On June 6th 2005 Apple announced plans to commercialize Mac OS X from the PPC to Intel based platform (MacIntel). 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. In the long run, the switch to MacIntel should result in new opportunities and a wider audience for our products and services. For those reasons, and 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 to continue developing for, and have regular product improvements to, the PPC Mac OS X platform upto the day that MacIntel is made commercially available. Then shift to MacIntel as the primary development target and PPC Mac OS X as the secondary target and perform quality control cycles on both platforms independently, maintaining facilities for both targets. We are scheduled to have the MacIntel version of VVI products completed and available shortly after the first commercial introduction of MacIntel.

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

• Customers who are original purchasers of VVI retail products purchased at or after June 6, 2005 shall be entitled to receive the MacIntel 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 MacIntel version, when available, free of additional charge.

Additional Information

The following is additional information in relation to previous product conversions for historical context.

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 MacIntel 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 MacIntel 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.