This is, to put it mildly, the most ridiculous single piece of analysis
I've heard about the Apple-Microsoft deal over the past week... Rhapsody
was mentioned nowhere in the deal, and somehow this is supposed to benefit
Microsoft/hurt Apple? I'd say exactly the reverse - since Rhapsody was
mentioned nowhere in the deal, there's nothing to stop Apple from
positioning it as a first-class NT killer when it's released next year.
Think about it... (Oh, and you might want to go back and read my quote at
the bottom of one of Adam's recent posts, too...)
> - It raises the possibility that Apple might assist, or at least
> acquiesce, in Microsoft's campaign to kill Java as a viable cross-
> platform development language [5].
I don't see this as particularly likely either. Apple has already committed
to making the Rhapsody Yellow Box APIs available in Java, which adds to
cross-platform-ness - since there's going to be a Yellow Box for Win32 and
a Yellow Box for Mac OS, all that's missing is a Yellow Box for UNIX
systems... And it seems to me that it wouldn't be that hard to implement
one - heck, OpenStep already exists for SPARC, and how hard could it be to
port to Alpha? :)
In fact, I'd say that Apple and Sun ought to get together and work on a
Yellow Box for Solaris so that it's ready at the same time as the one for
Win32 - and I wouldn't be surprised if they're already talking about it...
Hell, let Sun _include_ it with Solaris (like WABI), it won't make a
difference to Apple's bottom line...
I certainly doubt that Apple will wholeheartedly embrace "Microsoft Java",
in any shape or form.
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Daniel Zimmerman Caltech Infospheres Research Group
M/S 256-80 - Caltech http://babylon.caltech.edu/~dmz/
Pasadena, California 91125 USA dmz@cs.caltech.edu