Nextstep Proves That Apple Is Not 'Rotten at Core'

Regarding Kevin Davis's March 18 Tech Talk column on Apple: yes, it is tempting for The Crimson, like so many other media outlets, to join in the "let's gang up on Apple" phenomenon. In fact, many have been claiming the imminent demise of Apple for the last 15 years, and it has never happened.

Davis's column shows remarkable shortsightedness. He claims that Apple's hopes are "pinned on a mythical new O.S. that doesn't yet exist." To the contrary, Apple's new O.S. has existed for years and is currently being used by hundreds of thousands of people. It is Nextstep, the remarkably stable and fast O.S. that draws rave reviews. Indeed, Apple has already shown Nextstep running on current Power Macintosh hardware with current software, including shipping versions of Microsoft Word.

Apple's future is not "rotten at the core," as Davis claims. Apple will ship this year both Mac O.S. 8 (code-named Tempo, a complete revitalization of the Macintosh interface, which includes significant performance and stability improvements) and its first release of the Nextstep-derived Rhapsody, which promises to put Microsoft back on the defensive.

Combine Apple's new operating systems with the PowerPC hardware--which by mid-1997 will run at twice the speed of Intel's fastest offering--and it is easy to see that Apple is not dying. Indeed, amid all the furor over Apple's reputed downfall in the past six months, sales of Mac O.S. computers are up 60 percent from their levels a year ago. --Mike J.B. Epstein '00