Whither Acorn, Whither RISC OS?
Brendan O'Sullivan talks to Alan Bonsor about
his plans for the new Acorn/Apple joint
venture

Could you tell us something about the new
company and your plans for it?

The new company is going to be dedicated to and
completely focused on the education world and
particularly primary and secondary schools. We
believe the great opportunity for the company is
that by bringing together two of the big players
in the industry - Acorn and Apple - under one
roof, we can exploit the best technologies and
best services and solutions from both sides for
the benefit of each other. In other words, there
are fabulous strengths within the Acorn camp and
there are fabulous strengths within the Apple
camp; what we hope to do is to exploit these
strengths to the benefit of the customer.
Whether that customer be an Acorn user or an
Apple user, we think they'll benefit from this
cross-fertilization.

Prior to the announcement of the new company,
Acorn had laid out its technology path which
stated that it was going to move towards the
PowerPC/CHRP platform and bring its customers to
that arena. Quite coincidentally, this was also
Apple's stated goal. This company is here to
ensure that this convergence will be to both
sets of customers' advantage.

Specifically from an Acorn user's point of view,
I think this offers tremendous opportunities and
advantages to the current Acorn user base. Acorn
users are very interested in technology,
software products and solutions, but they also
want to know that they're buying into a platform
which is solid and which is going somewhere.
When change occurs, one's first reaction is, "oh
no, it's change, it's over." That's a natural
human reaction no matter what the business is.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth
for the Acorn user. We have a situation whereby
we believe that we can build upon the Acorn
investment that customers have out there, more
positively than Acorn ever could in the past.

Our short term plan, particularly for the Acorn
side of the business, is to continue and develop
the Risc PC and the A7000 range of computers.
The new company commits itself to providing a
next generation Risc PC based on the ARM810, and
this will be launched in the near future. We
have also announced development of the
StrongARM-based Risc PC which will appear
slightly further down the line. As far as the
A7000 is concerned, we have already announced
that we will provide a go-faster A7000, and
there will also be a next-generation A7000 based
around the ARM7500 processor. We are therefore
committing ourselves to providing the technology
paths that the Acorn user requires on the Risc
PC and A7000.

The reason I emphasize this commitment to the
Acorn platform is that we get a lot of negative
feedback from the market place that RISC OS is
dead. Once again, nothing could be further from
the truth. We see RISC OS carrying on, and the
proof of this is that we can provide direction
on two of our core product lines for another two
generations. What other manufacturer that's not
allegedly moving out of its market can
offer that kind of commitment?

The path for RISC OS is as solid as ever, and
indeed I believe even more solid. In addition to
committing ourselves to another two generations
of A7000 and Risc PC systems, we are also
committed to providing a CHRP-based system that
will run Mac OS and RISC OS. It's also
fascinating to note that the Oracle network
computer device will be running RISC OS or a
variant of it. We could have a situation in a
year's time, for example, where, if the Oracle
system is successful, there are another 20
million RISC OS users around the world.

So I believe the story is very positive. We will
provide a methodology and a platform which will
continue to allow people who want to run RISC OS
to run RISC OS.

Of course the whole IT world, from the beginning
of PCs and before, is all about transition. It
never stands still; it's always moving forward.
From now, 1996, as you look forward, think of
all the potential changes ahead of us. Six or
seven years ago IT meant PC. Today the PC is
still a core solution device, but there are many
other technologies that are converging: the
portable digital assistants (PDAs), network
computers, voice and handwriting recognition,
etc. As we move forward, what we need to do is to
provide our customers with the most appropriate
technology in whatever shape it will be. Will
RISC OS be a part of that? Absolutely. Over time,
however, we will offer many different products
and we will give the customer the opportunity to
go in whatever direction they choose.

It was Acorn's stated intention just a few
months ago to offer a range of PCs alongside
the RISC OS range of computers. Will the new
company's product range include
Windows/Intel-based PCs as well as Acorn and
Apple systems?

We don't see ourselves offering a Wintel
solution as part of our education range, simply
because we believe that the Acorn and Apple
products we have are so much better. That is our
raison d'tre. We are specifically targeting
one sector of the market: primary and secondary
schools. We are not at all distracted by
business, general multimedia, etc. We are only
interested in solutions that are required by the
education world. As it happens, however, there is a
particular requirement for school administration
systems which only run on PCs, and which our
customers have told us they require. We will
therefore provide them with that facility. We
believe that we have the best solutions for
education in Acorn and Apple technology; Wintel
systems will not form the core of our strategic
direction.

Prior to coming to Acorn, what was your
knowledge and impression of the Acorn market,
particularly considering that some people in the
industry still seem to associate Acorn with the
BBC micro and nothing else? How much did you
know about Acorn and Acorn computers?

I have worked in the computer industry for
twenty two years, and it's an industry that I
really love. I watch the industry a lot, and
prior to coming to Acorn I already knew quite a
bit about the company. The image of the Acorn
community as a bunch of 'techno-weirdos' which
some people might have was not one that I
shared. My view of Acorn was that it was a
highly innovative company that perhaps didn't
get the credit it deserved for its innovations;
that had faced the challenge of being so
successful with one product, in the form of the
BBC micro, that it became labelled as the 'BBC
supplier'. The BBC was such a powerful brand, and
the idea at the time was so innovative, that I
think Acorn found it hard to leave that image
behind and that they suffered because of that
success. However, to answer your question, my
personal view was that I knew that the company
was developing superb technologies and that the
Risc PC was very innovative. Indeed, you must
remember that the company that I'm coming from,
Apple, has had a joint venture with Acorn, in
the form of ARM Ltd, for the past six years now,
using the ARM processor as the key technology in
the Apple Newton PDA. So my view of Acorn was
perhaps not quite representative of the public
view; they really had great technology, knew
what they were doing, but maybe paid the price
of their success early on.

Coming from an Apple/Mac OS background, what do
you think of Acorn's RISC OS? How do you think
it compares to Mac OS, and are their any
features which you think could be moved from one
operating system to the other in the future?

I'm probably not the best person to answer
that from a technical point of view, since as
Managing Director of the Apple organisation in
Ireland I didn't get that much time to evaluate
products; it's a challenge enough just trying
to keep up with the technology in an industry
where innovations are happening all the time.
However, let me give you an overall impression.
It is intriguing to compare the two operating
systems. I do think that RISC OS has some lovely
features which the Mac operating system could
certainly learn from. What has impressed me
about RISC OS is the way it is so efficiently
written; the way it is so mean with the use of
resources; and how the design of it is so
flexible. Currently its biggest application is
in personal computers, but it is easy to see why
it is such an attractive product for
set-top-boxes, etc.

Regarding the Acorn/Tesco Computers for Schools
scheme, will the new company be continuing this
scheme, offering Apple computers as well?

Absolutely. It has been hugely successful and
the 1996 scheme is being launched on the 18th
March, offering both Acorn and Apple products.
So the answer is a very definite yes.

One of Acorn's biggest problems in the past has
been that of improving its image through
marketing. It has never really had the
financial resources to invest heavily in
advertising, and has thus had very little impact
in the general market outside the education
sector. Is the new company going to be promoting
its products on TV and in the mass press, or is
your advertising and marketing going to be
focussed specifically in the education market?

It's going to be the latter. Management
textbooks say that you have to get a lot of
things right to be successful, and one of those
is to focus on what you do. Perhaps in the past
Apple and Acorn have not focussed as tightly as
they might have liked to on the education
sector. This time we are going to. TV is a
brilliant medium for hitting the mass consumer
market, but a lot of the hits are to people who
are not relevant to your market at all. When
you're focussed on a sector, and you know who
and what that sector is, you can utilise your
money far better. The marketing methodology you
will see us using is direct marketing: talking
directly to our customers. The outside world -
the consumer market - may not see us at all.

You have already announced plans to develop a
new range of CHRP-based computers. However,
these systems will probably take at least
another year to appear and, one would assume,
will be fairly expensive. Since a growing number
of educationalists seem to be endorsing
Windows-based software from companies such as
Microsoft and Dorling Kindersley, since schools
currently have almost no IT budgets, and since
it is far cheaper for them to go out and buy
very inexpensive PCs from a box shifter, is it
not already too late to provide an effective
alternative to Windows in the classroom? Is the
battle not already lost?

The concept of moving to CHRP is a future
direction. We have to do business today,
tomorrow, next month, next quarter and so on.
CHRP comes later. Our game plan is complex
indeed, and it's certainly not a case of killing
off the enemy with one shot. Using the battle
metaphor, we now have two regiments who up until
now have been shooting both at the enemy and at
each other. Our first positive step is that we
can stop shooting at each other and point all
our guns in one direction. The belief that the
Wintel platform owns the education market is a
common misconception. It doesn't. Windows does
very well in the business world. It does pretty
well in the education world, but if you combine
Apple and Acorn together, you have as big a
player as the Wintel platform in education, and
that's where our target market is. Remember also
that under the banner of Acorn and Apple, we
will have as many, if not more, education-
orientated titles than the Wintel platform. We
have a battle on our hands, and we're looking
forward to it.

The largest installed base in primary schools
today is Acorn. Schools are not going to throw
those away. What we will do is provide them with
a continuing technology path which will exploit
that investment. That is a RISC OS investment,
not a Wintel investment. We are best positioned
to bring that forward and to grow it, because
schools won't and can't leave it behind. They
can't afford to.

Copyright  RISC User 1996
