Apple Computer Inc, the company that provided the foundation technology for Taligent Inc, will be the last of the three investors to roll out an implementation of the first Taligent software, the TalAE Application Environment. Apple says that it will offer TalAE up on PowerOpen by the end of next year. PowerOpen, Apple’s conversion of IBM Corp’s newest AIX 4.1 release plus version 2.0 of the Mac Application Environment will feature on high-end PowerPC – and 68040 – Macintosh enterprise clients and servers, but not, at least for the foreseeable future, on its volume desktops and portables. However, Taligent has got at least part of TalAE up on Mac System 7.5. According to Apple’s senior director of open systems software, Bruce Cleveland, the combination will provide support for Taligent, Macintosh and AIX applications. Servers will also be available with MacOS and NetWare, he added. In 1996 Apple plans to add the TalOS microkernel and other unnamed operating system options on servers, plus TalOS and Macintosh Application Environment 3.0 on enterprise clients, by which time Apple expects Taligent technologies to be fully integrated with the MacOS and frameworks. It will also provide a bridge between OpenDOC and Taligent applications. For the time being, Apple’s PowerPC hardware that supports these technologies will not be PowerPC Reference Platform-compliant. Only when agreement is reached on a PowerPC Reference Platform specification will Apple embrace it in hardware, and its mood last week did not suggest that would be likely any time soon. Apple’s own A/UX Unix will be stopped on shipment of PowerOpen and there is no upgrade path for A/UX users, although the company notes that that is mainly because users have already set their own migration plans in motion.
