Feature:Apple and Rhapsody x86

A reader wrote in with an idea that I just have to share with everyone. Everyone now knows plenty about Rhapsody- the uber cool unixish OS apple has been developing to replace MacOS. Well, now MacOS X is the future of Apple *cough* and Rhapsody is second fiddle. Well, this reader (who requested anonymity) wrote in with an idea that I just can resist posting... hit the link below to hear it.

Hey there...just wanted to let you know that DR2 of Rhapsody for Intel just got seeded. I've been playing around with it and it brought tears to my eyes, seeing a relatively Mac interface running on a crappy Packard Bell. Anyway...very cool OS, but I'm having trouble getting tcl to compile..ditto on the PPC version. Overall, a great OS. Having played with it sufficiently, I think Apple has a definite winner here.

Now of course, Apple doesn't want to get involved with maintaining an Intel OS. THat's the beauty of the Yellow Box/Mac OS X strategy...Apple can write the underlying OS for the computers it sells, and let MS deal with the driver and hardware crap on the intel side....YB's APIs simply ride atop of whatever crap MS puts out!

But..it still seems a shame that Rhapsody for Intel must necessarily die. Although the Yellow Box API's will continue to exist, the elegance of an OS level solution won't. Perhaps Apple would listen to a petition drive to release the Intel Version to the public? (http://www.rhaptel.org, perhaps?) This would be unbeileveably cool....Apple doesn't have to woorry about supporting a whole 'nother OS or deal with PC hardware crap...Intel users get an amazing UNIX os that runs neato yellowbox apps, no one on intel would have to buy a MS OS to run Yellow Box apps, Apple gets an extended market for its Yellow Box API and more exposure for its top-notch user interface....and Apple can simply ensure that the Carbon technologies aren't ported over (at least, as long as it's still selling PPC products)

eveyone wins!

(Well, I can dream, can't I)

Sincerely,
an anonymous Apple Developer-type person