according to Apple. The company now has a dual-OS strategy. Updates to Mac OS 7.x will ship about every six months while Apple works on the next-generation OS (code-named Rhapsody).
Apple's Mac OS 7.6 update includes elements such as integration of OpenDoc 1.1 and CyberDog 1.2, Apple's suite of OpenDoc-based Internet components. However, the company's OS has fallen behind with its lack of suppor
t for preemptive multitasking, multithreading, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and other features considered de rigueur in the late 1990s. NextStep does support multithreading and preemptive multitasking, but not SMP. However, Next proponents point out that the Mach kernel upon which NextStep is based is SMP-capable -- it just hasn't been enabled in the current version of NextStep. Apple says it will include support for SMP in the next-generation OS, but it hadn't decided which kernel to use. These and other questions will be answered later this year.
At press time, Apple said Rhapsody will be released in early 1998 and should provide strong backward compatibility with current Mac OS software. Apple says it will ship a release for developers this year. Apple is hoping Next technology and Steve Jobs, who returns to the company he cofounded, will restore the luster to the Mac OS. Meanwhile, wannabe Apple acquisition target Be says it is working on technology to support Mac applications running on the BeOS
and PowerPC hardware.
Future Watch
