Speaking at Apple's World-wide Developers' Conference in New York last week, CEO Gil Amelio (right) underscored the company's commitment to its MacOS operating system. He also revealed Apple will be rationalising its Mac product line, releasing special edition ranges and working closer with developers.

A key focus of the plan is a clearer distinction between Apple's hardware and system software operations. "We have to make them more internally competitive," said Amelio.

Although the plan has yet to be finalised, Amelio said he was pushing ahead aggressively to license the MacOS to third parties. Apple is also well on its way to developing a common hardware reference platform with partners IBM and Motorola.

The Internet permeated Amelio's speech. He noted that Apple was already a key player in the World Wide Web authoring market and Web server business. Last week, Apple licensed Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, as Netscape announced support for the Apple-backed Open Doc component technology and said it will endeavour to release Mac versions of its software simultaneously with other platform releases.

Apple is repositioning its Newton PDA as a mobile Web browser and will start beta testing an Internet Enabler Extension for the device this week.

Amelio also promised direct financial support for small ISVs, lower-priced products, an $18 million (£12 million) investment in Mac tools and a $20 million spend on ISV marketing programmes.

Developers were generally pleased with Amelio's proposals. Greg Galanos, CEO of tools vendor Metro-Weorks, said separating the hardware and software units was long overdue: "The software division has been subsidising the hardware division to an obnoxious level. Now the effort to license the MacOS won't be held back by heel-draggers on the hardware side."

Industry observers said the restructuring programme was years overdue. Kimball Brown, analyst at Dataquest, said: "Insanely great products don't mean anything if you don't make money."