News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Mail Starting 9/11/97

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From: dan@5280pub.com (Daniel Brogan);
Sent at 9/13/97; 10:02:30 AM;
Re:Commercialize System 7

You may already know this, but the song you refer to is actually written by John Hiatt, who is indeed a helluva rhymer.

If you're not familiar with his work, I'd definitely suggest that you check out either "Bring the Family" or "Slow Turning." Lots of cooool stuff about families, getting over old pain, etc. Based on the other music you write about, I think you'd like it.

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From: tommela@earthlink.net (David Tommela);
Sent at 9/12/97; 9:19:40 AM;
Re:A Request for Respect

You have definitely struck a nerve with me on this issue! Being in the ISP business we have this problem big time. Some people love to hate their ISP judging by the vitriolic news postings I've seen. They also refuse to accept any factual information provided in response to real or imagined problems. The invective spewing from these individuals is unbelievably hateful. I'm afraid that the mindless and vicious attacking of anything that displeases a person is becoming America's blood sport.

With your permission, I'd like to use your eloquent piece as part of our attempts to restore responsible debate among people of differing views.

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From: colligan@macromedia.com (Bud Colligan);
Sent at 9/11/97; 12:02:01 PM;
Re:Competing with Bill

Could you give the Macromedia User Conference (Oct 8 - 10 at Moscone Center in SF) a plug--theme this year is "Ignite the Web" with cool graphics, sound, animation, video--you know, take it to the next level...like moving from DOS to the Mac with Flash! All info is at http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/ucon97/ or call 1-800-287-7141.

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From: warrior@bearholm.com (The Great Bear Avitar);
Sent at 9/11/97; 9:36:35 AM;
The future of the powerPC

It's hard to predict what Apple will do, but I feel much safer predicting what will happen with the powerPC processor. In this morning's Mercury News there was an article about Motorola and IBM dropping out of the MacIntosh clone market (no surprise there). Motorola also announced that they would stop trying to match the performance of Intel's processors. This means that the powerPC will be largely limited to the embedded systems market in the near future. This market does not have the thirst for processor performance that the system market has. It seems likely that IBM will continue with the powerPC architecture. They will offer processors for embedded systems and produce high performance powerPC hardware for their own systems. Its not at all clear that IBM will sell this hardware in the component market.

Its difficult to imagine that Jobs and Apple do not understand the trend that they set in motion (or hastened). To me this means that the writing is on the wall: Apple must produce a 486 architecture platform. Only the 486 architecture will provide the performance that they need to be competitive.

I read Ric Ford's notes on his interview with Jobs. My guess is that the famous reality distortion field worked over the phone lines. Unless I am totally wrong about the future of the powerPC, there will be no MacOS platforms withtin two years. MacOS systems running on powerPC processors will not be competitive, since they will be a factor of two slower than the 486 architectures at that time.

Then there are the software issues. I am not familiar with the features of the new MacOS 8. Both Windows 95 and Windows NT provide true virtual systems with memory protection (although this is corrupted in Windows 95 to some extent to provide compatibility). There is far less chance of an application crash on these systems causing a system crash requiring a reboot. These systems also provide full multi-tasking and thread support. Does MacOS 8 provide these features? Finally, even if MacOS provided all these features, can it be ported to an Intel platform?

This all seems to point to Rapsody as the future operating system for Apple and Rapsody will probably run on an Intel platform. The question is, can Apple be competitive with an Intel platform, where price cutting is so fierce and profit is so thin? My guess is that they cannot. Predicting the future is always dangerous, but I think that Mr. Jobs is turning Apple into NeXT. The press has a short memory, but its worth remembering that Next burned through a quarter of a billion dollars of other people's money (mainly Sony and Fujitsu, if I recall correctly).

I've never been a Mac zelot, but I'm not wild about the convergence of hardware and software architecture. I've used UNIX since the days of System III and I now believe that we are seeing the twilight of UNIX as well. As Ric wrote, we all have bills to pay and no one can fight the tide. I figure my future is with Windows NT and the 486 architecture.