Apple Is Once Again Striving to Create a Cross-platform Standard. Will OpenDoc Be Another Quicktime or a Boondoggle?
John Rizzo
IT SEEMED LIKE MAGIC at the time. I stood at a trade-show booth in 1987, staring in disbelief. The application that was then the raison d'être for the Mac -- PageMaker -- was running smoothly under the clunky
new Microsoft Windows 1.03. PageMaker was one of the first Mac applications to make its way to the other side of the fence. The Windows port gained Aldus new customers, but it also helped the company keep its Mac customers, by establishing the product as a cross-platform standard.
The importance of standards for the success of the Mac has only grown with time. Some of Apple's cross-platform products, notably QuickTime, have captured the market, whereas others have failed. In the afterglow of the Windows 95 hoopla, OpenDoc presents an important opportunity to bring a Mac standard to the industry -- if Apple can show that it has learned from its past successes and failures.
Multimedia Savvy
Realizing that its QuickTime technology would be a welcome addition to the PC environment, Apple was quick to port the multimedia software to Windows. QuickTime for Windows 1.0 enabled PCs to run multimedia software without the costly add-in boards and additional RAM required by Intel-promoted technologies. But Microsoft soon picked up on the idea and released Video for Windows, which instantly became a major competitor. Apple fought back with QuickTime for Windows 2.0. QuickTime is faster than Video for Windows, is easier to develop for, and yields better-quality video.
Yet QuickTime couldn't succeed with superior technology alone. It needed the endorsements of major PC companies, and it got them. Last year Apple agreed to include Intel's video-compression algorithm, Indeo, in QuickTime for Windows and the Mac. A few months later, Netscape agreed to incorporate QuickTime and QuickTime VR into future releases of Netscape Navigator for the Mac and Windows, to enable people to use multimedia over the Internet.
QuickTime for Windows has prevailed, because Apple stayed ahead of the technological curve and because it made crucial licensing deals. QuickTime for Windows is widely used in PC multimedia products, gets good reviews in the PC press, and lets the Mac remain an important platform in the production of CD-ROMs and multimedia titles for Macs as well as for PCs.
Windows Vaporware
Apple has not always taken the lessons of QuickTime to heart. The company's GeoPort was supposed to become a general-purpose, low-cost communications standard for analog and digital lines. IBM and AT&T announced support for the GeoPort standard but have never produced a product that implemented it. In fact, Apple itself underutilizes the GeoPort, which has the capability to transmit ISDN but can currently operate only at 14.4 kbps on the Mac. With 28.8-kbps modems available for $200, there's little reason for a Mac user, let alone a PC vendor, to adopt the GeoPort.
Another of Apple's failed cross-platform standards is DAL (Data Access Language), client/server database middleware. DAL actually made it to a PC version. In fact, you can still buy DAL Client for DOS/Windows ($149) and DAL server software for UNIX machines, from AGE Logic (508-898-3300). However, DAL failed to become anything like a standard in the face of Microsoft's ability to sign up developers and create a de facto standard with its own ODBC. Apple eventually made the Mac and PC DAL client software compatible with Microsoft's ODBC APIs, but this tactic didn't work. Apple surrendered the battle, stopped shipping DAL with the Mac OS, and sold DAL to Independence Technologies (800-605-9010 or 510-438-2034).
Apple has occasionally attempted to enter the cross-platform world by bringing others' technology to the Mac. NetWare for PowerPC, a joint project with Novell, was possibly Apple's biggest cross-platform mistake ever. As I described in my December '95 column (page 143), Apple was planning to bundle a PowerPC port of the NetWare network operating system with an Apple Workgroup Server. The decision to kill the project was an expensive one. NetWare for PowerPC was already in beta and was scheduled to ship in February 1996.
Why did Apple and Novell kill NetWare for PowerPC? Apple told me that customers didn't really want NetWare for PowerPC after all and that it had decided to focus on AppleShare software. Unfortunately, the company took too long to come to this conclusion, which cost it money and produced an embarrassing retreat from what would have been a high-profile product.
Sticking to AppleShare does make some sense, now that Apple Workgroup Servers include AppleShare Client for Windows at no extra charge. (It's also available separately for $199 for an unlimited number of networked PCs.) Although it's not intended to compete with NetWare or Microsoft Windows NT Server, AppleShare Client for Windows makes Workgroup Servers viable solutions for Mac-centric networks that have a few PCs.
OpenDoc: Another Quicktime?
Despite a string of failures, Apple does have a chance of repeating QuickTime's success. OpenDoc technology will let users link and customize their applications (see Mac to PC, March '95, page 119). Just as QuickTime brought multimedia to PCs, without requiring a lot of extra hardware, OpenDoc promises to bring powerful applications to users' machines, without the need for massive amounts of hard-disk space and RAM. OpenDoc makes features of applications available as small pieces of software, called parts, that you can choose to install and mix and match at your own whim. OpenDoc may ultimately allow you to simply remove the features you don't need from OpenDoc-based applications, although early versions are unlikely to include this capability.
Like QuickTime, OpenDoc is technically superior to Microsoft's alternative, OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), which still relies on huge, monolithic applications. OpenDoc is easier to use than OLE, easier to develop for, and more flexible. Apple has also been able to articulate these advan-tages to cross-platform developers and to get them interested -- something it succeeded in doing for QuickTime but failed to do with DAL and NetWare for PowerPC. Apple created an industry alliance, Component Integration Labs, to foster OpenDoc development. CI Labs now controls Apple's OpenDoc technology and boasts members that include IBM, Novell, and Adobe.
Unfortunately for OpenDoc proponents, OLE is already shipping, with OpenDoc expected to become available to developers only this quarter. The OpenDoc alliance will need a massive marketing effort to overcome OLE's lead. Fortunately, the alliance has more resources for this effort than Apple would have by itself.
With OpenDoc, Apple seems to have the right technology and the right alliances. OpenDoc will be a central part of Apple's Copland operating system, and IBM -- whose new ownership of Lotus Development makes it a very important software vendor -- has stated its intention to use OpenDoc widely. Novell's commitment at this point is less clear.
One thing is certain: The cross-platform success of OpenDoc is crucial for Apple. The company can no longer afford to create great Mac-only technology. By propagating innovative cross-platform technology, Apple can help the Mac remain relevant in a Windows-dominated world.
Contributing editor John Rizzo is the author of several books, including How Macs Work.
