RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
As you pointed out (and so did I) developers could create their apps as FAT, the problem was an alarming number didn't. You pointed out that Mac developers were reluctant to develop for Rhapsody (which is what ended up killing the Rhapsody client just before it's scheduled release), but almost all of the developers for Rhapsody were former developers for OpenStep which had NO PPC presents (other than a demo version of NEXTSTEP for the 601 that never saw the light of day). Given this, you would expect the ratio of PPC apps to Intel apps to be at least one to one (or even favoring the Intel version slightly), but it wasn't. Platform bias was one of the things that was very hard to get developers to move past before Apple acquired NeXT (remember that both NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP were available for Intel, NeXT, SPARC and PA-RISC based systems, but an overwhelming majority of apps were compiled Intel only). When developers moved to Rhapsody, they moved their platform of choice from Intel to PPC, and unfortunately never looked back.
If you followed the testimony of the Microsoft case, you would have seen spelled out in great detail what is know as the Applications Barrier for new operating systems. Basically developers won't write for an OS that other developers aren't already writing for. Apple knew that Rhapsody for Intel needed a critical mass of applications in order to be release and get past this barrier (Rhapsody for PPC would have Blue Box to add support for apps written for Mac OS 8 which was thought to be enough to push it past the Applications Barrier). When it didn't even get the same number of Yellow Box apps from developers as the PPC version, that was when Apple pulled the plug. When Mac developers (like Microsoft and Adobe) said they had no interest in developing their apps for Rhapsody at all, that killed the client version altogether.
The Applications Barrier is NOT speculation. And Apple would have a very hard time getting past it on the Intel platform. Most of Mac OS X success is due to the fact that "Classic" is rootless (making apps appear to run almost native) and Carbon is less painful than a complete rewrite. Without those factors, Mac OS X would not have made it past the Applications Barrier on it's own platform.
Here is some speculation that I can not confirm with my source inside Apple, but I believe to also be true. Rhapsody based systems use Display Postscript which was licensed from Adobe at a high price. Apple decided while it was developing Carbon, it would also develop Display PDF to get around paying for Display PostScript. Adobe wasn't very happy about the loss of major future revenue and slowed down productions of native version of it's apps for Mac OS X. It is a theory, but the rest of what I said is historical fact. Apple is not going to develop Mac OS X for Intel based systems without the support of developers, the Applications Barrier has killed off far to many great operating systems. And Apple learns from past mistakes.
If you followed the testimony of the Microsoft case, you would have seen spelled out in great detail what is know as the Applications Barrier for new operating systems. Basically developers won't write for an OS that other developers aren't already writing for. Apple knew that Rhapsody for Intel needed a critical mass of applications in order to be release and get past this barrier (Rhapsody for PPC would have Blue Box to add support for apps written for Mac OS 8 which was thought to be enough to push it past the Applications Barrier). When it didn't even get the same number of Yellow Box apps from developers as the PPC version, that was when Apple pulled the plug. When Mac developers (like Microsoft and Adobe) said they had no interest in developing their apps for Rhapsody at all, that killed the client version altogether.
The Applications Barrier is NOT speculation. And Apple would have a very hard time getting past it on the Intel platform. Most of Mac OS X success is due to the fact that "Classic" is rootless (making apps appear to run almost native) and Carbon is less painful than a complete rewrite. Without those factors, Mac OS X would not have made it past the Applications Barrier on it's own platform.
Here is some speculation that I can not confirm with my source inside Apple, but I believe to also be true. Rhapsody based systems use Display Postscript which was licensed from Adobe at a high price. Apple decided while it was developing Carbon, it would also develop Display PDF to get around paying for Display PostScript. Adobe wasn't very happy about the loss of major future revenue and slowed down productions of native version of it's apps for Mac OS X. It is a theory, but the rest of what I said is historical fact. Apple is not going to develop Mac OS X for Intel based systems without the support of developers, the Applications Barrier has killed off far to many great operating systems. And Apple learns from past mistakes.