Sunday, February 2, 1997

How will Apple transform the Macintosh? Tour of Next computer gives fans an idea

By STEPHEN LYNCH / The Orange County Register

For Bryan Vila, Apple Computer was, to a large extent, charismatic co-founder Steve Jobs.

"I have a lot of loyalty to the concepts he promotes," said Vila, an assistant professor of social ecology at the University of California, Irvine. "That people shouldn't have to adapt to computers, that computers should adapt to people."

So after Jobs was kicked out of Apple in 1985 over clashes with management, Vila soured on the firm. When Jobs started Next Computer in 1986, Vila became one of only 50,000 customers who lined up for one of the sleek black terminals. Vila's NextCube still sits on his desk, humming along virtually nonstop for seven years.

It has lasted just long enough, Vila muses, for Jobs to return to his origins, and for two computers he loves to merge ideas. In December, Apple bought Next for $400 million, and at the Macworld Expo, officials announced the next generation of Apple's operating system would combine the two technologies.

"I might go back to the Macintosh," Vila said, fiddling with his NextCube. "This just might work."

If he does, Vila may be more familiar with the new Macintosh than many Apple computer fans. The new Macintosh operating system, code-named Rhapsody, will look much like a Mac on the surface, but will work much like Next.

Though Apple hasn't detailed exactly how Rhapsody will look, a tour of Vila's NextCube gives Mac fans a few ideas of where the company's headed:

The NextStep operating system was built to access the memory and processor of a computer as efficiently as possible. NextStep is a variety of UNIX, an operating system also renowned for its stability. It doesn't crash as often as other systems.

As a result, NextStep is excellent at "multitasking," or running many programs at once, quickly.

When you turn on a NextCube, or a PC running the NextStep software, it asks you to log on. The operating system can customize itself to an unlimited number of people. Each person gets a sign-on name and password, and the computer changes the way it looks and what information can be accessed, depending on who's logged on.

The main screen of NextStep has a series of small square icons running down the right side. This is the "Dock," a place where users can keep links to programs or documents they often use. Just double-click on an icon to get started.

Users navigate the hard drive via menus that collapse and expand, much like the "start" menu on Windows 95 or the Apple menu on a Macintosh. All these menus, however, can be separated and dragged anywhere on screen, unlike the other systems. Therefore you can keep a small pop-up menu of often-used documents floating wherever you wish.

When programs are open, they can be "minimized" into square icons on the bottom of the screen, as on Windows 95 today.

Next had a built-in electronic-mail program in 1990, three years before most people had even heard of the Internet. And the program is still one of easiest e-mail composers to use. Documents, pictures and sounds can be dragged with the mouse into e-mail or other files instantly.

Next was also the first to experiment with:

-- An optical disk drive to hold more information than a floppy disk.

-- A processor equivalent to the Intel 486 chip one year before 486 PCs appeared.

-- A standard for playing video on a computer screen.

But Next's most enduring legacy may be object-oriented programming, Jobs' pet project. Some Next programs are made up of various blocks, called objects, which are combined to form an application. Programs can replace or manipulate any one of these objects, changing the application to fit their needs.

This object-oriented structure will be the core of Rhapsody. During the development of Copland, Apple's original code name for its System 8 operating system, programmers described an environment in which users would open up a blank document, then pull in the tools they needed to do what they wanted. That research will now be integrated into the Rhapsody project.

For example, if you wanted to write a letter, you could drag in a text tool from a word processor. If you wanted to draw a picture on the letter, you could pull in the pencil tool from a graphics program. This configuration could be saved as a custom writing/drawing application, featuring your favorite tools.

Since Next has concentrated on Internet projects in the past few years, it's a sure bet that objects for Rhapsody will be developed for and distributed on the Internet. You could write a sales report, for instance, that includes an object that automatically checks the World Wide Web for the latest inventory figures. Each time you open that report, on any computer, the object will scan the Internet.

What else will Apple incorporate from Next? Chairman Gil Amelio said during a Macworld speech that Rhapsody will look more like the Macintosh interface than Next, but probably have the minimizing and collapsing menu features of NextStep.

Don't be surprised to see new Macs with two-button mouses, like Windows 95, and displays customized to each user. The Copland project was already working on a system that made the computer cartoonish and simple for kids, efficient and powerful for adults.

A Web browser and e-mail reader will be built into the operating system, a la Next, and multitasking will be key.

Analysts say Apple should also try to get the price down, considering neither Next nor Apple has effectively fought PC clones for cost-conscious customers. Even in 1990, for instance, Vila's machine cost $7,500.

But Apple doesn't want Mac fans to wait around for Rhapsody. The new system is, after all, at least a year away.

In the interim, Apple is improving its System 7 operating system with six-month upgrades. The latest, Harmony, just came out, and includes the latest version of Apple's CyberDog Web browser.

This summer brings Tempo, then Allegro and Sonata, all advancing various Internet and object upgrades developed within Apple.

Then, when Rhapsody appears, the operating system will support both System 7 software and programs developed for the new, Next-ish system. Rhapsody may even run on PC machines with Intel processors.

During Macworld, Amelio said customers would probably run programs in System 7 for at least 10 years before everything migrates to Rhapsody.

And yet some customers are nervous, wondering if companies will develop software for Rhapsody, and whether Apple can remain competitive with the Microsoft/Intel PCs.

Even Vila, the Apple and Next diehard, is nervous. "If it was the old Apple, 1984, 1986, there wouldn't be any question," he said, then smiled. With Jobs back and a new computer in the works, it may just be 1984 all over again.