Bedrock, the object-oriented development environment, is to offer a whole range of benefits when it comes to market in 1993. According to Computerwoche, the joint venture between Cupertino, California-based Symantec Corp and Apple Computer Inc (CI No 1,950), is to result in a product that offers programmers faster software development and localisation times as well as the ability to transfer applications to different operating systems within a much shorter time-scale. Bedrock is to support both Windows and the Macintosh operating system, and, if adopted, should prove highly profitable – hence Symantec’s interest. But what does Apple stand to gain from providing money and programmers to Symantec to help promote arch-rival, Windows? Director of Apple’s development tools, Stephen Weyl, sees the advantages as twofold. Firstly, he believes that, if a company uses the same applications on both Macintosh and Windows personal computers, then the Macintosh is sure to win by direct comparison. And therefore, the proportion of Apple computers to be installed within the company is sure to rise. Secondly, Windows has a massive market share and the ability to sell such Apple software as QuickTime, WorldScript and AppleScript to that market could be highly profitable. For some time now, Symantec has actually been using Bedrock internally in programming. Bedrock is a collection of C class libraries with objects represented by very similar visual elements to those used in graphical user interfaces. The programmer writes an application in a kind of metalanguage, which, at the compiling stage, can be adapted to suit different operating systems by means of application programming interfaces. It is said to make it unnecessary to fiddle about with the petty details of an operating system, at least not as far as routine work goes, although this is not the case with more complex tasks, such as producing applications with high graphical resolutions. Bedrock is scheduled to appear by the second quarter of 1993. Pricing has not yet been decided, although it apparently won’t be expensive; and future versions are expected to run under Unix, OS/2 and Windows NT.
