Kaleida Labs was one of several joint ventures between Apple Computer and IBM in a period of alliance between the two companies. The two computer giants sought to counter the influence of Microsoft and the growing dominance of its Windows operating system. Other ventures between Apple and IBM in this period included the Taligent operating system, and the PowerPC reference platform, a hardware chip alliance that included Motorola.

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  • Kaleida Labs was one of several joint ventures between Apple Computer and IBM in a period of alliance between the two companies. The two computer giants sought to counter the influence of Microsoft and the growing dominance of its Windows operating system. Other ventures between Apple and IBM in this period included the Taligent operating system, and the PowerPC reference platform, a hardware chip alliance that included Motorola. Announced in 1991, the company began operations early in 1992 with Nat Goldhaber serving as its first CEO. The company’s objective was the development of a common multimedia platform, the Kaleida Media Player, that would run on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The Kaleida Media Player was the runtime environment for the company’s main product known as ScriptX, a programming language and object library for authoring multimedia content. In its early days, Kaleida had several other projects underway, including a proposed operating system for television set-top boxes that was to be based around the Kaleida Media Player software. Following the departure of Goldhaber in 1993, Mike Braun of IBM became CEO of Kaleida Labs, and the company’s focus was narrowed. Kaleida’s mission from then on was to complete and support the ScriptX language and multimedia object library. Kaleida sought to bundle the Kaleida Media Player as system software with new personal computers. At the same time, CD-ROM developers could ship the Kaleida Media Player with content to support existing Windows and Macintosh systems. In late 1993 and early 1994, the company’s objective was for the Kaleida Media Player to run on a reference platform consisting of either a 25 MHz Motorola 68030 or a 25 MHz Intel 80486 processor running with 4 MB of random access memory. Such a system was typical of the installed base at that time, and most new computers were shipping with a read-only CD-ROM drive. Toshiba, which had supported Kaleida’s set-top box effort, became a minority stakeholder. Throughout its brief history, Kaleida maintained cross-platform development efforts for Windows (both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95), the Macintosh (supporting both the 68000 and PowerPC platforms), and OS/2. Kaleida's corporate offices were located in Mountain View, California, at sites near the Shoreline Amphitheater on the east side of U.S. 101. Although Kaleida never arguably became an Internet company, it was one of the earliest companies to post a corporate website. Registration of its domain kaleida. com has long since lapsed, and the Internet domain has since been used by another company.
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  • Kaleida Labs was one of several joint ventures between Apple Computer and IBM in a period of alliance between the two companies. The two computer giants sought to counter the influence of Microsoft and the growing dominance of its Windows operating system. Other ventures between Apple and IBM in this period included the Taligent operating system, and the PowerPC reference platform, a hardware chip alliance that included Motorola.
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  • Kaleida Labs
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