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id Support Slipping (3/22/98)
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Evidence of developer confusion about just what's up with Rhapsody is perhaps best illustrated by John Carmack's .plan file, which has been posted at StepWise. Carmack, you may know, is the programming guru over at id Software, the company who brought you Doom and Quake. Carmack has long been a vocal supporter of NeXTStep, the operating system on which Rhapsody is based, and in fact he had personally committed to doing a port of Quake 2 to Rhapsody all by himself. Now, though, that promise looks like it may be abandoned.
Carmack announced yesterday that he has shut down the last of the NeXT systems at id, and they're using Windows systems exclusively now. Says he, "I had high hopes for Rhapsody, but even on a top of the line PPC, it felt painfully sluggish compared to the NT workstations." (Of course, the only version out there is the first developer release, and we'd certainly hope that speed will increase both in the second developer release and the first customer release.) In addition, "Apple doesn't have their 3D act together at all," he says, referring to Apple's lack of support for the industry standard OpenGL 3D programming interface, of which he is a huge advocate.
While he says he "hasn't given up on Rhapsody yet," the confusion surrounding Rhapsody's targeting has put a serious damper on his planned support. One of the most interesting quotes is that Apple was "so incredibly cautious about targeting Rhapsody for consumer apps at the expense of Mac OS that I doubted their resolve." We've been hearing the same thing from a lot of AtAT viewers who also happen to be developers. If Apple is truly counting on Rhapsody as the basis for its operating system future, they had better clear up this confusion once and for all or it'll starve to death on a dearth of applications. Let's hope seven weeks isn't too late.
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SceneLink (559)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/22/98 episode: March 22, 1998: The world gears up for May's Worldwide Developer Conference, which promises a beefier role for Rhapsody, who's been relegated to walk-ons and voiceovers lately. Meanwhile, a highly visible supporter of Rhapsody voices his frustration, and a wacky group in the Phillipines has less luck with the already-hackneyed "hit Bill Gates with a pie" routine...
Other scenes from that episode: 558: Developer Developments (3/22/98) Geez, we blinked for a second and suddenly the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference is almost upon us. And despite our shocked realization that May 11th is a scant seven weeks away (seems like it was six months away only, er, four months ago), for our money it can't arrive soon enough... 560: Here Come the Copycats (3/22/98) We can't say we're particularly surprised, but we still think it's pretty odd that copycat pie attacks are now being launched against software mogul Bill Gates. You recall, of course, the original incident from early last month, in which Bill was hit with several cream cakes by an anarchist group in Brussels as he entered a building to meet with the Prime Minister of Flanders...
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