jQuery.extend(Drupal.settings, {"basePath":"\/","CTools":{"pageId":"page-b6c516428d32535efd606e07c9fc56fd"},"googleanalytics":{"trackOutgoing":1,"trackMailto":1,"trackDownload":1,"trackDownloadExtensions":"7z|aac|avi|csv|doc|exe|flv|gif|gz|jpe?g|js|mp(3|4|e?g)|mov|pdf|phps|png|ppt|rar|sit|tar|torrent|txt|wma|wmv|xls|xml|zip"},"lightbox2":{"rtl":0,"file_path":"\/(\\w\\w\/)sites\/default\/files","default_image":"\/sites\/all\/modules\/lightbox2\/images\/brokenimage.jpg","border_size":"2","font_color":"000","box_color":"fff","top_position":"","overlay_opacity":"0.6","overlay_color":"000","disable_close_click":1,"resize_sequence":"0","resize_speed":100,"fade_in_speed":100,"slide_down_speed":100,"use_alt_layout":0,"disable_resize":0,"disable_zoom":0,"force_show_nav":0,"loop_items":1,"node_link_text":"","node_link_target":0,"image_count":"Image !current of !total","video_count":"Video !current of !total","page_count":"Page !current of !total","lite_press_x_close":"press \x3ca href=\"#\" onclick=\"hideLightbox(); return FALSE;\"\x3e\x3ckbd\x3ex\x3c\/kbd\x3e\x3c\/a\x3e to close","download_link_text":"","enable_login":false,"enable_contact":false,"keys_close":"c x 27","keys_previous":"p 37","keys_next":"n 39","keys_zoom":"z","keys_play_pause":"32","display_image_size":"","image_node_sizes":"()","trigger_lightbox_classes":"","trigger_lightbox_group_classes":"","trigger_slideshow_classes":"","trigger_lightframe_classes":"","trigger_lightframe_group_classes":"","custom_class_handler":0,"custom_trigger_classes":"","disable_for_gallery_lists":true,"disable_for_acidfree_gallery_lists":true,"enable_acidfree_videos":true,"slideshow_interval":5000,"slideshow_automatic_start":true,"slideshow_automatic_exit":true,"show_play_pause":true,"pause_on_next_click":false,"pause_on_previous_click":true,"loop_slides":false,"iframe_width":"600","iframe_height":"400","iframe_border":0,"enable_video":0},"thickbox":{"close":"Close","next":"Next \x3e","prev":"\x3c Prev","esc_key":"or Esc Key","next_close":"Next \/ Close on last","image_count":"Image !current of !total"}});
<p>A tough year awaits Avie Tevanian, former vice president of engineering at<br />
NeXT Software. Recently anointed as Apple's senior vice president, system<br />
software engineering, Tevanian has what is quite possibly the most<br />
challenging job in the computer industry: creating the next Mac OS.<br />
MacUser Editor Andrew Gore sat down with him to get his take on Rhapsody<br />
(Apple's code name for its upcoming operating system) and on the rumors<br />
that future PCs may come equipped with a "Mac Inside" sticker.</p>
<p>MacUser: Avie, I wanted to start off with a basic question: In the new<br />
organization in Apple, what part of the OS organization are you<br />
responsible for?</p>
<p>Tevanian: I'll be responsible for the Rhapsody product and all the<br />
deliverables that fall out of that. So that's essentially the new modern<br />
OS that Apple's building based on the NeXT technology that they've just<br />
acquired, and based on integrating in some of the key pieces of their<br />
existing technologies. And I'll also be responsible for the ongoing<br />
projects we've had at NeXT, including things like our WebObjects<br />
technology.</p>
<p>Could you take a few more minutes and just explain what Rhapsody is? We've<br />
heard a lot of stories about Rhapsody, and we've written a couple<br />
ourselves. From your standpoint, what is Rhapsody?</p>
<p>Rhapsody is, at a high level, basically the future operating system for<br />
Apple. It's the next generation in the evolution of operating systems at<br />
Apple, and it's the piece of technology that's going to take Apple into<br />
the 21st century with computing.</p>
<p>More specifically, Rhapsody is a modern operating system. It has all the<br />
features that you expect of a modern operating system, like symmetric<br />
multi-processing, multi-tasking, memory protection, all those types of<br />
things, and it does all those things in not only a modern way, but a very<br />
good way compared to the way other systems on the market do today. So it's<br />
definitely best-of-breed in all those categories.</p>
<p>But it's much more than that. It's a set of APIs that exist above the core<br />
operating system that make it very easy for developers to write new<br />
applications. It's a compatibility system -- which we call the Blue Box --<br />
which allows customers to run old Macintosh applications compatibly on<br />
PowerPC platforms. And it's an advanced look and feel that people expect<br />
when they use a Macintosh.</p>
<p>There's been some talk about combining the Mac OS look and feel with<br />
NeXT's look and feel. In your mind, what currently exists in the NeXT look<br />
and feel that you'd like to see carried over into Rhapsody? When somebody<br />
boots up this machine, what should it feel like? Should it feel like a<br />
Macintosh or should it feel like a NeXT machine?</p>
<p>The issue here stems from the fact that both the Macintosh and Nextstep<br />
have very good user experiences.</p>
<p>But they're a little different, too.</p>
<p>They are a little bit different, but conceptually they're very similar and<br />
they're both very good. Our goal is that when we ship the final product,<br />
people feel as though they're getting the Macintosh experience -- it's<br />
really to use, things work the way they expect them to, and they have no<br />
complaints about the user interface.</p>
<p>To get there, what we need to do is we need to acknowledge that both the<br />
Macintosh of today and Nextstep of today have major strengths. I think<br />
every one of your readers understands the strengths of the Macintosh user<br />
interface. They probably don't understand NextStep's as well, but to give<br />
you a flavor for the power, the Nextstep user interface has been more<br />
designed to match a multitasking environment. [In that scheme] it works<br />
work better than, say, a Macintosh.</p>
<p>So our goal here is to take the best paradigms from both and put them<br />
together in a way that makes sense -- not just arbitrarily mix them. We'll<br />
put them together in a way that makes sense, and have the best of both<br />
worlds.</p>
<p>Let's take a specific example. The most obvious aspect of the NeXT<br />
interface that's different than the Mac is the Dock. Do you see the Dock<br />
being something that you'd want to have in the Rhapsody interface?</p>
<p>I think that's a good example. We haven't completely decided if the Dock<br />
will or will not be there, but that's a great example where both Apple and<br />
NeXT have looked at the various products and agreed: gee, the Dock is one<br />
of the things that doesn't exist on the Macintosh today, but that we<br />
should probably really consider making sure is part of the final product.<br />
That's the kind of thing we're doing.</p>
<p>Could you take a minute and talk about the Rhapsody schedule? There's been<br />
a public schedule, and it's been pretty specific. As the guy who's<br />
ultimately going to be expected to deliver this, what is your confidence<br />
is in that schedule? What should users' expectations should be for what<br />
they'll have, what they'll be able to do with it, and when?</p>
<p>We have three major milestones in our planned rollout. The first one,<br />
which will occur around the middle of the year, will be our Developer<br />
Release. The goal of this release is to seed developers with the APIs, so<br />
they can start creating applications that will run when the final product<br />
ships.</p>
<p>So that's the goal of that. It's not in general release to lots of<br />
different customers. It's for developers and for really, really early<br />
adopters who want to get a look at the technology and just understand it.</p>
<p>So, for example, the new interface won't be there at that point?</p>
<p>Certainly not in its final form. There may be a few simple things that<br />
we've already adjusted for, but there's clearly no goal to make that be<br />
the user interface that's going to be final.</p>
<p>Next is the Premier Release. The Premier Release will get out by early<br />
next year, which means in the January/February time frame. We would like<br />
to get it out by the end of 1997 if we can, but we hesitate to commit to<br />
that, because it's still a little bit far out. The goal of the Premier<br />
Release is to be a fairly solid release, so that early adopters can start<br />
to use it, evaluate it. And it will have the first public version of<br />
support for Blue Box (the part of the upcoming operating system that will<br />
run System 7.x applications).</p>
<p>So in terms of what, if you were going to make a recommendation to a<br />
friend or family member, what would you tell they should be able to do<br />
with the Premier Release or not do? In other words, what will it be good<br />
for? Is it basically just for evaluation, or do you think people will be<br />
able to do productive work with it?</p>
<p>I think people will certainly be able to do productive work unless they<br />
depend on a Mac OS application that won't be supported by the Blue Box in<br />
that timeframe. And it's hard to predict exactly which ones will or won't,<br />
but that would be probably the big thing that would come to mind, that<br />
they wouldn't be able to do at that point in time.</p>
<p>But other than that, everything should be clearly functional. There may be<br />
some pieces of the UI that are still subject to revision, but we'll have<br />
at least some of the changes, maybe most of the changes, done by that<br />
timeframe.</p>
<p>Along those lines, we will complete the Rhapsody rollout in the middle of<br />
next year. This will be the Unified Release, which is the complete Yellow<br />
Box (the new Rhapsody API), the complete Blue Box -- everything fully<br />
functional, fully supported. At that point, anyone ought to be able to use<br />
Rhapsody without any restrictions.</p>
<p>What is Rhapsody going to offer developers to induce them to port their<br />
applications to Yellow Box and not just rely on Blue Box?</p>
<p>A number of things. First of all, from a technical perspective, the Yellow<br />
Box frameworks are very powerful, making it extremely easy to build very<br />
nice applications very quickly. For example, if you're a small development<br />
shop and you want to do something to change the world, you're going to be<br />
able to bring your new application to market for far less cost and much<br />
quicker with Rhapsody technologies. You can focus on what your idea is and<br />
your added value instead of how to make menus work.</p>
<p>Now, combined with that needs to be the business case, if you will. So the<br />
technology will be very compelling. What's the business case going to be?<br />
Well, first of all, we will absolutely be leveraging Apple's volumes,<br />
which is in the millions, and in a lot of markets, for example, the<br />
publishing market, the Macintosh owns that. If you have an idea in the<br />
publishing market, Macintosh is without question your best bet.</p>
<p>In addition, we'll be making the APIs and the tools available<br />
cross-platform. So as you're developing for Rhapsody, you're not limited<br />
just to Apple's customer base. You can now also go after NT-based systems<br />
or even sell the software for PCs running Rhapsody.</p>
<p>So you're saying you'll be able to develop a Rhapsody application using<br />
the tools that will be available, and it will be a simple matter to run<br />
that same application on either NT or Macintosh?</p>
<p>That's absolutely correct.</p>
<p>You touched on publishing for a minute. It has, obviously it's a big<br />
stronghold for the Macintosh. It's also a very entrenched marketplace. You<br />
can still go out in publishing houses and find linotypes in use. What are<br />
you going to do to make Rhapsody attractive to this very entrenched<br />
marketplace, so that they will make the conversion sooner rather than<br />
later?</p>
<p>One of the things that might be most interesting to the customers you<br />
describe is the Blue Box support. And so what will happen is all the<br />
applications they're using today on their Macs will continue to work. But<br />
it's more than that, because since they're running in the context of the<br />
Blue Box inside of Rhapsody, they gain all the benefits of Rhapsody<br />
itself, so they get the advantages of the powerful core OS underneath,<br />
which is going to actually, in many instances, make their applications run<br />
faster. They'll gain more protection.</p>
<p>Certainly if you have a native Rhapsody application that uses the Yellow<br />
Box, and you have a problem with that application, it's not going to crash<br />
the Blue Box. If you have a Blue Box application that crashes, it's not<br />
going to crash the Yellow application.</p>
<p>So it's a very nice transition path for these customers who are slow to<br />
move, by simply focusing on running applications first in the Blue Box,<br />
interacting with new applications in the Yellow Box, and doing the<br />
transition between the two.</p>
<p>What's your expectation of the performance of the Blue Box?</p>
<p>Our indications at this point are that applications running inside the<br />
Blue Box should run at least as fast as they do today, if not faster. And<br />
that has been the experience with people who have used MAE (the Macintosh<br />
Application Environment for UNIX) in the past, and we think that will<br />
carry forward with the Blue Box.</p>
<p>The Blue Box is not MAE technology, right?</p>
<p>That's right. Blue Box is not MAE. Blue Box is an environment, but it's<br />
not an emulation environment. It is an environment in which System 7 runs.</p>
<p>It's a virtual machine.</p>
<p>It's a virtual machine, yes.</p>
<p>So it's actually very similar to the way Windows 95 runs Windows 3.1 apps.</p>
<p>Yeah. I wouldn't say that they're exactly the same, but in spirit they're<br />
very similar.</p>
<div class="links"><ul class="links inline"><li class="comment_forbidden first last"><span><a href="/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F78378%23comment-form">Login</a> or <a href="/user/register?destination=comment%2Freply%2F78378%23comment-form">register</a> to post comments</span></li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="left_inner_box_bottom"> </div>
</div>
<!--[if !IE]> End left box inner page <![endif]--></div>
<!--[if !IE]>End left content<![endif]--> <!--[if !IE]>Start right content<![endif]-->
<span class="field-content"><a href="http://forums.applecentral.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/537782/Analyst_sees_iPad_killers_less#Post537782" target="_blank"> Analyst sees iPad killers le...</a></span>
</div>
</div>
<div class="views-row views-row-5 views-row-odd">
<div class="views-field-title">
<span class="field-content"><a href="http://forums.applecentral.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/537649/Small_business_accounting_soft#Post537649" target="_blank"> Small business accounting so...</a></span>
<span class="field-content">Introducing the App Hall of Fame!</span>
</div>
<div class="views-field-body">
<div class="field-content"><div class="body-row" id="body-row-213485"><div style="background:#F5F5F5;">App discoverability continues to be a real issue. With the fast churn of apps in the App Store, an app has only a few weeks of promotional life in it before it‚Äôs largely forgotten. There are a few things developers can do to fix that, but those... | Read more »</div></div></div>
<span class="field-content">Gobliiins Are Coming</span>
</div>
<div class="views-field-body">
<div class="field-content"><div class="body-row" id="body-row-213486"><div style="background:#F5F5F5;">In the midst of the huge Q4 launch schedule, the cult classic, Gobliiins, as well as the rest of the trilogy, are being ported to the iPhone in all of their original glory. The Goblins trilogy was a quirky Atari/Amiga game series from the early 90‚Äôs... | Read more »</div></div></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="views-row views-row-3 views-row-odd">
<div class="views-field-title">
<span class="field-content">myPhoneDesktop – Chrome to iPhone Extens...</span>
</div>
<div class="views-field-body">
<div class="field-content"><div class="body-row" id="body-row-213469"><div style="background:#F5F5F5;">Anyone who has used myPhoneDesktop knows that it is a fantastic tool for streamlining your onscreen workflow. Instead of having to type line after line into your phone directly, you can use myPhoneDesktop to type from your computer directly into... | Read more »</div></div></div>
<span class="field-content">AutoVerbal Talking Soundboard Pro helps...</span>
</div>
<div class="views-field-body">
<div class="field-content"><div class="body-row" id="body-row-213471"><div style="background:#F5F5F5;">Being able to speak and communicate with others is something that many of us take for granted. It‚Äôs not so easy for many folks though, in particular for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, as well as those who have suffered various brain... | Read more »</div></div></div>
<span class="field-content">Get Your Roast Right With ‘Time To Roast...</span>
</div>
<div class="views-field-body">
<div class="field-content"><div class="body-row" id="body-row-213473"><div style="background:#F5F5F5;">Roasting meat, in the cooking world, is about as simple as it gets. The greatest roast recipe I‚Äôve ever found is from Michael Ruhlman‚Äôs website, with the recipe titled, ‚ÄúThe World‚Äôs Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe.‚Äù | Read more »</div></div></div>
MacTech is a registered trademark of Xplain Corporation. Xplain, "The journal of Apple technology", Apple Expo, Explain It, MacDev, MacDev-1, THINK Reference, NetProfessional, Apple Expo, MacTech Central, MacTech Domains, MacNews, MacForge, and the MacTutorMan are trademarks or service marks of Xplain Corporation. Sprocket is a registered trademark of eSprocket Corporation. Other trademarks and copyrights appearing in this printing or software remain the property of their respective holders. Not responsible for typographical errors.
</div>
</div>
<div class="footer_bottom"></div>
</div>
<div id="bootom_foo_ter">All contents are Copyright 1984-2010 by Xplain Corporation. All rights reserved. Theme designed by <a href="http://www.icreon.com">Icreon</a>.</div>
<div id="newuser-popup" style="font-size:14px">Greetings, and welcome to the new MacTech web site! Our home page is designed to be your <cite>Industry Dashboard</cite> -- so you can have a snapshot of all that's relevant in the industry in one easy location. Many readers tell us that because the information is updated so frequently, they are now checking the site multiple times a day.
Here's a quick run down of the features on the new web site, which can be subtle.
<UL><LI>We're running regular raffles. If you want free stuff make sure to register. <a href="/register">It's easy and only takes a minute!</a>
<LI>Registering for the site allows you greater functionality.
<LI>The first few blocks are original content from MacTech (for geeks) and our sister web site, MacNews (for general users)
<LI>Below that are MacTech's scanners, which scan the web and organizes it into News, Rumors, and Documentation. Updated every 15 minutes.
<LI>Our Whitepapers, Screencasts, and Videos section give you insight into great products
<LI>The Community Search narrows your search to the most relevant of Apple related sites for better results
<LI>The forums give you a place to ask questions, and share your knowledge.
<LI>Our partners at MacUpdate, MacPrices.net and the Jobs Boards keep you up to date
<LI>Want to see all the news in one big list? Check out our new <a href="/firehose">Information Firehose</a>
<LI>And, don't forget the Apple Central area, and ads throughout the site. Advertisers are what make the site possible</UL>
We truly hope you <a href="/register">register</a> so that we can keep you up to date about new features as they are implemented. And, please use the BETA button in the top right to provide us any feedback, suggestions or bugs. We love to hear from you. </div>
<!--[if !IE]>End pop_up<![endif]-->
<!-- Google Analytics now handled by Google Analytics Module in drupal -->
<!--VISISTAT SNIPPET//-->
<script type="text/javascript">
var DID=13280;
var pcheck=(window.location.protocol == "https:") ? "https://sniff.visistat.com/live.js":"http://stats.visistat.com/live.js";
