Recently, Apple announced plans to release Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) during October 2007. This white paper briefly states VVI's commitment to the Mac OS X platform in this regard.

VVI has a long-term commitment to Mac OS X in terms of our software and consistency of support in the Mac-related marketplace. Consistent with our past performance, VVI plans to continue to be at the forefront of Mac-based products and services in our area of expertise. VVI plans are similar to the MacIntel Position Statement issued in 2005, which was successfully executed.

The following lists the VVI upgrade policy in regards to the Leopard version:

• Customers who are original purchasers of VVI retail products purchased at or after June 1, 2007 shall be entitled to receive the Mac OS X 10.5 version, when available, free of additional charge.

• Customers who have a then current negotiated license agreement, including site-license or maintenance agreement, shall be entitled to receive the Mac OS X 10.5 version, when available, free of additional charge.

Additional Information

The following is additional information in relation to previous product conversions for historical context and is nearly identical to the MacIntel Position Statement issued in 2005.

VVI products are based on Apple's recommended Cocoa application programming interface (API) and was derived from legacy NeXT code base and its AppKit, which was the precursor to Cocoa. At one time, VVI products ran on 6 separate platforms at the same time: OpenStep for Intel PCs, M68K (NeXT), HP/PA-RISC and Sun Sparc computers and OpenStep under Solaris and Windows NT (Yellow Box) operating systems. Without rearchitecting the VVI code base, the conversion time to each platform was about one weeks time. That product development and support of multiple targets required the programming and quality control expertise to develop, validate and maintain each platform independently. That expertise is retained in the present day development of the VVI product code base.

In parallel with conversion to those platforms VVI has maintained active development and rearchitecting of our product code base in keeping with the best practices of software engineering. So, for instance, in migrating from the OpenStep to the Rhapsody (precursor to Mac OS X) version, VVI made a fundamental design change to the code base. That change was a comprehensive multi-year undertaking and resulted in an improved product by the time Apple shipped Rhapsody. VVI has been implementing new functionality and API on top of that code base since that time and its design has proven itself in implementations with many customers.

Today, VVI products run on Mac OS X using Cocoa and other frameworks as an application interface to the functionality of the operating system. Those frameworks are the Apple recommended frameworks for migration to the Mac OS X 10.5 platform. In addition, VVI has taken special precautions as a development methodology to ensure use of only the most robust API, including eliminating the use of depreciated API and maintaining multi-platform coding techniques inline with reduced-platform deployment. Our experience indicates that the VVI product code base is highly transportable to the Mac OS X 10.5 target and that it will take only a modest effort to bring that code base up to production quality, basically a recompile and then quality control cycle.