Granted, Apple under the Second Jobs Dynasty has always viewed the enterprise market rather the way most individuals regard getting smacked upside the head with a wet piece of cheese, but we've still always been a little baffled by the foot-dragging on Oracle's part when it comes to adding Mac compatibility to its database products. After all, Oracle is run by Larry Ellison, who also just happens to be Uncle Steve's best friend; what's taking so long? Maybe the fact that Larry's a member of Apple's board of directors is a factor-- Apple seems to have trouble persuading its directors to get their own companies to support the Mac. Witness Bill Campbell, whose company Intuit stopped making QuickBooks for the Mac, and Mickey Drexler, whose Gap still inexplicably lacks Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian casual wear from its summer line-up. Go figure.

But things on the Oracle front may finally be changing. As faithful viewer Victor Agreda, Jr. was quick to point out, an eWEEK article indicates that Larry's minions are hard at work on "developing client software to connect workstations running Apple Computer Inc.'s new OS to Oracle's database applications." Yes, folks, whether Steve likes it or not, Mac OS X may wind up forcibly dragging our beloved platform into the enterprise market by its throbbing blue buttons. Come the third quarter of this year, Oracle will release a Mac OS X client-- albeit in an "unsupported, early adopter" form.

But if you're one of those people that can't wait to start smuggling Mac OS X into your big-business day jobs, keep in mind that Larry hasn't exactly got Aqua on the brain or anything. While Oracle will have a production version of its software ready for Mac OS X "before the end of the year," it's not quite going to be on par with the version for that other platform. As the main Oracle 9i marketing shill puts it, "the Mac client will provide programmatic connectivity to Oracle databases but will not provide any client tools (executables) such as SQL*Plus. As such, it is not a full client like that on Windows." Yeah, yeah, yeah... still, baby steps, right?

Geez, between the Oracle announcement and Microsoft's recent release of a Mac version of Outlook (not Outlook Express) that reportedly sucks less than its predecessor, it's almost like the Mac might actually stand a chance in big business. Or, at least, it might stand a chance if the Redmond gang had actually bothered to Carbonize Outlook instead of deciding to release it strictly as a Classic application. (Classic-only at this stage of the game? No, there's no hidden agenda there...)