APPLE has partly blamed recent rumours of a merger with un Microsystems for the losses now expected for its next fiscal quarter. It recently reported a $69 million quarterly loss, cut 1,300 employees and sacked its chief executive a week ago.
Meanwhile in a busy week for the company it has given the first public demonstration of a Mac operating system running on a prototype computer built to the PowerPC Platform specifications, at the Demo 96 show in California.
Apple also announced at last weekend's Milia show in Cannes that it had concluded arrangements for a series of partnerships in the multimedia field. These would be with Disney Interactive (for CD Rom titles), Adobe (for Internet publishing software) and young British firm Digital Village ("interactive publishing"). The battle between Windows and Mac was over, Apple Europe's president Marco Landi told the show. "The platform is the Internet. So the battle now is who is going to provide the easiest access to the different services on the Internet."