[yeah yeah, off topic]
On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 08:11 PM, newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net
wrote:
> Apple talked about Rhapsody or whatever "the new OS" was called at
> various points in time for how many years ? And eventually they
> abandonded it altogether and did something very different.
Well, they *did* abandon Copeland for Rhapsody/OSX. But I'm amazed at
how many people don't realize that, Apple's marketroid proclamations
aside, Rhapsody and OS X are basically one and the same. Here's the
deal.
With Rhapsody, Apple was designing an OS which had:
0. New driver architecture
1. Mach3/4.4BSD
2. Display PostScript window server
3. A new Finder and UI feel
4. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP API
5. Old mac apps running in a protected environment
But there were some problems.
#2 Adobe wouldn't play ball. They didn't want to license DPS to Apple
like they had to NeXT (Adobe wanted to get rid of DPS entirely, pushing
for PDF).
#4-5 Old mac developers (read: Microsoft) weren't happy with the devil's
choice
of running their apps in, as they called it, a "penalty box"; or
rewriting
them from scratch to adhere to OPENSTEP.
To deal with #2, Apple basically told Adobe, to heck with you, we'll
just write our own dang DPS-equivalent window server. Which they did.
It's called Quartz. Apple will tell you it's based on PDF, but that's
just marketspeak. Quartz is an API based on the PostScript3.0/DPS
graphics model, but without the rarely-used interpreter commands. That
it did PDF was just gravy. Basically, Quartz allowed Apple to replace
DPS without paying the DPS royalties.
To deal with #4-5, Apple added another UNIX library, called Carbon,
against which old Mac apps could be recompiled. A library does not an
operating system make.
So now the OS looks like this:
0. New driver architecture
1. Mach3/4.4BSD
2. Display PostScript <equivalent> window server (now called "Quartz")
3. A new Finder and UI feel
4. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP API (now renamed "Cocoa")
5. Old mac apps running in a protected environment (now renamed
"Classic")
6. Carbon libraries
Apple then renamed the slightly-revised Rhapsody to "OS X". And people
bought it hook line and sinker!
Sean
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