Rivals launch new operating systems

Apple chief Steve Jobs shows off OS X in Paris

By BBC News Online internet reporter Mark Ward

Microsoft and Apple have unveiled new versions of their respective operating systems.

On Thursday, Microsoft made available the Millennium Edition of its Windows 98 software which improves the product's ability to cope with crashes.

And at the Apple Expo, in Paris, Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, has demonstrated a test version of OS X - a complete re-write of the software that keeps the company's computers running.

The finished version of OS X will be available early next year.

Cleaning Windows

Windows Millennium Edition (ME) features an improved interface as well as improved support for music and multimedia files.

The software includes a web radio and a jukebox, and lets people sort and store popular MP3 music files better than earlier versions.

Microsoft is taking a risk with the improved media player inside Windows ME because it will not play files prepared with software from rival Real Networks.

As Windows ME was launched, Bill Gates was giving money to Indian vaccination programs

The US Government launched legal action against Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour, saying that it was abusing its dominance in operating systems to shut out rivals.

Also built-in to Windows ME are tools for editing home movies. In doing this, it is following the lead of Apple which earlier this year started bundling similar software utilities, called iMovie, with its computers.

But the most welcome changes to the software will be utilities that make it cope better with system crashes.

One, called "system restore", takes a snapshot of the state of a computer every few hours. It lets users roll their PC back to a more stable state if something goes horribly wrong when they are installing or upgrading software.

Minimum requirements for Windows ME are 150MHz Pentium, 32Mb of RAM and around 500Mb of free disk space. A limited life upgrade is expected to cost about £42 ($59). The full version will cost about £149.

Windows Millennium Edition is the successor to the second edition of Windows 98 released last year and is a stop-gap upgrade prior to the release of a consumer version of Windows 2000 that is due late next year.

Windows ME still has buried within it the DOS operating system that is now almost 20 years old. By contrast, Windows 2000 is based on a program called Windows NT that is barely seven years old and has been written to be more stable.

Apple rewrites the core

At the same time as Microsoft was unveiling Windows ME, Apple was demonstrating a more complete revamp of its operating system.

At the Apple Expo in Paris, Steve Jobs unveiled Mac OS X (pronounced MAC OS ten), a long-awaited rewrite of the core Apple software.

The software incorporates a whole host of changes that give it a cleaner user interface, make it display graphics better, run faster and crash less.

Apple is hoping that the re-write will spur interest in its computers and drive software developers to write more programs for it.

"We've gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time," said Mr Jobs.

OS X lets Apple computers be clustered together to form more powerful, co-operative computers.

The software is based around software developed by Next Computers, a company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985. Apple bought Next Computers in December 1996.

Next built its software around Unix, a venerable but widely used and powerful operating system that has long been a favourite in business and academia.

Apple is hoping that software writers familiar with Unix might now take another look at its computers and start to write or change programs to run on them.

The test, or beta, version is available for £24.95. The finished version is scheduled to be available early next year.