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Newton Gets Macified (2/11/98)
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Mac OS Rumors has more on the fate of Newton, Apple's scrappy little handheld operating system that sits constantly with the sword of Damocles hanging over its head. According to their sources, that OS is indeed getting skewered and tossed out in favor of "Allegro Lite," a version of the Mac OS that has been run through a miniaturizing ray.
Note, however, that this description of Allegro Lite differs from what other sources, such as MacWEEK, have been calling Allegro Lite: instead of a "thin-client" version of the Mac OS for handhelds, MacWEEK claims that Allegro Lite is Apple's repackaging of Allegro with fewer features, so that it can ship on time this summer. Sounds like somebody somewhere got their wires crossed, though we won't know which rumor is correct until Allegro Lite finally ships, whether it be as a feature-reduced Mac OS 8.2, or the new OS for Apple's next-generation handhelds.
While the Macifying of Newton is being reported from a Rumors site, it does fit in pretty well with the Mac OS-centric world view we've seen from Apple for the past six months; all that talk about the Mac OS being the most important asset at Apple and downplaying both Rhapsody and Newton makes this Allegro Lite scenario seem pretty feasible. We've also seen a precedent for Apple adopting Microsoft's strategies, both with technical support pricing, and with their "dual-OS" strategy, so coming out with Allegro Lite as a sort of "Mac OS CE" isn't all that far-fetched. Personally, we'll be sad if the Newton goes the way of the dodo; it's truly the best and most elegant of the PDA operating systems.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/11/98 episode: February 11, 1998: In a long-forgotten plot thread, a secret stranger waits and watches, preparing to emerge from the shadows to take control of Cupertino. Meanwhile, QuickTime gets its fifteen minutes of fame as the basis for the new MPEG standard, and the Newton is dead-- long live the Newton...
Other scenes from that episode: 441: We're Close, We Promise (2/11/98) Who else out there totally forgot that Apple's still looking for a new CEO? As strange as it sounds, we at AtAT would swear on a stack of Macintosh Bibles that that particular little plot twist had almost completely slipped our minds... 442: QuickTime For All (2/11/98) Good news for Apple, and good news for the rest of us, too: a collection of computer technology companies that reads like a Who's Who of High Tech That Isn't Owned by Microsoft announced today that ISO, the international Organization for Standardization (yes, we know the acronym doesn't work; it's an ISO thing, you wouldn't understand) has accepted their proposal to make the QuickTime file format the basis for the development of a universal multimedia format, to be defined in the MPEG-4 specification...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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