Pick Your Desktop

Next year will bring you a rather confused clickfinger, as Microsoft and Apple launch the newest versions of their operating systems.

OS launches are decision-making times the multimillion dollar launch of Windows 95 was pathbreaking in scale and publicity and home users as well as corporates are forced to take another look at the way they interact with their computing engines and wonder, Shall I upgrade or not?

And there will be a bonanza in choices. Microsoft will launch NT 5.0 aimed at the corporate desktop and Windows 98 for the home user; while a much-harried Apple computer will serve up System 8.0, and then, Rhapsody. The second is even more eagerly awaited our sustained scepticism of Apple effectiveness notwithstanding as, two years after the debacle of OS/2, mainstream Intel-IBM PC users will have a choice of OSs. Rhapsody can run easily on the Intel architecture, apart from the PowerPC platform.

But will anyone want to?

Oh, they just might. The early adopters and adventurers are the driving force behind every new operating system. If Apple manages to convince a few PC manufacturers to bundle Rhapsody as an additional OS option in a boot menu, and succeeds in backing application developers to the hilt to develop Rhapsody apps, we can see Microsoft stock taking a nose-dive, even though the market may still remain predominantly Microsoft.

What will all the new OSs entail? For one, they will all run slower! That is not unexpected all upgrades of operating systems cry out for more memory, more hard disk estate and a jet engine for a CPU. For many home computer users, that immediately means that a new OS is out of the question you dont shell out a few thousands to make your machine sun slower, even if it brings in the latest technology. On the other hand, for those considering a hardware upgrade or a new PC (top-end, of course),

OS upgrades and switches are juicy options.

The corporate desktop, not just in India but across the world, has not taken very kindly to Windows 95 despite all the hoopla. Why? Information Systems (IS) never takes kindly to high-tech makeovers that tax their existing infrastructure and demands additional investment in training. Also, the rule that if it works, dont mend it applies more to IS than the home user.

But being left behind in the Windows for Workgroup era is a little uncomfortable, and users increasingly demand advanced capabilities such as multitasking at the desktop. Hence, corporate IS is more likely to take another look at its desktops next year. Older PCs may still retain Windows For Workgroups, but new machines mean new OSs.

The offerings are as varied as they can get. We have a cocky Microsoft serving up Windows 98 (no, it wont be Windows 97) aka Memphis and Windows NT 5.0. Apple will initially dish out its next version of the Mac OS, followed by its pathbreaking at least on paper Rhapsody, that will finally take the Mac out of the Macintosh and put it right in the middle of the wolves that make up the Wintel combine.

Your choice will determine the fortune of Apple. Also, the market acceptance of the new OSs will send a message or two to Microsoft about users willingness to make complex technology upgrades as fast as the company can ship them.

Finally, it may push the

corporate IS to stick its head out into the 32-bit world of NT 5.0 or Windows 97.

Its a bird, its a browser, its Memphis!

Some still say that this time over, Microsoft has gone too far with the integration of the internet into the desktop. Your whole desktop functions like a browser!

There is the single click interface that was considered dummy stuff just a couple of years back before Netscape became all the rage; there is the browser window that lets you view your hard drive and directory contents as HTML pages; there is push technology that brings the information that you want to your desktop... do you call all that a new operating system or a browser?

But behind that new interface, Memphis is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Some of the behind the scenes features of the new release have already been out as part of the OSR2 kit. The interface brings a common user environment for NT and Windows 98 as well as existing Windows 95 installations with Internet Explorer 4.0 so corporates will have less of a hard time investing in user training. For the home user, most probably, Windows 95 spiced up with Internet Explorer 4.0 will be satisfactory.

It may not look obvious, but there is more to Memphis than a change of interface. Microsoft has been quietly shipping minor OS upgrades for the last two years Memphis will integrate them all. FAT32 supports bigger hard disks, and DirectX video technology will deliver better multimedia. The all-new device drivers will work equally well under NT and Memphis, so new applications and hardware will have fewer compatibility problems.

Ever wondered how long it takes for your PC to wake up when it goes to sleep to save power? That, hopefully, will be a thing of the past with the new Advanced Configuration and Power Interface.

OnNow technology, recently announced by Microsoft, will come in handy for routine maintenance and keep-fit activity

for the systems personnel. For example, it will be easy to schedule the company machines to wake up after office hours, back up data or scan for viruses and defragment drives.

What Memphis adds to the desktop operating-system equation is support for a number of new industry technologies such as Universal Serial Bus, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), Microsofts Digital Versatile Disk, digital audio, and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). Universal Serial Bus enables you connect, literally, new hardware end to end without opening up your system. Something that Mac users have enjoyed for years, Mac evangelists can protest in unison but then thats life.

Support for new drivers, ease of use and internet capabilities can make it easily a winner at home, but corporates may choose to wait. This could be primarily because Memphis is the the end of the Windows line. The move has been systematically towards the integration of a merged Windows NT/ Memphis kernel, and a couple of years from now, we will have different versions of NT, but no Memphis. Will corporates wait till 1999 to make a clean switchover skipping over the intermediate versions?

If better administration of a corporate network is on the cards, and if you need it now, Memphis can do it for you six months from now. Several NT features make their way into Memphis with the latest version and for free and for many, that could be a

compelling reason to upgrade. But for risk-vary Indian corporates, this means wait and watch the rise of NT.

Whats New in Memphis?

Features that Microsoft is currently working on:

Internet/intranet browsing capabilities (Internet Explorer will be included with the final product.)

Support for state-of-the-art hardware, including the Universal Serial Bus (USB), Digital Video Disc (DVD), and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)

Support for all the latest multimedia components such as Intels highly publicized MMX multimedia processor

Technologies to help reduce the cost of owning and maintaining PCs

All of the same features - including FAT 32 support for large disc drives - now available in the Windows 95 OEM-only Service Release. Customers converting from Windows 3.1 will still have the option to stay with a FAT 16 file system by using a built-in conversion utility

NT: Fat and friendly

A workhorse OS on your desktop? NT was never targetted at the home user, always more an OS for the workstation and the server. What explains the inclusion of NT here?

For one, the unified interface. NT 5.0, to be released mid-1998 will have the familiar Memphis interface, Internet Explorer et al. Setting up NT is now easier than ever. It scales from a single processor to 8 already, and will be better when 5.0 is launched. We have increased stability, iron-clad security and the ability to run a reasonable number of DOS and Win 16 apps and with 32 MB of memory slated to become the standard next year, what are we waiting for?

NT is not slated to be a volume seller in the near future. But with the Microsoft initiative removing the barriers to prod all who dont have good reasons to stick with Memphis to move on to NT, it is only a matter of time. Increased acceptance of NT will also see more mainstream NT apps, something that can only accelerate the process.

What was Cairo, then? The fact is that Cairo was supposed to be the next major OS upgrade to NT after NT 3.51, but Microsoft found it tough to incorporate all the major advancements at one go. So, we have Cairo being described by Microsoft officials as a set of technologies that will find their way in NT 4.0 and 5.0.

The GUI is the determining factor users need not be trained as they are already familiar with Win 95. Already, many run NT minus the NTFS as an alternative OS on their desktops something that can only get more popular as the fears of migrating to a power-OS dwindle.

Will Plug and Play be present? Well, the best answer is that it should be. Even in NT 4.0, the lack of Plug and Play is a major hassle, at least to current Windows 95 users.

Will we see the two operating systems cannibalising each other? Microsoft doesnt think so. The idea seems to be that NT will be positioned as the OS for those who have the system resources and need security (read corporates). If compatibility is a key issue, stick with Windows 98/ Memphis.

Other features of Windows NT 5.0 will include:

Pervasive Plug and Play;

Task-oriented system customisation;

EasyNet, a reworking of Windows NT network configuration utility;

Clustering technology, via Microsofts Wolfpack APIs, that will scale to 16 nodes

Symmetric multiprocessing optimization of both the hardware and the operating system that will target eight-processor servers; and

Storage farms for tape, optical, and disk.

Cool tunes from Apple

Apple was always dangerous territory to try prophetic stuff. With Microsoft, you always knew they would ship the product an year down the line with Apple, you never know. Remember how the trade press burned their fingers with Copland?

Copland, the next great Apple OS is dead. But wait a minute they have three new OSs to offer. The Mac OS 8.0 will be out later this year or early next year. That will be, to put it bluntly, the last of the Macintosh OS that millions of households have come to love. After that, we will see the company dancing to the tune of Steve Jobs Next Software which it acquired recently.

The roadmap goes thus: The Mac OS 8.0 late this year or early next year, a follow on release, the Allegro by mid-1998, and Rhapsody soon after. This is a machine that can run shrink-wrapped software, off the shelf, from both MacOS and Win32 platforms. In addition, it has, at its core, a super-fast Java implementation. Is that the hardware and OS compatibility dream coming true?

While the Mac OS 8.0 upgrade in itself is an event, Rhapsody will be keenly watched. It has all the features that you expect of a modern OS, like symmetric multi-processing, multitasking and memory protection. Not to mention enhanced internet-everything a remnant of the UNIX legacy of the Mach microkernel from NextStep.

Whatever Apple does on its machines based on the PowerPC architecture is necessary to keep the faithful going but the shocker will be the promised compatibility with Intel architecture. Suddenly, that opens up new vistas for the beleaguered computer manufacturer. Intel itself would keep quiet initially, but if some runaway PC makers offer Rhapsody as an additional OS, this could be a major boost for Apple. The initial launch of Rhapsody will be as a server platform similar to NT. It will run most of the existing System 7.0 applications on the Apple. New cross-platform tools available to PC makers will see to it that Rhapsody applications will run on NT and the Macintosh news that will make developers happy.

Mac users, thus, dont have much to worry about. This wasnt about leading technology, only about staying in the race. Home users can take heart, but there is something even for the network administrators the excellent networking characteristics of NextStep will find their way into Rhapsody. But it will take some time before we see Apple pulling itself out of current mess.

Babychen Mathew

Rhapsody, due by mid-1998, will finally take the Mac out of the Macintosh and put it on the Intel platform. It will be positioned as a server platform initially.

Have a fast processor and lots of memory? Go for NT5.0. But if backward compatibility is a key issue, stick with Windows 98/ Memphis.