From: George Graves <gmgr...@aimnet.com>
Subject: Copland is DEAD! Apple takes a new tack.
Date: 1996/08/09
Message-ID: <320B733B.56CE@aimnet.com>#1/1
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It's official. Amelio announced at the MacWorld convention in Boston on 
Wednesday (8/07/96) that Copland/Maxwell will not be released. Now, 
before you start wringing your hands in angst (or jumping for joy if you are
a PCer), let me say that this is actually a blessing. Instead of putting out
a new 'numbered' system every few years, Apple has decided to do quarterly
system updates to bring ".....new and wonderful things to delight the Mac user, 
as they are ready." In Q1 of 1997, Apple will release Harmony, an OS update 
meant to give people many of the features of System 8 (and meant to be the 
closest thing a 68K user will get to "Copland/Maxwell" for a while). This has 
all been trashed. Harmony will still ship as scheduled, BUT according to Jim 
Gable, Apple's Vice President of Marketing for the AppleSoft Division, along 
with Harmony will be the System-8 kernel, a full native finder complete with
memory protection and multithreaded multitasking. This means that the major
parts of what was called System-8, will now ship 6 to 9 months early instead
of waiting till third quarter '97 or early '98! Other parts of the new system
software will ship as they are ready. This way we get to catch-up and surpass
Win95 within the next 7 months, and address the Mac's major 'perceived'
shortcoming, lack of multithreaded multitasking. The new all native finder
will, I'm told by Apple insiders, incorporate OpenDoc at the finder level. What
I have yet to find out is whether multitasking and memory protection will
work with current 32-bit apps. My Apple contact says that they think it will,
but that they weren't 100% sure.
So rejoice! The major part of what used to be called System-8 will be out
before next spring.

George Graves

From: k.h...@apple.com (Kelly Hagen)
Subject: Re: Copland is DEAD! Apple takes a new tack.
Date: 1996/08/14
Message-ID: <k.hagen-1408961714290001@17.127.10.91>#1/1
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In article <320B73...@aimnet.com>, George Graves <gmgr...@aimnet.com>
wrote:

> ... according to Jim 
> Gable, Apple's Vice President of Marketing for the AppleSoft Division, along 
> with Harmony will be the System-8 kernel, a full native finder complete with
> memory protection and multithreaded multitasking. 


I know this will be disappointing, but Jim Gable did not say this.  Apple
did announce last week that it is changing how it releases system
software.  The company now intends to ship software releases in
incremental segments rather than large monolithic releases because this
will allow Apple to release its latest technology out to developers and
customers as quickly as possible. The next system software release will be
issued in January, followed by another in July.  

The January release will include some new functionality and integrate the
latest versions of OpenDoc, Open Transport, QuickTime and Cyberdog. 
However, we have no details as yet to disclose about the July release.

We understand that the Mac OS 8 microkernel, multitasking and protected
memory are critically important and we realize that many loyal Mac OS
customers are anxiously awaiting these capabilities.  We are currently
working hard, both internally and with our developers, to complete these
technologies and estimate when they will be available.  Keep pointing to
the Mac OS and Mac OS 8 pages on the Web (http://www.macos.apple.com) for
updated information.

Kelly Hagen
System Software Product Marketing
Apple Computer Inc.
k.h...@apple.com