May 12, 1998: Phil Schiller Says OS X for PowerPC Only
When Apple was talking up its next generation operating system, Rhapsody, one of the selling points was "develop once deploy everywhere." The project was called Yellow Box and promised developers an opportunity to write the code a single time and have it work on both Macs and PCs.
The goal was a bit too ambitious. Apple, backing away from their previous position, announced that there was no way they would be developing for platforms besides the PowerPC. Phil Schiller put it this way:
"That was what all the developers and customers told us to do. It's fully PowerPC native. We will not ship Mac OS X for any other platforms. The overriding goal is to be the best Mac OS ever."
Apparently, Mr. Schiller is Apple's dedicated spokesman on just what chip the Mac OS (and others) will run on because after the switch to Intel was announced he said:
"That doesn't preclude someone from running [Windows] on a Mac. They probably will."
Users rested assured that Mac OS X was a PowerPC-only proposition on May 12, 1998.
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I really don’t think “the goal was a bit too ambitious.” I think they figured out that allowing people to use Macs to develop fantastic Windows software was not going to sell any more Macs.
Yellow Box for Windows was simply an incremental upgrade to OpenStep, a product which was released and worked perfectly well once-upon-a-time at NeXT. I’m sure Apple still has it working somewhere in the basement at Cupertino. Who knows, someday if there is ever a good business reason to release it, maybe they will. Personally I hope so.
But to suggest that the goal was somehow technically “too ambitious” is to ignore the fact that it was essentially already done. It was just a business decision.