Apple has been around since 1976, and many accounts of its history have been told. If the story of Apple as a company is fascinating, so is the "technical" story of Apple's operating systems.
This document discusses operating systems that Apple has created in the past, and many that it tried to create. Through this discussion, we will come across several technologies the confluence of which eventually led to Mac OS X. An important goal of the discussion is to better understand the reasons, and if possible, the rationale behind Mac OS X and its important components. This, in turn, will be helpful in understanding and appreciating the system as it is today.
My approach in this discussion is to have somewhat high magnitudes of the depth and breadth of historical coverage, as long as I believe the discussion is interesting and relevant from a system design perspective, within reason. For example, while I will briefly describe "the influence of Xerox PARC" and the background of Mach, I will not go to farcical limits and talk about the invention of the transistor, or the discovery of Silicon.
Feedback
I will welcome, and do request constructive feedback. I will highly appreciate if any errors, omissions, or misrepresentations are .
I thank all those who have taken time to send me feedback in the past, and apologize to those whom I did not, rather could not, reply to individually.
Contents
- Early Apple Systems
- Apple DOS
- Apple Pascal
- Apple CP/M
- Apple SOS
- Apple ProDOS
- The oNLine System
- Smalltalk
- Xerox Alto
- Xerox STAR System
- System Software Releases 2 - 6
- Blue, Pink, and Red
- GS/OS
- A/UX
- System 7
- AIM for POWER
- Mac OS for PowerPC
- NetWare for PowerPC
- AIX for PowerPC
- Star Trek
- Raptor
- NuKernel
- Taligent and TalOS
- Copland
- Gershwin
- BeOS
- Plan A
- Rochester's Intelligent Gateway
- Accent
- Mach
- MkLinux
- Musical Names
- Mac OS 8
- Mac OS 9
- Rhapsody
- Blue Box
- Yellow Box
- Mac OS X Server
- Darwin
- Mac OS X Developer Previews
- Mac OS X Public Beta
- Mac OS X 10.x
- Mac OS on Pippin
- Newton OS
- iPod's OS
