Aug 18, 1998

Mac OS X to Emulate Alpha?

Boy, this story sure has one foot in the Wacko File!

During the last few weeks, things have been heating up in the Alpha oven, concerning System-level Alpha 21264 emulation in Mac OS X. What really steams things up now is that this RISC Emulation Core, as Apple and Compaq reportedly call it, may be implemented in Mac OS X!

Sources close to the project, code-named Encumbering Load, say that the reasons behind this purported emulation are many, and surprising ones at that!

Remember the good ol' days of System 7, with almost no native code in the OS for Power Macs and constant crashing? The REC, when implemented in Mac OS X (or in Mac OS 8.1 thru Mac OS 9, via shared libraries and a runtime environment) will bring back many attributes from the OS of Apple's heyday! Overall System instability, inexplicable hangs and mysterious Type 11 errors will all be brought back via the REC! “We're sure the customers will appreciate the nostalgia,” commented Migraine Hashish, co-director of marketing campaigns for product returns of Apple Arabia, the 27th largest Apple Computer, Inc. branch in the world.

Other reasons for the Alpha emulation remain shrouded in mystery. One haunting suggestion came from a source we have just now started correspondence with. Now that Compaq owns DEC, maker of the Alpha line of chips, and Intel has a large stake in DEC as well, this project very well could be the source of earlier, unsubstantiated rumors of Rhapsody for Merced. Why? Here's unedited email from our source:

Of course, it all makes a ton of sense when you put it all together. Apple, Intel, Compaq, DEC, AMD and Motorola are all pitching in together to do the one thing no one thought possible: Actively port an operating system to the vaporous Merced (P7) chip!

You see, the extreme power of the Alpha is the only thing that could possibly do what it takes to do that OS porting: run the Merced Emulation Environment (MEE) in an OS before the Merced even exists! Of course, this puts Hewlett Packard out in the cold, and stuck with their shitty HP-RISC architecture.

Aug 12, 1998

QuickTime Rumors Heating Up

Several Mac OS and Windows 98/NT developers have been seeded with QuickTime 4.0a1c24, and have reported excellent stability, as well as some startling news and shocking refinements!

This tidbit comes to us from a reliable Apple Developer source, who states that a major change he noticed in QuickTime 4.0a1 was support for SmallTalk and Perl:

As I was installing QuickTime beta 6 today, I noticed several new modules in addition to those installed in the previous betas: the QuickTime for SmallTalk 1.0a2, QuickTime for Perl 1.0a4, and QuickTime for Visual Basic 1.0.2a1 modules!

This is an excellent boon for the scripting community! Imagine, being able to play entire streaming movies through a CGI with Perl and QuickTime 4! I can already see the porn-vendors on the web taking advantage of this!

As a matter of fact, we have a source who uses QuickTime 4's streaming capabilities with the heretofore rumored IBM QuickTime servers:

Here at [redacted], we not only participate in the Apple developer's program but IBM's as well! Because of this, I can confirm that reports of IBM hosting streaming QuickTime servers are true. In fact, [redacted] is utilizing one right now. Check it out: AIX 4.3.1 on a quad-500 MHz POWER3 motherboard, 2 GB RAM and 500 GB of Ultra-SCSI 2 hard drives! And let me tell you, our porn flies faster off this server than [redacted]! Thank goodness for QuickTime 4! It's a porn-monger's dream-c[ome]-true!

It seems like QuickTime 4 will be making a bigger splash than perviously expected!

Aug 1, 1998

Microsoft to Resurrect Xenix

A slow but steady trickle of rumors have seeped into our inboxes as of late, concerning a startling move by Microsoft many of our sources see as The Next Big Threat.

According to many of our sources, in the recent months, Microsoft has been rewriting the source code to their own flavor of UNIX, called Xenix. Their goal is to finally release a new version optimized for the Pentium, MMX Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. Sources also say that, thanks to ActiveX knowledge, MS will compile support for ActiveX and JScript right into the kernel!

If this is true, Linux is in big trouble. This move is reminiscent of the full 180 MS pulled after they realized they couldn't control the Internet: any move necessary will be made in order to dominate anyway; resistance if futile, you will be assimilated.