(c) 1998 Andrew C. Stone. All Rights Reserved. It's been a few weeks since the last Stone's Throws, and to alleviate reckless speculation, I'll fill you in on what's happening. Of course, if you were Parisienne, you'd understand that no one works in August! Ah, would that were the case... There is no rest for either the wicked or those Yellow Box developers insisting on having product shipping for the release of Mac OS X Server in the October(ish) timeframe. From my point of view, it's more like The Endless Summer, except instead of endless surfing, it's endless coding and quality control! If the Motley Fool wishes to believe "Rhapsody is Dead" and "it is now geared only to developers to get started on writing applications for the Mach microkernel", let him! At least he corrected some of what the Motley Fool team said the day earlier. More importantly, TMF's still saying Apple stock is a buy, so he's doing his job. However, once you distill what the analyst says about speculations and snippets from the public relations department of Apple Computer, you'll quickly see just how technically unsavvy the "perception controlling" side of marketing is. It is as though we lived in two distinct realities - one where technical superiority dominates (also known as Computer Science) and the other where wishful thinking and propagandistic marketing mold the mindset. Alas, people's choices and understandings are more controlled by the latter than the former - we do not live in a rational world, else how can you explain the dominance of Windows9X, "overkill", or a nation's fascination with a powerful man's private life? Reality is like a an onion, the more you peel away, the more you find that the inside is just like the outside, and it all makes you cry. So, for the record, let me clear up what Mac OS X Server is and isn't. It is the exact same robust operating system to be used in Mac OS X. It contains the Yellow Box API's which will be used in Mac OS X, thus allowing developers to write applications for Mac OS X AND Windows95/98/NT with a single set of source code. I've developed with this environment for 10 years and never once did I develop an application for the Mach microkernel, nor do I plan to. Mac OS X Server will be totally POSIX compliant which makes it an excellent option for any enterprise needing a robust, portable, bullet-proof operating system such as for large scale web sites or corporate computing. In short, Mac OS X Server is the framework of the future. Currently, Mac OS X Server is not a complete end user replacement for Mac OS, at least not until some of familiar Mac OS functionality gets rolled into the framework in the Q4'99 timeframe. In the meantime, you can still run your PPC Mac Apps in Mac OS X Server's "Blue Box". But OS X Server has some other jewels which make it desirable now: a scaleable dynamic web server solution (Web Objects), network user accounts and shared services (fonts, printers, file servers, and other resources), a suite of leading edge apps (Create, TIFFany, PasteUp, Mesa, OmniWeb, OpenBase, etc...), and of course, an industrial strength bullet-proof operating system which features protected memory and preemptive multitasking. Once the Motley Fool grasps the much larger vision that Mac OS X actually is, we'll be seeing more buy recommendations.