Two days ago I have just helped some Japanese chap to get OSX Server up
and running and we were going through all the Japanese TIL articles on
Apple Japan's web site.
We found something that looked like an OSX mini-FAQ which was derived
from an English Apple document and it said ...
"Q: Is MacOS X the same as Rhapsody ?
A: No, MacOS X is not Rhapsody."
That is Apple who said that.
I tried to find the article again, but because we went through so many
articles, I simply can't recall exactly which one it was. I make no
promises but I will keep looking and if I find it I'll post the link.
In any event pleas don't blame me for what Apple says. I am not an Apple
employee.
As far as your comments on the architecture go, there are some things
that look alright to me, but others raise suspicion. For example, I
remember to have read about Rhapsody, even with an architecture diagram
of it in a MacWorld or MacUser or MacSomethingElse magazine well
*before* Steven Jobs rejoined Apple and well before Apple even
considered to use OpenStep as a base. Before Apple decided they would go
with OpenStep, they were in talks with Be to use BeOS as a base for the
new OS to come. So, clearly, Apple didn't always have OpenStep on their
mind, an impression one might get reading your comments. In reality,
Apple was running around like a headless chicken trying to come up with
something but even if they had good ideas they could never agree on a
direction. Steven Jobs changed that and it was only then that OpenStep
became the direction. Work on Rhapsody had been done long before that.
I clearly remember that Jobs announced that Rhapsody was to be abandoned
for something else. Sure, there will have been some level of publicity
stunt behind that, but I also seem to remember that it was also stated
that some work that had gone into Rhapsody was to be salvaged for OSX.
Besides, it is Apple who owned whatever was Rhapsody and it is Apple who
bought OpenStep. They are the owners of all this stuff and as such they
have the ultimate owenership rights which means it is up to them to say
what it is and what it not is. That's what the law in the US says anyway.
If Apple says Rhapsody is not OSX, I'll go with that.
And I do realise that they would have used whatever they can from
previous work. I even expect them to have used some bits and pieces from
their work on MkLinux, and if it was only the learning experience.
In any event, this all only proofs my point. The point was that for as
long as there is no product on the market, there is lots of development
and lots of talk going on which ideally is not to be taken seriously.
rgds
BK
On Tuesday, November 27, 2001, at 12:26 , Sean Luke wrote:
>
> [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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