Apple quietly scraps Mac OS X Server for Intel

According to Apple's Dr. Ernest Prabhakar, the company will not be releasing an PC-compatible version of Mac OS X Server, the UNIX-based server operating system developed to compete with Windows NT Server. Thiscomes as somewhat of a surprise, given the fact that Apple was talking upan Intel product since the OS was announced as Rhapsody a year and a halfago. As recently as December, I talked to someone in Apple's pressrelations who assured me that an Intel version was coming.

This decision will severely limit the number of people that have access toApple's most impressive technology, since Mac OS X Server for PowerPC willrun only on a small subset of PowerPC hardware. Whether Apple will continuework on the so-called "Yellow Box" APIs (an updated version of the oldNextStep/OpenStep APIs) for Windows 9x and NT is unclear and, frankly, noteven newsworthy. No one is interested in such a product. What people areinterested in, however, is an advanced UNIX-based operating system with ahybrid Macintosh/OpenStep user interface. In a day and age where Linux issweeping up in the media attention race, maybe Apple should have figuredout that a lame "HAL" Super Bowl ad wasn't exactly the right decision. Neither was dropping the Intel version of Mac OS X Server and not tellinganyone.

Another bozo maneuver from Cupertino: It's only a matter of time before weall stop caring