All attention this week (as far as Apple watchers are concerned anyway) is on how much Apple's declared profit will be in its SEC fillings this Wednesday (turn up for the book's, for the first time in two or three years, Apple is expected to return a profit). Analysts believe Apple will declare about US$20 million profit for their second quarter 1998, but others have suggested up to US$80-100 million as possible is well. Most analysts are basing the profit prediction on the great sales of Power Mac G3's.
New developers program for Apple
Apple has announced a new Developers Program. This program has a multi-tiered system varying from free web-based information through to a US$2500 option that includes hardware discounts, free software, including Operating System upgrades and betas, developer mailouts and Apple Developer Support. There are also intermediate levels that have lesser support that are way cheaper (varying from a couple hundred dollars up to just shy of a thousand). These have no hardware discount or Apple support, but include access to a greater range of Apple supplied information, including Apple developer ezines.
Predictably developers are up in arms about the massive increase in cost of membership to the Apple developers program, not to mention the loss of features available. Developers are used to getting the full $2500 package for $250. As is said by Wil Shipley, President, Omni Development, Inc., Apple was giving developers a service way above that supplied by any other company, but it was costing them a fortune, and people were abusing it. I wouldn't have minded paying $250 dollars for a $1000 discount on a new Mac. Hey I probably would even go as far as writing a program to so if need be to get it. Apple can no longer afford to be ripped off, if it ever could, so these changes are probably long overdue, no matter how harsh they seem.
As with Quicktime, Apple can no longer afford to give away things for free. There isn't the money in the Mac market there used to be that allowed this to happen.
Apple denies Imatec patent infringements
Imatec has sued Apple for over a billion dollars damage in a patent infringement case over Apple's ColourSync technology. ColourSync is software available on Macs which allows synchronisation between different systems so that the same colour always appears. Systems such as scanners, monitors and printers all use different colour schemes, meaning that not all the same colours are available to all the devices. ColourSync software makes all the systems colours appear the same, so if you scan in an image, process it than print it, at all stages the colours appear true to the original image. This process is invaluable to the print industry, and NT does not have it (believe me, I've been working with colour printing at uni with NT and it is a constant hassle which colours you choose so that they print out just acceptably, not right, but usable).
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