Not much difference between a Pippin and a cut-down Power Mac – that’s what we said in CI No 2,566, about Apple Computer Inc’s new CD-player. But now it has emerged that the Pippin will not have its operating system in ROM: instead, the operating system will ship on the CD-ROM, alongside the application. This is the first time we have seen Apple lever its operating system out of the ROM, and it seems clear that Pippin application developers will have to license Pippin’s variant of the Mac OS to include on their disks. The interesting question is whether Apple may be tempted to follow a similar approach for machines built to the forthcoming Common Hardware Reference Platform specification. As we’ve reported, whether Apple ROMs will be required to run Mac applications on machines built to the planned new standard is still under debate. Might Apple allow software authors to include Mac OS on CD for these machines? Frankly it looks like a messy and unlikely solution, and one that would be completely unsuitable for anyone wanting to multi-task applications. Still, it might appeal to Mac games manufacturers that want to ensure their offerings work on the widest variety of Common Hardware Reference Platform machines.
