They love the prospect of OS X. This is what they have been dreaming of for years. This is the Unix plumbing they like with open source, with a graphic interface on top of it, and a development environment they like and really important applications such as Office."

So, is Apple now looking at greater opportunities in the corporate market? There is that potential, says Tevanian, although he notes it is risky to say that it is a new market to be pursued aggressively, because of other issues. "But from a technology viewpoint I believe we are now much better positioned."

There is a lot more information that we have not quoted, and we encourage you to read the full article; it is very interesting.