Mac OS X users can accomplish this by holding down Command-S after powering the system. The user may be required to enter a password set in the firmware. Single User Mode is different from a Safe Mode boot in that the system goes directly to the console instead of starting up the core elements of Mac OS X (items in /System/Library/, ignoring /Library/, ~/Library/, et al.). From there users are encouraged by a prompt to run fsck or other command line utilities as needed (or installed).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Single user mode, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Gentoo for Mac OS X was the first non-Linux project of Gentoo and focused on making the Gentoo experience available on Apple’s operating system by introducing the Portage system as a separate entity. This was roughly similar to Fink and Macports, but it used Portage instead of a Debian-like or Ports-like system. Later on, Gentoo for Mac OS X was made a subproject of Gentoo/Alt. Currently, the project is no longer active, because its prime assumption of using and not modifying the host OS appeared not to be realistic and eventually broke most packages or made them hardly maintainable. Gentoo for Mac OS X has been superseded by Gentoo Prefix, which is currently what Gentoo offers to Mac OS X users.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Gentoo/Alt, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Released in 1996, Verdana was bundled with subsequent versions of the Windows operating system, as well as their Office and Internet Explorer software on both Windows and Mac OS. In addition, it was long available for download from Microsoft’s web site allowing it to be used by any system supporting TrueType fonts. The downloadable file is still available legally from a third-party web site; see the External links section. Verdana is also one of the bundled book-reading fonts on the iPad.

According to one long-running survey, the availability of Verdana is 99.34% on Windows (making it the second most common font on that platform) and 96.06% (seventh most common) on computers running Mac OS. As shown by the same survey, however, it is uncommon on free operating systems like Linux. This is due to legal restrictions, as copying or redistributing the font is illegal unless a proprietary license is acquired.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Verdana, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Control-C is a common computer command. It is generated by pressing the key while holding down the key on a computer keyboard. The equivalent key combinations on Mac OS computers is Command-C.

In graphical user interface environments that use the control key to control the active program, control-C is often used to copy highlighted text to the clipboard. In many command-line interface environments, control-C is used to abort the current task and regain user control. It is a special sequence which causes the operating system to send a signal to the active program. Usually the signal causes it to end, but the program may “catch” it and do something else, typically returning control to the user.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Control-C, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are examples of contemporary operating systems that implement a safe mode; as well as other complex electronic devices.

An operating system in safe mode will have reduced functionality, but the task of isolating problems is easier because many non-core components are disabled (turned off). An installation that will only boot into its safe mode typically has a major problem, such as disk corruption or the installation of poorly configured software that prevents the operating system from successfully booting into its normal operating mode.

Though it varies by operating system, typically safe mode loads as few executable modules as possible and usually disables devices, except for the minimum necessary to display information and accept input. Safe mode can also take the form of a parallel “miniature” operating system that has no configuration information shared with the normal operating system. For example, on Microsoft Windows, the user can also choose to boot to the Recovery Console, a small text-based troubleshooting mode kept separate from the main operating system (and can also be accessed by booting the install CD), or to various “safe mode” options that run the dysfunctional operating system, but with features such as video drivers, audio and networking disabled.

Safe mode typically provides access to utility and diagnostic programs so a user can troubleshoot what is preventing the operating system from working normally. Safe mode is intended for maintenance, not functionality, and provides minimal access to features.

Microsoft Windows’ safe mode is accessed by pressing the F8 key as the operating system boots. Also, in a multi-boot environment with multiple versions of Windows installed side by side, the F8 key can be pressed at the OS selector prompt to get to safe mode.

An equivalently minimal setting in Unix-like operating systems is single-user mode, in which daemons and the X Window System are not started, and only the root user can log in. On Mac OS versions 6, 7, 8 and 9, a similar mode is achieved by holding down the shift key while booting, which starts the system without extensions. In Mac OS X holding the shift key after powering up puts the system in safe mode. Safe mode with networking, one of the variations of safe mode, can be used to troubleshoot network issues.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Safe mode, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Apple Lisa and Macintosh (and later, the Apple IIgs)

Beginning in 1979, started by Steve Jobs and led by Jef Raskin, the Lisa and Macintosh teams at Apple Computer (which included former members of the Xerox PARC group) continued to develop such ideas. The Macintosh, released in 1984, was the first commercially successful product to use a GUI. A desktop metaphor was used, in which files looked like pieces of paper; directories looked like file folders; there were a set of desk accessories like a calculator, notepad, and alarm clock that the user could place around the screen as desired; and the user could delete files and folders by dragging them to a trash can on the screen. Drop down menus were also introduced.

There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox’s PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh, but it is clear that the influence was extensive, because first versions of Lisa GUIs even lacked icons. These prototype GUIs are at least mouse driven, but completely ignored the WIMP concept. Rare screenshots of first GUIs of Apple Lisa prototypes are shown [http://www.pegasus3d.com/apple_screens.html here] and [http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt&topic=User%20Interface&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium here]. Note also that Apple was invited by PARC to view their research, and a number of PARC employees subsequently moved to Apple to work on the Lisa and Macintosh GUI. However, the Apple work extended PARC’s considerably, adding manipulatable icons, a fixed drop-down menu bar and drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see Macintosh Finder) for example. A list of the improvements made by Apple to the PARC interface can be read [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date here] (folklore.org) It’s hard to say which particular features were originated in which project, though. Jef Raskin warns that many of the reported facts in the history of the PARC and Macintosh development are inaccurate, distorted or even fabricated, due to the lack of usage by historians of direct primary sources.

In 1986 the Apple IIgs was launched, a very advanced model of the Apple II successful series, based on 16-bit technology (in fact, virtually two machines into one). It came with a new operating system, the Apple GS/OS, which features a Finder-like GUI, very similar to that of the Macintosh series, able to deal with the advanced graphic abilities of its Video Graphics Chip (VGC).

Graphical Environment Manager (GEM)

Digital Research (DRI) created the Graphical Environment Manager as an add-on program for personal computers. GEM was developed to work with existing CP/M and MS-DOS operating systems on business computers such as IBM-compatibles. It was developed from DRI software, known as GSX, designed by a former PARC employee. The similarity to the Macintosh desktop led to a copyright lawsuit from Apple Computer, and a settlement which involved some changes to GEM. This was to be the first of a series of ‘look and feel’ lawsuits related to GUI design in the 1980s.

GEM received widespread use in the consumer market from 1985, when it was made the default user interface built in to the TOS operating system of the Atari ST line of personal computers. It was also bundled by other computer manufacturers and distributors, such as Amstrad. Later, it was distributed with the best-sold Digital Research version of DOS for IBM PC compatibles, the DR-DOS 6.0. The GEM desktop faded from the market with the withdrawal of the Atari ST line in 1992 and with the popularity of the Microsoft Windows 3.0 in the PC front by the same years.

DeskMate

Tandy’s DeskMate appeared in the early 1980s on its TRS-80 machines and was ported to its Tandy 1000 range in 1984. Like most PC GUIs of the time it depended on MS-DOS. The application was popular at the time and included a number of programs like Draw, Text and Calendar as well as attracting outside investment such as Lotus 1-2-3 for DeskMate.

Amiga Intuition and the Workbench

The Amiga computer was launched by Commodore in 1985 with a GUI called Workbench based on an internal engine which drives all the input events called Intuition, and developed almost entirely by RJ Mical. The first versions used a blue/orange/white/black default palette, which was selected for high contrast on televisions and composite monitors. Workbench presented directories as drawers to fit in with the “workbench” theme.

Intuition was the widget and graphics library that made the GUI work. It was driven by user events through the mouse, keyboard, and other input devices.

Due to a mistake made by the Commodore sales department, the first floppies of AmigaOS which were released with Amiga1000 named the whole OS “Workbench”. Since then, users and CBM itself referred to “Workbench” as the nickname for the whole AmigaOS (including Amiga DOS, Extras, etc.). This common consent ended with release of version 2.0 of AmigaOS, which re-introduced proper names to the installation floppies of AmigaDOS, Workbench, Extras, etc.).

Early versions of AmigaOS did treat the Workbench as just another window on top of a blank screen, but this is due to the ability of AmigaOS to have invisible screens with a chromakey or a genlock – one of the most advanced features of Amiga platform – even without losing the visibility of Workbench itself. In later AmigaOS versions Workbench could be set as a borderless desktop.

Amiga users were able to boot their computer into a command line interface (aka. CLI/shell). This was a keyboard-based environment without the Workbench GUI. Later they could invoke it with the CLI/SHELL command LoadWB which performs the task to load Workbench GUI.

One major difference between other OS’s of the time and for some time after was the Amiga’s fully Multi-Tasking Operating System, a powerful built in Animation system using a hardware blitter and copper and 4 channels of 26k 8 bit sampled sound. This made the Amiga the first Multi Media computer years before other OS’s.

Like most GUIs of the day Amiga’s Intuition followed Xerox, and sometimes Apple’s lead, but a CLI was included which dramatically extended the functionality of the platform, but Cli/Shell of Amiga is not just a simple text based interface like in MS-DOS but it is another graphic process driven by Intuition engine and with same gadgets included in Amiga graphics.library and serving the GUI process and CLI/Shell interface integrates itself with the Workbench, sharing the same privileges with the GUI.

The Amiga Workbech still evolved over the 1990s, far beyond the official withdrawn from Commodore in 1994. See the next section.

MS-DOS file managers and utility suites

Because most of the very early IBM PC and compatibles lack any common true graphical capability (they only shared the 80-column basic text mode compatible with the original MDA display adapter), a series of file managers arose, including Microsoft’s DOS Shell, which features typical GUI elements as menus, push buttons, lists with scrollbars and mouse pointer. The name Text user interface was later invented to name this kind of interface. Many MS-DOS text mode applications, like the default text editor for MS-DOS 5.0 (and related tools, like QBasic), also shared the same philosophy. The IBM DOS Shell included with IBM DOS 5.0 (circa 1992) supported both text display modes and actual graphics display modes, making it both a TUI and a GUI, depending on the chosen mode.

Advanced file managers for MS-DOS were able to redefine character shapes with EGA and better display adapters, giving some basic low resolution icons and graphical interface elements, including an arrow (instead of a coloured cell block) for the mouse pointer. When the display adapter lacks the ability to change the character’s shapes, they default to the CP437 character set found in the adapter’s ROM. Some popular utility suites for MS-DOS, as Norton Utilities (pictured) and PC Tools used these techniques as well.

DESQview was a text mode multitasking program introduced in July 1985. Running on top of MS-DOS, it allowed users to run multiple DOS programs concurrently in windows. It was the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to a DOS environment in which existing DOS programs could be used. DESQview was not a true GUI but offered certain components of one, such as resizable, overlapping windows and mouse pointing.

Applications under MS-DOS with proprietary true GUIs

To take the maximum advantage possible in lack of a true common GUI under MS-DOS, the most of the graphical applications which worked with EGA, VGA and better graphic cards had proprietary built-in GUIs, before the MS-Windows age. One of the best known was Deluxe Paint, a popular painting software with a typical WIMP interface.

The original Adobe Acrobat Reader executable file for MS-DOS was able to run on both the standard Windows 3.x GUI and the standard DOS command prompt. When it was launched from the command prompt, it provides its own true GUI (on VGA), which provides the full of its functionality to read PDF files.

Microsoft Windows (16-bit versions)

Windows 1.0 was a GUI for the MS-DOS operating system that had been the OS of choice for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. Windows 2.0 followed, but it wasn’t until the 1990 launch of Windows 3.0, based on Common User Access that its popularity truly exploded. The GUI has seen minor redesigns since, mainly the networking enabled Windows 3.11 and its Win32s 32-bit patch. The 16-bit line of MS Windows were discontinued with the introduction of Windows 95 and Windows NT 32-bit based architecture in the 1990s. See the next section.

The main window of a given application can occupy the full screen in ”maximized” status. The users must then to switch between maximized applications using the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut; no alternative with the mouse except for de-maximize. When none of the running application windows is maximized, switching can be done by clicking on a partially visible window, as is the common way in other GUIs.

In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement of the LISA and Apple Macintosh GUI. The court case lasted 4 years before almost all of Apple’s claims were denied on a contractual technicality. Subsequent appeals by Apple were also denied. Microsoft and Apple apparently entered a final, private settlement of the matter in 1997.

GEOS

GEOS was launched in 1986. Originally written for the 8-bit home computer Commodore 64 and shortly after, the Apple II series it was later ported to IBM PC systems. It came with several application programs like a calendar and word processor, and a cut-down version served as the basis for America Online’s DOS client. Compared to the competing Windows 3.0 GUI it could run reasonably well on simpler hardware. But it was targeted at 8-bit machines and the 16-bit computer age was dawning.

The X Window System

The standard windowing system in the Unix world is the X Window System (commonly X11 or X), first released in the mid-1980s. The W Window System (1983) was the precursor to X; X was developed at MIT as Project Athena. Its original purpose was to allow users of the newly emerging graphic terminals to access remote graphics workstations without regard to the workstation’s operating system or the hardware. Due largely to the availability of the source code used to write X, it has become the standard layer for management of graphical and input/output devices and for the building of both local and remote graphical interfaces on virtually all Unix, Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, with the notable exception of Mac OS X.

X allows a graphical terminal user to make use of remote resources on the network as if they were all located locally to the user by running a single module of software called the X server. The software running on the remote machine is called the client application. X’s network transparency protocols allow the display and input portions of any application to be separated from the remainder of the application and ‘served up’ to any of a large number of remote users. X is available today as free software.

NeWS

The PostScript-based NeWS (Network extensible Window System) was developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980′s. For several years SunOS included a window system combining NeWS and the X Window System. Although NeWS was considered technically elegant by some commentators, Sun eventually dropped the product. Unlike X, NeWS was always proprietary software.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article History of the graphical user interface, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Apple advertises the Services menu in connection with other features of its operating system. For example, it’s possible to desktop search for a piece of text by selecting it with the mouse and using the service from Spotlight. Other central services are Grab for taking screenshots, and the system spell checker. The concept is similar to a GUI equivalent of a Unix pipe, allowing arbitrary data to be processed and passed between programs.

Services can be implemented as application services, which expose a portion of the functionality of an application to operate on selected data, usually without displaying an interface, or they may be standalone services which are small utilities to manipulate data, such as transforming the case of selected text or cropping an image to use as an icon. Their simple, one-purpose nature and the fact that they don’t require a GUI to be designed makes writing standalone services popular beginner’s Mac OS X programming projects

Since many applications install their entries without asking the user, the OS X services menu tends to clog up with dozens of entries quickly. Most users only will ever use a small subset of the possible options, therefore cutting down and customizing the menu makes it both faster and more pleasant to use. Prior to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, third party software is required to do this; in Snow Leopard, the Services menu can be customized from the Keyboard pane of System Preferences.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Services menu, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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On the original Mac OS, optional features and services were provided by files loaded at startup time that patched the operating system; these were known as system extensions and control panels. Later versions of classic Mac OS augmented these with fully-fledged faceless background applications: regular applications that ran in the background. To the user, these were still described as regular system extensions.

Mac OS X, being a Unix system, has daemons. There is a category of software called ”services” as well, but these are different in concept from Windows’ services.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Daemon (computer software), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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BALL (Biochemical Algorithms Library) is an extensive open source C++ framework of algorithms and data structures for molecular modelling and computational structural bioinformatics. The library also offers a Python scripting interface. Among the supported systems are Linux, Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and MacOS X. The library is supplemented with command-line utilities and supports display with Qt and OpenGL as well.

There is a molecular viewer BALLView developed by the same team, which allows viewing and editing several other molecular file formats, e.g., PDB, HIN, MOL2 and many more. It is the visulization component of BALL. Both BALL and BALLView are available under LGPL and GPL licences. The programs are developed and maintained by the groups of Hans-Peter Lenhof, Oliver Kohlbacher and Andreas Hildebrandt. BALLView is an application written in C++ that uses BALL for molecular modeling and visualizing molecular models. It is available under the GPL license for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article BALL, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Apple’s Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server running 10.3.6 both with the Common Criteria Tools Package installed were certified at CAPP/EAL3 in January 2005. [http://niap.nist.gov/cc-scheme/vpl/vpl_type.html#operatingsystem][http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/commoncriteriatools.html]

Apple’s Mac OS X & Mac OS X Server running the latest version 10.4.6 have not yet been fully evaluated however the Common Criteria Tools package is available.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Security-evaluated operating system, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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