WWDC Quick Takes.
When I first heard Jobs presentation on Monday, I came to two quick but disparate conclusions:
1) That AAPL had "nailed" it with regards to shoring up their existing corps of developers. Baby would *not* be thrown out with bathwater and all the current Mac installed based would be able to upgrade to an industrial strength UNIX/NT OS while retaining their beloved apps and ease of use. Great focus and headline.
That the new OS would require(??) a G3* would mean more consumers would go out and buy iMacs and Powerbooks. Lots of upgrading, more CPU sales, balloning revenues, accelerating stock price.
Yaaayy!
2) On the other hansd, conspicuously, there was no mention of either:
a) an OS to run on Intel boxes or;
b) a non-emulation means by which to run Windows apps on Mac hardware.
Ie; where's the convergence? That and the emphasis on G3s pounding Pentiums into the pavement left me with the distinct impression that (negotiations with MSFT had collapsed and that) AAPL was going full bore into a *proprietary* mode and were going to gut it out with Intel in a hardware battle and do a rollover for MSFT on the software side.
This I thought is extremely ballsy/cowardly move on Jobs' part. While a hardware strategy not undoable given AAPL's excellent product line, it did signal to me a clearly more *dangerous* strategy.
Aaaahhh!
And since my options had only a few days left ...
Anyway, I've since been going through reports on continuation of Yellow Box as part of OSX and the continued implementation of Rhapsody as a server OS, so my concerns have been considerably addressed.
soup
*I'm unclear if Jobs said OSX will *require* a G3. I remember in January '97 Amelio *guaranteed* that any new Next-based OS would run on any of the Mac *then* current 603-604s. Can anyone answer this? |
