Apple Profits Aim Strays Off Target

Hopes of quick recovery fade as manufacturer admits losses may continue into fourth quarter

Apple has admitted that it may not return to profitability in its fourth quarter as previously anticipated.

The ailing Mac manufacturer had expected to make a loss for its third quarter ending on 30 June, but had been striving to get into the black by Q4.

But in a report filed at the US Securities & Exchange Commission, Apple admitted it could turn in a loss for Q4 as well.

A representative said Q4 profits had been presented as a target, rather than a promise, and that they were still Apple?s stated aim.

Meanwhile, Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio is committed to make the next generation of the company?s operating system, codenamed Rhapsody, work on Intel-based PCs in an attempt to stop war-weary Mac developers from defecting.

In his keynote speech at Apple?s Worldwide Developers? Conference last week, Amelio said Apple would release programming tools to enable developers to write applications for the Mac that could run on Windows PCs after a simple recompile.

He vowed to shorten product development cycles to compete more effectively in the Wintel world and also committed Apple to a dual operating system strategy. This would enable users to migrate to Rhapsody at their own pace. Rhapsody is based on the Nextstep operating system, which Apple acquired along with Next Software in December 1996.

It consists of the core operating system; Blue Box, which is a Mac-based environment to ensure backwards compatibility; the Yellow Box development environment; and the advanced Macintosh user interface.

Yellow Box will ship with a future version of the Mac OS, codenamed Allegro, due in mid-1998. Allegro will still be based on existing Mac OS technology, and will follow the release of Mac OS version 8 in July.

Apple sees Java as an opportunity and plans to open the Yellow Box application programming interfaces (APIs) to the language.