| 1. | A brief public note of thanks to Steve Jobs for having the guts to back off the Rhapsody dual operating system strategy. The new strategy, called OS X, is basically a reincarnation of Copland, which was a *good idea* from the early nineties that wasn't well executed. |
| 2. | Roughly, the Copland plan was to close various holes in the Macintosh OS that allowed programs to do things that couldn't work under a fully pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system. Most of the OS remains intact. A few interfaces have to go. A minor transition for developers. |
| 3. | The benefit, Mac software can be as powerful and sophisticated and perform as well as software for other real-time operating systems such as Unix and Windows NT. It was clear that the Mac OS needed to go this way, but previous Apple management didn't get there. |
| 4. | As a longtime critic and public advisor to Apple, it's gratifying to see them make moves that make sense. |
| 5. | ***Investment money for developers |
| 6. | In early 1996 I outlined a plan for the revival of Apple. Jobs is pretty much executing that plan, with one major exception. |
| 7. | http://www.scripting.com/davenet/96/01/gottabearetha.html |
| 8. | There's still no money available from investors for Mac-based development. This will probably be a challenge, but it really shouldn't be. The Mac OS remains the best alternative to Windows, with a deep application software base and millions of users of all levels of technical skills. It should be a good developer market. |
| 9. | ***Competing with Apple |
| 10. | We still compete with Apple, but it's easier to compete with a strong hypester like Steve Jobs. In the past we got in trouble with many users for promoting our product, I think largely because Apple wasn't promoting their products well. Competing with college professors is very difficult, I learned. |
| 11. | Now Apple isn't ashamed to promote the value of system-level scripting for the Macintosh. It's a huge win for people building publishing systems, an area where we have chosen to specialize. |
| 12. | http://www.scripting.com/appleScript/comparison/default.html |
| 13. | Now the revival of the Macintosh platform is looking more likely, we hope that the cross-platform feature of Frontier 5 will turn into as big plus for our Windows users as it is for our Mac users. What a great place to be if it can happen. |
| 14. | Let's have fun, again! |
| 15. | Dave Winer |