Good morning, Dave.
I know you try to put the best spin on things. You have an infectious,
positive zeitgeist that's just wonderful to read...
But let's face it, Dave. This deal means trouble.
Here's why:
You speak a great deal about the respect that Apple needs to have for
developers. I agree with you 100%. Platforms follow the apps, not the
other way around, which is why I bet you can't name more than three apps
written natively for, say, OS/2.
But.
Apple also needs to respect its own developers.
Now, put yourself in a Copeland developer's shoes for a minute.
You got hired out of Stanford by Sculley to work on Pink. This was hot,
this was new, this was cooool.
Pink chugged along a few years, and then was subsumed into Taligent.
Remember all the promises back then, Dave? Apple and IBM sittin' in a tree?
MacOS and OS/2 to somehow blend together, and use a brand new chip? Detente
in our time, and the Great Satan Microsoft to be vanquished?
A few years go by, and PowerPC systems are introduced.
And your Taligent code isn't on them.
Oops.
And slowly Apple lets it leak out that they've more-or-less pulled out of
Taligent, and they're now re-using the original Pink code to be the core of
a new OS, Copeland. No contractual compromises with IBM, it'll be great.
Then, this year, it leaks that Copeland -- your project -- is hopelessly
mired. It'll never get released. So Gil is shopping for a new OS.
And it comes out that he's talking to Jean-Louis, over at Be... and that's
OK, because you're enough of a realist to recognize that Copeland, at this
stage, is based on some positively ancient code, by today's standards...
It's not the best of news, but it's livable... And BeOS is new, is fun, is
coool...
Whereupon, the rabbit pops out of the hat, and...
...and it turns out that Gil wants to replace your code... with an
eight-year-old UNIX shell. UNIX with a human face, to use a certain phrase
from the Sixties.
Your entire professional career is now up in smoke -- in favor of an OS
older than you are, albeit with a fancy UI that looks...
Well, that looks eight-years-old, when you get right down to it.
Now tell me, does this even *begin* to sound like respect to you?
Or, to phrase it with humor:
Q: What do you get when you cross Apple and NeXT?
A: Xanadu.
I'll go out on a limb here, Dave.
I don't think Apple will ever release another OS. System 7 is it. They may
change the name, they may add a few cosmetic features...
But it's Xanadu all over again.
The goal will always be "just six more months" away -- as it has been for
about six years now.
This is not a "Chinese household".
It's an abusive, co-dependent household.
And it tears me up seeing people I respect get abused this way.
Are flowers at night enough when you're just going to get a black eye in the
morning?
-- Hal
P.S.: If folks aren't familiar with Ted Nelson's Xanadu, they should read
Wired's article at:
REVISIONS, WITH APOLOGIES