Historical context: the “Premier” and “Unified” releases planned here in 1997 got canceled, and all x86 work (Rhapsody for Intel and Yellow Box For Windows) got canceled after Rhapsody Developer Release 2. Rhapsody for PowerPC did see brief public availability as Mac OS X Server 1.{0..2} and shipped both in retail box (like mine!) and bundled with Server configurations of G3 and G4 towers. The “rootless” (only applications visible) Blue Box mentioned here eventually happened when Blue Box became the Classic Environment.

Even though it's actually usable for very little, Rhapsody remains my favorite “weird dead-end Apple thing” just for the novelty of having essentially NEXTSTEP 5.x (Display Postscript and all) with a Mac Platinum UI. Copland would probably hold that title for me if any of its builds actually worked, but Rhapsody has real stability, real application support, and a real POSIX environment via its NeXT heritage: http://rhapsodyos.org/ https://betawiki.net/wiki/Category:Mac_OS_X_Server_1.x_build...

Mac OS X Server v1.2v3 a.k.a. Rhapsody 5.6 is my favorite thing to run on my Blue & White G3 — the OG New World machine `PowerMac1,1`! https://cooltrainer.org/rhapsody-in-blue-and-white/

I wouldn't call Rhapsody a dead end; it took more work than expected but it evolved into OS X. And the delays were worth it because OS X solved a bunch of the thorny problems described in this document.

A friend of mine came across an x86 Rhapsody machine, but it was password protected and he wasn't able to ever login. Sadly I believe he wiped it.

Cool alternative history that kinda-sorta ended up coming true.