Platform Crisis: The Lazy Dinosaur 3

Copland Backup Plans

Apple was also selling A/UX, its own Unix distribution integrated with a Mac desktop environment, primarily used to sell Mac hardware to government contracts that required Unix. It a couple years it would also release mkLinux, an open source distribution of Linux for Macs which used a kernel design similar to IBM’s Workplace OS under development for use in Taligent.

Taligent itself was a viable plan; Apple had spun off Pink into the partnership with IBM. With the announcements of industry wide support for PowerPC, it seemed plausible that Taligent would provide a Apple with a futuristic, next generation operating system option as well.

What's Wrong with System 7?

PowerPC itself promised to make the existing Mac System 7 run much faster, giving Apple a comfortable lead in hardware after being stuck in a competitive megahertz race between the Mac's Motorola 68040 and the Intel 486.

With a boost from PowerPC, the Mac’s System 7 would appear years ahead of the ugly, buggy Windows 95, which wasn’t planned to arrive until the end of the next year anyway.

Further, Apple had completed Mac emulation work that promised to expand the Mac System 7 software market by targeting Unix workstation users, who lacked the selection of common commercial desktop applications available for the Mac.

Apple's MAE, the Macintosh Application Environment, used software emulation to allow users of Sun and HP Unix workstations to run classic Macintosh applications; MAS, Macintosh Application Services, could host both classic and PowerPC native Mac applications in an X Window on IBM’s AIX or other PowerOpen Unix variants.

For Mac users, there was no obvious problem looming. Microsoft Windows had been a complete joke until 1990, and even then, the new Windows 3.0 was a clumsy approximation for the the elegant Mac desktop.

Apple appeared to have the luxury of casually dabbling in various technology directions. It was rich, with billions in the bank and billions in revenue.

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Tech: The Rise and Fall of Platforms