Apple pre-empts Rhapsody blues

The company has reassured users that its alternative OS will not differ massively from Macintosh

Apple?s new operating system ? codenamed Rhapsody ? will include specific elements from both Next and Apple, said Ellen Hancock, the firm?s chief technology officer, at Mac World last week. Nextstep will bring memory protection capabilities and pre-emptive multitasking to speed performance. Apple will offer Mac features such as Quick Time Media Layer, Opendoc and TCP/IP connections to the Internet. The good news for delegates at Mac World was that Rhapsody will look familiar to them, despite being based on Nextstep. ?It will look like a Macintosh,? Hancock reassured the Mac faithful. ?The user experience will be much more like the Mac OS than the Next OS.? But at some point in the future, developers will have to write to a Next application programming interface. Apple intends to replace its Macintosh Toolbox programming interface with a version of Next?s Openstep interface, renamed Yellow Box. While Yellow Box is being created, developers will be advised to prepare for Rhapsody by using Nextstep for Intel-based machines, to produce applications that can be recompiled for Power PC hardware. Rhapsody will run on all Power PC platforms, so customers will be able to upgrade with the minimum of fuss, claims Apple. The full release of the OS will include an element known as a Blue Box, which will run System 7 software. This, said Hancock, guarantees that legacy applications will run on the platform ? up to a point. ?More than 85 per cent? of existing Mac programs will not need to be modified for Rhapsody. A developers? release of Rhapsody will ship in mid-1997, followed by a premier release in early 1998. A ?unified release? that runs System 7 software will finally appear in mid 1998.