Apple Computer Inc, previously sceptical about its chances in the desktop Unix market, has been forced to reconsider, our sister publication PowerPC News reports. The Internet-only newsletter says that pressure from a few large corporate accounts means that Apple will have Unix on the desktop in the first half of 1995, the company says. However it will not run on today’s Power Macintoshes: instead it is being designed for one of the forthcoming Peripheral Component Interconnect-based desktops, which Apple has loosely dubbed an Enterprise Client. Waiting for a machine-based on the PCI bus reduces the amount of work needed to get Apple’s Unix running on the desktop since hitherto it had been planning to run its Unix (based on IBM Corp’s new AIX 4.1) running on PCI-based servers anyway. Apple will also use the desktop Unix machines to host the TalAE Taligent Application Environment: it will be up on the Unix machines in the second half of next year. Hitherto, Apple had said that it felt uneasy trying to differentiate itself in a crowded Unix desktop market and had suggested that it could think of better places to spend its research and development dollars. However it appears that the company has now received firm commitments from US Federal bodies and educational sites, plus some large corporates – all of whom want Apple Unix on the desktop
