Apple's Copland: New! Improved! Not Here Yet!

On Nov. 17, more than 400 Apple Computer Inc. software engineers jammed into a company auditorium. After working into the wee hours and weekends for seven months, they were ready to ship the first version of a new Macintosh operating system called Copland. There were T-shirts for project "heroes," a Lettermanesque top-10 list in praise of Copland, and a beer bash. Says Ike Nassi, an Apple vice-president: "The place was wild. It was a very important milestone."

It was, however, perhaps a little soon to break out the beer kegs. While a group of 50 applications development companies are seeing an early version of the program now, Mac users aren't likely to get the new system until mid-1997. That's 18 months after it was initially due, and as a result Copland has blown its primary mission: to blunt the impact of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95.