At Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Microsoft Corp. unveiled several new products designed for the Macintosh computer user, including the beta release of Microsoft Outlook 2001 for Mac and a future version of Microsoft Office for the Mac OS X platform now in development. According to Microsoft, Outlook 2001 will have the ability to easily communicate and share contacts, schedules and tasks with other Windows and Macintosh Outlook users. The final version of the software is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2001. Microsoft plans to release Office for Mac OS X in the fall of 2001. Microsoft has also released Macintosh drivers for its optical mouse, trackball and keyboard products.
Oracle Corp. of Redwood Shores, Calif., has taken three acquired products – Express, Darwin and Pure Integrate – and melded them into its upcoming Oracle 9i database software. By doing so, Oracle runs counter to what other database vendors have done in the past, the company said. Most database platforms offer separate server products for on-line analytical processing, but Oracle’s 9i will have merged datawarehousing and business intelligence applications into one suite. The database will be available for Unix, Windows NT 2000 and IBM S/390 machines in the spring of 2001.
IBM Corp. has released a new AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications, which will allow developers to link its AIX and Linux operating environments together, according to the company. Developers constructing applications for Linux can take advantage of the range of capabilities found in AIX. And once implemented, the Linux applications are treated as native AIX applications. IBM will also soon release the AIX 5L, Version 5.1 operating system, which will support IBM’s Power and Intel’s Itanium architectures. The toolbox also includes open-source and GNU software that will work with AIX 4.3.3 and AIX 5L, including versions of Gnome, KDE, Emacs, Samba, GNU base utilities, Shells, G++, GCC and RPM.
