strike three for developers 12 of august, 1996 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

Once again, just when you think things are back on track at Apple Computer, the folks in Cupertino do something extraordinarily stupid just to let us know that it is still business as usual at our favorite computer company. Despite all of the whining and moaning us Mac users do about the lack of good news reported about Apple, lately virtually every news source has given front page attention to Apple's overnight recovery. Apple has lost in the last year over 700 million dollars, but in their last quarter trimmed the loss to the 30 million range. A strong statement to the health of the computer giant. But, like we have come to expect from Apple, just when the good news gets rolling, they go and shoot themselves in the foot, again.

At the latest MacWorld Expo the CEO of Apple Computer (Amelio) talked about his strategy for the future of the company. One such strategy dealt with how Apple Computer will be releasing future upgrades of their ailing operating system (currently 7.5 release 2). It is not a secret that Mac OS 8 (Copland) is long overdue, and that developers have been waiting in the wings on empty promises of a developer release for what seems like (and has been) years. Well, guess what? As a complete surprise to everyone, including the developers, Amelio essentially said that we will not ever see such a release. Gee, thanks for the warning. Thanks for leading us to believe that we might be developing on a state of the art operating system soon. Thanks for making us wait years to release a new version of our products to make it OS 8 compliant.

Apparently the new plan for Apple Computer is to release operating system upgrades twice a year on a scheduled basis. In other words: We are going to continue to release patches instead of a real operating system. Never mind the fact that Apple has not sufficiently shown they can release ONE operating system patch on a timely basis, let alone two a year. Never mind the fact that upgrading an operating system twice a year is not a possibility for those in the business world (by the way, Amelio, thanks for giving Windows 95 another edge with IS managers). Never mind the fact that home computer users will not appreciate having to upgrade the operating system and countless programs twice a year. Never mind.

Apple obviously listened to no one but their bottom line when making this decision. Every poll asking Mac users what features they want in a new Mac OS lists as the top three items: greater system stability, fault protection, and true pre-emptive multitasking. Now, guess which of these three items you will be seeing in Mac operating system patches released twice a year? If you guessed none, you are absolutely correct!

Needless to say, every developer and Mac IS manager I have talked to are fuming over this one. Some developers have been talking a lot about the "W" word since this latest fiasco. And who could blame them? Apple Computer was already on shaky ground with developers, but this latest idea is about an 8.7 on the screw up scale. Given a choice of never seeing OS 8 or Apple receiving a 500 million dollar loss, the latter of the two would have been far more palatable.