At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynote address last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs disclosed Apple's latest OS strategy. It sounds like a winner to me. The biggest news was Mac OS X (ten), a modern, totally PowerPC-native marriage of Mac OS and Rhapsody. OS X includes advanced features such as protected memory, advanced virtual memory and preemptive multitasking, which means faster, more stable Macs in the future (Fall, 1999).

In the meantime, we can look forward to Mac OS 8.5 (code named Allegro) this fall. Mac OS 8.5, Apple promises, will offer advanced Internet integration on the Mac with new find and browsing capabilities and even easier Internet set up and will also include new features for power users, such as fast file transfer optimized for 100 MBps Ethernet and a full PowerPC implementation of AppleScript.

Later this year Apple will ship the first customer release of Rhapsody, a new operating system that Apple is providing as a server platform for publishing and Internet solutions. Rhapsody contains technologies key to Mac OS X, including a microkernel-based core OS and an advanced software development environment.

Then, in early 1999, we'll see Mac OS 8.6, about which little is being said at this time. At the same time Mac OS X will become available to developers. Then, finally, Mac OS X will be available to us in fall, 1999.

If you're familiar with Apple's OS strategy in the past, it had maintained that the next-generation OS, known as Rhapsody, would be a separate OS from Mac OS, designed for more demanding users and servers. Unfortunately, programs had to be completely rewritten by their developers to run under Rhapsody.

The new strategy makes that a non-issue. Mac OS X will combine the best features of Rhapsody -- protected memory, advanced virtual memory and preemptive multitasking -- with the best features of Mac OS 8x. But now, unlike the old Rhapsody strategy, Apple expects almost all current Macintosh applications to run unaltered on Mac OS X. Of course, they'll run without the advanced features. But they will run. Or, developers can give their programs a "tune-up," which Apple says will require only a week or two of programming time, and have their tuned-up program take advantage of all of OS X's advanced features.

It sounds like a winner to me and I'm not alone. Jobs was joined on stage by representatives from Microsoft, Macromedia, and Adobe, all of whom embraced the new OS strategy wholeheartedly. "Apple has responded to customer concerns with an OS strategy that preserves the industry's investment in Mac OS while at the same time providing increased stability and performance," said Ben Waldman, general manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. "Microsoft is looking forward to continued collaboration with Apple on products that meet the needs of our mutual customers." The guys from Macromedia and Adobe said pretty much the same thing.

I have to tell you folks, this is the best I've felt about Apple in a long time. After the Amelio ouster, the killing of the clones, and billions of dollars in losses, I was afraid Apple was going down like a sinking BetaMax. But the past two weeks, with the introduction of the iMac, the awesome new PowerBook line, and an OS strategy everyone seems to love (plus lots of other cool stuff -- like faster Java and better QuickTime and low-end portables and stock at a 52-week high -- that I don't have room to tell you about this week), have changed my thinking completely.

Apple, you've made me proud to tell my friends, "get a Mac." Again.

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