Apple Computer Inc is hopeful of saving its flagship US Air Force contract for Macintoshes despite the advice of the General Accounting Office that the tender should be offered again. Apple says that key technical capabilities of the Macintosh were not well understood by the General Accounting Office when it sustained Martin Marietta Corp’s protest of the pact. It says that the ability to run off-the-shelf Macintosh applications under Apple’s A/UX Unix was an important issue, and Honeywell Federal Systems Inc, which won the contract bidding Macs, says that the Office erroneously believed that the Macintosh Operating System as well as A/UX had to be loaded when running Macintosh applications. In fact, the Macintosh Operating System has no place in the Honeywell solution. The contract, awarded to Honeywell in August for the Worldwide Military Command and Control System Information System Workstation Segment was the first major government contract to involve Macintoshes and was also seen as a major boost for Apple’s credibility in the Unix market.
