There has, over the last two weeks been a number of reports suggesting a growing accord between Apple Computer Inc and IBM Corp on the PowerPC Reference Platform model. Last week Computerworld’s lead story proclaimed PowerPC compromise in the works. However, evidence of this rapprochement is pretty thin on the ground. It is still impossible to find anyone within Apple, on either side of the Atlantic, who has a good word to say about the specification – any hints of reconciliation come from IBM. Steve Everhard, who heads up Apple’s server business in the UK sums up when he says: I cannot see the value of it to us… I cannot see the value of it to anyone. He adds however that PReP is a living document and that Apple hopes and expects to contribute. Certainly, the official line from Apple is that the two companies are in talks, but the shortcomings in PReP, as outlined by Everhard, seem severe – including a total absence of support for high speed video and sound input-output exactly the kinds of things that the new multimedia PowerPC machines are meant to excel at. You might expect that the lack of a definition would be no problem for Apple – the company could simply implement its own solution, and still claim PReP compliance. However Everhard says that the difficulties go deeper – the lack of thought about how to handle multimedia traffic affects a number of the base assumptions that the specification makes. In addition there are very many other omissions he says. Put simply, Apple believes that IBM has jumped the gun with PReP and is trying to rush something out which is still only half-baked. Meanwhile IBM is characterising the changes due to be made to the document as fine tuning and is expecting to get a final version of PReP ready later this year. This understandable haste has made Apple wary about the PReP consultative process. They’ve got to make up their mind PReP is either a discussion document or a compliance document, Everhard says, adding that personally he feels that If I were IBM I wouldn’t be talking about PReP compliance yet. Trying to guess how things will turn out is, at this stage a mug’s game, however major changes seem likely in PReP, if Apple is to be tempted on board – system makers designing PReP compliant machines take note.
