White and blue are two principal colors which define the Aqua style. Title bars, window backgrounds, buttons, menus and other interface elements are all found in white, and some, like scrollbars and menu items, are accented with a shade of blue. Most of the interface elements have a “glass” or “gel” effect applied to them; for instance, David Pogue described the original Aqua scrollbars as “lickable globs of Crest Berrylicious Toothpaste Gel”.

Interface elements

All Mac OS X Cocoa interface elements (‘controls’) and their NEXTSTEP class name are given below. Most of the controls are available in three sizes: regular, small and mini.

Windows

Both the standard Aqua-themed pinstriped windows (NSWindow) and the brushed metal windows appear to have the title bar buttons sunken into the window, however in versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.2, the buttons appeared to be on top of the pinstriped windows. Brushed metal windows also have more plastic-like buttons. Mac OS X also allows users to choose a Graphite version instead of a Blue version of the interface. (In Graphite, window controls appear silverish-grey instead of red, yellow, and green.)

Toolbars, defined as NSToolbar, are available in two types: standard or unified. Standard retains the normal Aqua title bar and simply places a row of icons below it, whilst the unified look extends the title bar downwards and places icons on top of it, as if the window has one large title bar.

Sheets, which are modal windows, are also defined as NSWindow. When opened, they are thrust towards the user like a sheet of paper, hence the name. They are partially transparent and focus attention on the content of the sheet. The parent window’s controls are disabled until the sheet is dismissed, but the user is able to continue work in other windows (including those in the same application) whilst the sheet is open.

Menus

Menus are backed with a slightly translucent solid gray, and when menu items are highlighted they appear blue. In application menus, which run in a single bar across the top of the screen, keyboard shortcuts appear to the right-hand side of the menu whilst the actual menu item is on the left.

Drop down menus for use in windows themselves (NSPopUpButton) are also available in several varieties. The standard “pop up” menu is white with a blue end cap with opposing arrows, whilst ‘pull down’ menus only have one downward facing arrow in the end cap. ‘Pull down’ menus are available four different Aqua varieties, most of which have fallen into disuse with subsequent Mac OS X releases.

Text boxes and fields

Text boxes are black on white text with a sunken effect border, and are classed as NSTextField. In addition to regular square text boxes, rounded search text boxes are available (NSSearchField). For more extensive text requirements, NSTextView provides a larger, multi-line text field. A combined text box and pull down menu is available, NSComboBox, which allows the user to type in a value in addition to choosing from a menu. NSDatePicker is a combination textbox and picker control, which allows the user to type in a date and time or edit it with directional buttons. NSTokenField was introduced with Mac OS X v10.4, and allows the user to drag non-editable ‘tokens’ to a text box, between which text can be typed. Whitespace before and after the tokens is trimmed.

Push buttons

Standard push buttons with rounded corners are available in two varieties: white and blue. A blue button is the default action, and will appear to “pulse” to prompt the user to carry out that action. The action of a blue button can usually also be invoked with the return key. White buttons are usually associated with all other actions.

Also available are rounded bevel buttons, designed to hold an icon; standard square buttons; glass square buttons and round buttons. In addition, circular, purple online help buttons are available which display help relative to the current task when clicked. All types of button are classed as NSButton. Disclosure triangles, although technically buttons, allow views of controls to be shown and hidden to preserve space.

Checkboxes and radio buttons

In Mac OS X, empty check boxes are small, white rounded rectangles. When they are checked, they turn blue and a check is present. They are defined as NSButtons, in essence they are buttons which can be toggled on or off. Radio buttons are similar in appearance and behaviour except they are circular and contain a dot instead of a check. Radio button groups are defined as NSMatrices containing radio buttons defined as NSButtons.

Tables and lists

Tables and lists can be broadly categorised in three ways: NSTableView, a standard multi-columnar table with space to enter values or place other interface elements such as buttons; NSOutlineView, which is the same as NSTableView except it can contain disclosure triangles to show and hide sets of data; and NSBrowser, akin to the column view in the Finder. All table views can use alternating blue and white row backgrounds.

Progress indicators

Two main types of progress indicator are available: a progress bar or a spinning wheel (not the “beachball” wait cursor). Both are defined as NSProgressIndicator. The progress bar itself is available in two varieties: indeterminate, which simply shows diagonal blue and white stripes in animation with no measure of progress; or determinate, which shows a blue pulsing bar against a white background proportional to the percentage of a task completed. The spinning wheel indicator, also found in the Mac OS X startup screen, is simply a series of lines of various tones arranged in a circle spinning, like the side view of a rotating spoked wheel. Many other interfaces have adopted this device, including the Firefox web browser and many web sites.

Miscellaneous

Sliders are available in three types: one with tick marks and a triangular scrubber, one with a round scrubber and no tick marks and a circular slider which can be rotated. All are defined as NSSlider, and are available horizontally or vertically. The circular slider is simply a gray dot on a white circle which can be rotated to set values.

Mac OS X has a standard control for picking colors, NSColorWell, which appears as a regular square button with a color sample in the middle. When clicked, it shows the standard Mac OS X color palette.

Tab views (NSTabView) in Mac OS X appear to be sunken into the window, and are shaded darker and darker each time a new tab view is added inside another. The tabs appear in a row along the top of the sunken area, and are simply a series of white toggle buttons. The currently selected tab is blue. NSBox is a similar control, used to group interface elements, and uses the same sunken appearance, except without tabs. Image “wells” are also available (NSImageView), a small, sunken container into which image files can be dropped.

Fonts

Apple uses the Lucida Grande font as the standard system font in various sizes and weights. Some areas of the operating system such as editable text areas use another font, Helvetica by default. Mac OS X makes use of system-wide font anti-aliasing to make edges appear smoother.

Animation

Aqua makes heavy use of animation. Examples include:

* Dock icons bounce up and down as their corresponding applications are launched.

* Dock icons also bounce up and down, in a different rhythm, when a background application requires the user’s attention.

* Dock icons increase in size when approached by the cursor. This feature (called “magnification”) is optional.

* When minimized, windows are “sucked” into the Dock using the “Genie effect” or “Scale effect.” Both of the effects are customizable by the user. The former makes a window turn into a curvy shape so it looks like reverse animation of a genie exiting a lamp, and the latter scales down the window until it is small enough to be in the dock. Using the shift key, both effects can be seen in slow motion. These keystrokes can also be applied to other Aqua effects such as Dashboard, Exposé and Front Row. Holding control as well as shift makes the minimize effect take twice as long as just holding shift. There is another undocumented dock effect called “Suck” which can be enabled by hand editing a configuration file.[http://osxdaily.com/2007/04/12/change-the-minimize-effect-in-mac-os-x/]; this, however, appears to be the effect which accompanies removing widgets from the Dashboard.

* When a folder on the desktop is opened or closed, the corresponding Finder window appears to come from, or disappears into, the folder icon.

* Sheets are “posted” out of Metal, Unified or Leopard window title bars. A dark rectangular slot is drawn on the window so it appears that a dialog box is in fact a sheet of paper being thrust towards the user.

* Dashboard widgets appear with a “ripple” effect, as if being dropped onto the surface of a pond. When removed, Widgets are sucked into the close button as if being drawn into a vacuum. This effect can be applied on windows being minimized to the Dock[http://osxdaily.com/2007/04/12/change-the-minimize-effect-in-mac-os-x/].

* The contents of a stack will appear to spring out from behind the icon when clicked.

* In the Public Beta of Mac OS X, docked items dragged on to the desktop simply appeared to ‘drop’ on to the desktop. This behaviour was changed with Mac OS X 10.0; from this release onward items dragged off the dock would ‘disappear’ in a cartoon-like puff of smoke, an effect which is used in various places in the system (such as Safari’s Bookmarks Bar and iPhoto’s tag removal).

Many of these effects can be turned off by the user or are only available on supporting hardware.

System integration and standardization

There are a series of Mac OS X features which are standardized across the operating system to make the system more accessible, so the user does not have to learn multiple ways of doing the same thing. Included amongst these features are:

* Services menu – found in the application menu of most applications, which gives the user access to features of other applications

* Palettes – Many palettes are repeated across the system, including:

** Color – The Mac OS X color picker includes multiple ways of choosing colors, including a color wheel, sliders, a wax crayon view, and a “magnifying glass” to select a color from anywhere on the screen

** Fonts – The Mac OS X font picker gives the user access to advanced typography features like ligatures and shadows in any program which allows the formatting of text,

** Character Palette – Found as “Special Characters” in the Edit menus of most applications, allows the user to insert characters they are unable to insert with the keyboard

* Open, Save and Print dialogs – Standard in many applications, and usually use a sheet view

Underlying technology

Aqua is powered by the Quartz Compositor, the Mac OS X window server.

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

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The Apple II family of the 1980s

Apple now had two separate, incompatible platforms: the Apple II, an affordable, expandable home computer, and the Apple Macintosh, the closed platform for professionals. John Gruber, among others, has speculated that this platform incompatibility was the main reason the Macintosh did not share the initial commercial success which was experienced by the Apple II in the late 1970s. However, by the mid – 1980s, the Apple II was now competing with the IBM PC and its clones, and a new energy was focused upon marketing the Macintosh.

Thus, Apple continued to sell both lines promoting them to different market segments: the Macintosh to colleges, college students, and knowledge workers, and the Apple II to home users and public schools. A few months after introducing the Mac, Apple released a compact version of the Apple II called the Apple IIc. And in 1986 Apple introduced the Apple IIgs, an Apple II positioned as something of a hybrid product with a mouse-driven, Mac-like operating environment. Apple II computers remained an important part of Apple’s business until they were discontinued in the early 1990s.

The Mac family

At the same time, the Mac was becoming a product family of its own. The original model evolved into the Mac Plus in 1986 and spawned the Mac SE and the Mac II in 1987 and the Mac Classic and Mac LC in 1990. Meanwhile, Apple attempted its first portable Macs: the failed Macintosh Portable in 1989 and then the more popular PowerBook in 1991, a landmark product that established the modern form and ergonomic

On February 19, 1987, Apple registered the “Apple.com” domain name, making it one of the first hundred companies to register a .com address on the nascent Internet.

The early-mid 1990s

In the late 1980s, Apple’s fiercest technological rivals were the Amiga and Atari ST platforms. But by the 1990s, computers based on the IBM PC had become more popular than all three; they finally had a comparable GUI thanks to Windows 3.0, and were out-competing Apple.

Apple’s response to the PC threat was a profusion of new Macintosh lines including Quadra, Centris, and Performa. Unfortunately, these new lines were marketed poorly. For one, there were too many models, differentiated by very minor graduations in their tech specs. The excess of arbitrary model numbers confused many consumers and hurt Apple’s reputation for simplicity. Apple’s retail resellers like Sears and CompUSA often failed to sell or even competently display these Macs. Compounding matters was the fact while the machines were cheaper than a comparable PC (counting all the things built in which had to be added to the ‘bare bones PC’) the poor marketing gave the impression that the machines were more expensive.

In 1991, Apple partnered with long-time competitor IBM to form the AIM alliance. The ultimate goal was to create a revolutionary new computing platform, known as PReP, which would use IBM and Motorola hardware and Apple software. As the first step toward the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM’s PowerPC processor. These processors used a RISC architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 680X0 series that were used by all previous Macs. Parts of Apple’s operating system software were rewritten so that most software written for older Macs could run in emulation on the PowerPC series.

In addition to computers, Apple has also produced consumer devices. In 1993, Apple released the Newton, an early PDA. Though it failed commercially, it defined and launched the category and was a forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and Pocket PC.

1997: The Return of Jobs

In 1996, the struggling NeXT company beat out Be Inc.’s BeOS in its bid to sell its operating system to Apple. Apple purchased Steve Jobs’ company, NeXT on December 10, 1996, and its NeXTstep operating system. This would not only bring Steve Jobs back to Apple’s management, but NeXT technology would become the foundation of the Mac OS X operating system.

On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Store, an online retail store based upon the WebObjects application server the company had acquired in its purchase of NeXT. The new direct sales outlet was also tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy.

CEO

On July 9, 1997, Gail Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12 year record low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO to begin a critical restructuring of the company’s product line. He would eventually become CEO and has served in that position to the present day.

The Microsoft deal

At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into partnership with Microsoft. Included in this was a five-year commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well a US$150 million investment in Apple. It was also announced that Internet Explorer would be shipped as the default browser on the Macintosh. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates appeared at the expo on-screen, further explaining Microsoft’s plans for the software they were developing for Mac, and stating that he was very excited to be helping Apple return to success. After this, Steve Jobs said this to the audience at the expo:

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

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Acorn Computers

An early implementation of the taskbar concept is seen in Acorn Computers Arthur operating system, which was released in 1987 for their Acorn Archimedes computer. It is called the ”Iconbar” and remains an essential part of Arthur’s succeeding RISC OS operating system. The Iconbar holds icons which represent mounted disc drives and RAM discs, running applications and system utilities. These icons have their own context-sensitive menus and support drag and drop behaviour.

Unix and Unix-like=

KDE

In various KDE distributions, the taskbar is run by the Kicker program, which shows rectangular ”panels” that can contain ”applets”, one of which is the taskbar. Applets can be arbitrarily relocated, for instance, the notification area can be moved away from the taskbar. The bar can be placed not only at the bottom, but also at the top or (vertically) at the left or the right and its size can be altered (from 24 to 256 pixels), as well as the length in % of the screen size. And several other bars with various specific functions can be added in different locations, e.g., one bar at the left and one at the right or even overlapping (one fixed and one with automatic hiding).

Since KDE 4, the taskbar is implemented as a Plasma widget.

GNOME

Similarly, the GNOME desktop environment uses its own type of taskbar, known as panels (the program responsible for them is therefore called gnome-panel). By default, GNOME usually contains two full-width panels at the top and bottom of the screen. The top

The bottom panel is commonly empty by default, other than a set of buttons to navigate between desktops and a button to minimize all windows and show the desktop, due to its use in the navigation between windows (windows minimize to the bottom panel by default).

These panels can be populated with other customizable menus and buttons, including new menus, search boxes, and icons to perform quick-launch like functions. Other applications can also be attached to the panels, and the contents of the panels can be moved, removed, or configured in other ways.

Window managers that provide an integrated taskbar

* fluxbox

* fvwm95

* icewm

* jwm

* qvwm

* windowlab

Other Unix environments

There are many programs that offer standalone taskbars for desktop environments or window managers without one. Example include pypanel, fbpanel, perlpanel, tint2, and others.

Apple Macintosh computers

The Dock, as featured in Mac OS X and its predecessor NEXTSTEP, is also a kind of taskbar. The Mac OS X Dock is application-oriented instead of window-oriented. Each running application is represented by one icon in the Dock regardless of how many windows it has on screen. A textual menu can be opened by right-clicking on the dock icon that gives access to an application’s windows, among other functions determined by the app. Minimized windows also appear in the dock, in the rightmost section, represented by a graphical thumbnail. The trash can is also represented in the Dock, as a universal metaphor for deletion. For example, dragging selected text to the trash should remove the text from the document and create a clipping file in the trash.

The right side of OS X’s Menu bar also contains several notification widgets and quick access functions, called Menu extras.

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

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Initially designed to run on AT&T Hobbit-based hardware, BeOS was later modified to run on PowerPC-based processors: first Be’s own systems, later Apple, Inc.’s PowerPC Reference Platform and Common Hardware Reference Platform, with the hope that Apple would purchase or license BeOS as a replacement for its then aging Mac OS Classic. Apple CEO Gil Amelio started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but negotiations stalled when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée wanted $200 million; Apple was unwilling to offer any more than $125 million. Apple’s board of directors decided NeXTSTEP was a better choice and purchased NeXT in 1996 for $429 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. To further complicate matters for Be, Apple refused to disclose certain architectural information about its G3 line of computers—information Be deemed critical to making BeOS work on the latest Apple hardware.

In 1997, Power Computing began bundling BeOS (on a CD for optional installation) with its line of PowerPC-based Macintosh clones. These systems could dual boot either the Mac OS or BeOS, with a start-up screen offering the choice.

Due to Apple’s moves and the mounting debt of Be Inc., BeOS was soon ported to the Intel x86 platform with its R3 release in March 1998. Through the late 1990s, BeOS managed to create a niche of followers, but the company failed to remain viable. As a last-ditch effort to increase interest in the failing operating system, Be Inc. released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5 known as BeOS Personal Edition (BeOS PE). BeOS PE could be sta

Be Inc. also released a stripped-down version of BeOS for Internet Appliances (BeIA), which soon became the company’s business focus in place of BeOS. BeOS PE and BeIA proved to be too little too late, and in 2001 Be’s intellectual property was sold to Palm, Inc. for some $11 million. BeOS R5 is considered the last official version, but BeOS R5.1 “Dano”, which was under development before Be’s sale to Palm and included the BeOS Networking Environment (BONE) networking stack, was leaked to the public shortly after the company’s demise.

In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured to not market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. BeOS also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.’s initial public offering (IPO). The case was eventually settled out of court with no admission of liability on Microsoft’s part.

After the split from Palm, PalmSource used parts of BeOS’ multimedia framework for their failed Palm OS Cobalt product. With the takeover of PalmSource, the BeOS rights now belong to Access Co.

Continuation

Despite the end of Be Inc., BeOS has devoted followers. The BeOS community still develops free software and has even released patches, drivers and various updates to BeOS. The main source of BeOS-related software can be found at BeBits.

The BeOS user interface was notable at the time for being almost completely unthemeable, even with third party hacks. The BeOS theme of yellow, changing length tabs on the top of windows, and relatively plain grey interface widgets was enforced. This UI remained relatively unchanged from 1995, but had been completely overhauled by the time of the leaked ”Dano” release. An Easter egg in the OS allowed changing the title bar look-and-feel to a few others (Mac OS 8, Amiga Workbench, and Windows 98 appearances) and in ”Dano”, this had been extended to be a feature allowing changing of the title bar and scroll bars. No other interface widgets could be changed. There is a pre-Dano third party program WindowShade that allows the colors of the title bar and window frame to be changed, but the appearance remained the same.

The plain BeOS R5 GUI is commonly cloned, for example with themes for the GNOME or KDE desktop environment.

Version history

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

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1979 to 1984: Development

The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh, but the name had to be changed for legal reasons as it was too close, phonetically, to that of the McIntosh audio equipment manufacturer. Steve Jobs requested a release of the name so that Apple could use it but this was denied forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use the name. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype. Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple’s Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included George Crow, Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, Bruce Horn, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, Guy Kawasaki, Daniel Kottke, and Jerry Manock.

Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64& kilobytes (KB) of RAM, used the Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256 pixel black-and-white bitmap display. Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whethe

The design caught the attention of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and team member Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group’s own ideas. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the “Snow White” design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers. However, Jobs’ leadership at the Macintosh project did not last; after an internal power struggle with new CEO John Sculley, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found NeXT, another computer company, and did not return until 1997 when Apple acquired NeXT.

1984: Introduction

The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984″. The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece.” “1984″ used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on her white tank top) as a means of saving humanity from the “conformity” of IBM’s attempts to dominate the computer industry. The ad alludes to George Orwell’s novel, ”Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.”

Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. It was first demonstrated by Steve Jobs in the first of his famous Mac Keynote speeches, and though the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, some labeled it a mere “toy.” Because the operating system was designed largely around the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten. This was a time consuming task that many software developers chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft’s MultiPlan migrated over from MS-DOS, with Microsoft Word following in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz for the Macintosh platform after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year with the lemmings ad. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, it was not successful.

For a special post-election edition of ”Newsweek” in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,200 in 2010).

1985 to 1989: Desktop publishing era

In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple’s LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software’s MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as desktop publishing. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for Commodore 64 (GEOS) and IBM PC users as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator strengthened the Mac’s position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.

The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or the means to attach one easily. In October 1985, Apple increased the Mac’s memory to 512& KB, but it was inconvenient and difficult to expand the memory of a 128& KB Mac. In an attempt to improve connectivity, Apple released the Macintosh Plus on January 10, 1986 for US$2,600. It offered one megabyte of RAM, expandable to four, and a then-revolutionary SCSI parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its floppy drive was increased to an 800& KB capacity. The Mac Plus was an immediate success and remained in production, unchanged, until October 15, 1990; on sale for just over four years and ten months, it was the longest-lived Macintosh in Apple’s history.

Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the Macintosh II, which used a Motorola 68020 processor. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color QuickDraw in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were an ability to handle any display size, any color depth, and multiple monitors. Other issues remained, particularly the low processor speed and limited graphics ability, which had hobbled the Mac’s ability to make inroads into the business computing market.

The Macintosh II marked the start of a new direction for the Macintosh, as now, for the first time, it had an open architecture, with several expansion slots, support for color graphics, and a modular break-out design similar to that of the IBM PC and inspired by Apple’s other line, the expandable Apple II series. It had an internal hard drive and a power supply with a fan, which was initially fairly loud. One third-party developer sold a device to regulate fan speed based on a heat sensor, but it voided the warranty. Later Macintosh computers had quieter power supplies and hard drives.

In September 1986 Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop, or MPW that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross-developing from a Lisa. In August 1987 Apple unveiled HyperCard, and introduced MultiFinder, which added cooperative multitasking to the Macintosh. In the Fall Apple bundled both with every Macintosh.

The Macintosh SE was released at the same time as the Macintosh II, as the first compact Mac with a 20& MB internal hard drive and one expansion slot. The SE also updated Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama’s original design and shared the Macintosh II’s ”Snow White” design language, as well as the new Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the Apple IIGS some months earlier.

In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as Claris. It was given the code and rights to several applications that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and MacProject. In the late 1980s, Claris released a number of revamped software titles; the result was the “Pro” series, including MacPaint Pro, MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro, and FileMaker Pro. To provide a complete office suite, Claris purchased the rights to the Informix Wingz spreadsheet on the Mac, renaming it Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation software Claris Impact. By the early 1990s, Claris applications were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released ClarisWorks, which soon became their second best-selling application. When Claris was reincorporated back into Apple in 1998, ClarisWorks was renamed AppleWorks beginning with version 5.0.

Microsoft Windows 3.0, which began to approach the Macintosh operating system in both performance and feature set, was released in May 1990 and was a usable, less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple’s response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The Macintosh Classic, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh Plus, was the least expensive Mac until early 2001. The 68020-powered Macintosh LC, in its distinctive “pizza box” case, offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512 × 384 pixel monitor. The Macintosh IIsi was essentially a IIci with only one expansion slot. All three machines sold well, although Apple’s profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.

Apple’s microchips improved. The Macintosh Classic II and Macintosh LC II, which used a 68030 CPU, were joined in 1991 by the Macintosh Quadra 700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster Motorola 68040 processor. In 1994, Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the RISC PowerPC architecture developed by the AIM alliance of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola. The Power Macintosh line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months.

Apple replaced the Macintosh Portable in 1991 with the first of the PowerBook line: the PowerBook 100, a miniaturized Portable; the 68030 PowerBook 140; and the 68030 PowerBook 170. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a trackball) in front of the keyboard. The 1993 PowerBook 165c was Apple’s first portable computer to feature a color screen, specifically 8-bits with pixels. The second-generation of PowerBooks, the 500 series, introduced the trackpad in 1994.

As for Mac OS, System 7 was a 32-bit rewrite that introduced virtual memory, and improved the handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and co-operative multitasking. Also during this time, the Macintosh began to shed the “Snow White” design language, along with the expensive consulting fees they were paying to Frogdesign, in favor of bringing the work in-house by establishing the Apple Industrial Design Group. They became responsible for to crafting a new look to go with the new operating system and all other Apple products.

Despite these technical and commercial successes, Microsoft and Intel began to rapidly lower Apple’s market share with the Windows 95 operating system and Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of IBM PC compatible computers, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac GUI. Furthermore, Apple had created too many similar models that confused potential buyers. At one point Apple offered Classics, LCs, IIs, Quadras, Performas, and Centrises. These models competed against the Macintosh clones, hardware manufactured by third-parties that ran Apple’s System 7. This succeeded in increasing the Macintosh’s market share somewhat and provided cheaper hardware for consumers, but hurt Apple financially.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as version 7.7 be branded Mac OS 8 (in place of the never-to-appear Copland OS). Since Apple had licensed only System 7 to third-parties, this move effectively ended the clone line. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like Motorola, who produced the StarMax, Umax, who produced the SuperMac, and Power Computing Corporation, who offered several lines Mac clones, including PowerWave, PowerTower, and PowerTower Pro. These companies had invested substantial resources in creating their own Mac-compatible hardware.

1998 to 2005: New beginnings

In 1998, a year after Steve Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh called the iMac. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later many other colors, is considered an industrial design hallmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple’s standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as SCSI and ADB, in favor of two USB ports. It also had no internal floppy disk drive and instead used compact discs for removable storage. It proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 139 days, making the company an annual profit of US$309 million—Apple’s first profitable year since Michael Spindler took over as CEO in 1995. The “blue and white” aesthetic was applied to the Power Macintosh, and then to a new product: the iBook. Introduced in July 1999, the iBook was Apple’s first consumer-level laptop computer. More than 140,000 pre-orders were placed before it started shipping in September, and by October it was as much a sales hit as the iMac. Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the Power Mac G4 Cube, the eMac for the education market and PowerBook G4 laptop for professionals. The original iMac used a G3 processor, but the upgrades to G4 and then to G5 chips were accompanied by a new design, dropping the array of colors in favor of white plastic. Current iMacs use aluminum enclosures. On January 11, 2005, Apple announced the release of the Mac Mini priced at US$499, the least expensive Mac to date.

Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, including retrofits such as the addition of a nanokernel and support for Multiprocessing Services 2.0 in Mac OS 8.6. Ultimately its dated architecture made replacement necessary. As such, Apple introduced Mac OS X, a fully overhauled Unix-based successor to Mac OS 9, using Darwin, XNU, and Mach as foundations, and based on NEXTSTEP. Mac OS X was not released to the public until September 2000, as the Mac OS X Public Beta, with an Aqua interface. At US$29.99, it allowed adventurous Mac users to sample Apple’s new operating system and provide feedback for the actual release. The initial release of Mac OS X, 10.0 (nicknamed Cheetah), was released on March 24, 2001. Older Mac OS applications could still run under early Mac OS X versions, using an environment called Classic. Subsequent releases of Mac OS X were 10.1 “Puma” (September 25, 2001), 10.2 “Jaguar” (August 24, 2002), 10.3 “Panther” (October 24, 2003), 10.4 “Tiger” (April 29, 2005), 10.5 “Leopard” (October 26, 2007), and 10.6 “Snow Leopard” (August 28, 2009). Leopard and Snow Leopard each received certification as a Unix implementation by The Open Group.

2006 onward: Intel era

Apple discontinued the use of PowerPC microprocessors in 2006. At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs revealed this transition and also noted that Mac OS X was in development to run both on Intel and PowerPC architecture from the very beginning. All new Macs now use x86 processors made by Intel, and some Macs were given new names to signify the switch. Intel-based Macs can run pre-existing software developed for PowerPC using an emulator called Rosetta, although at noticeably slower speeds than native programs, and the Classic environment is unavailable. With the release of Intel-based Mac computers, the potential to natively run Windows-based operating systems on Apple hardware without the need for emulation software such as Virtual PC was introduced. In March 2006, a group of hackers announced that they were able to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac. The group released their software as open source and has posted it for download on their website. On April 5, 2006 Apple announced the public beta availability of their own Boot Camp software which allows owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP on their machines; later versions added support for Windows Vista. Boot Camp became a standard feature in Mac OS X 10.5, while support for Classic was dropped from PowerPC Macs.

Apple’s recent industrial design has shifted to favor aluminum and glass, which is billed as environmentally friendly. The iMac and MacBook Pro lines use aluminum enclosures, and both are now made of a single unibody. Chief designer Jonathan Ive continues to guide products towards a minimalist and simple feel, including the elimination of replaceable batteries in notebooks. Multi-touch gestures from the iPhone’s interface have been applied to the Mac line in the form of touch pads on notebooks and the Magic Mouse for desktops.

In recent years, Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macs. Many claim that this is due, in part, to the success of the iPod, a halo effect whereby satisfied iPod owners purchase more Apple equipment. The inclusion of the Intel chips is also a factor. From 2001 to 2008, Mac sales increased continuously on an annual basis. Apple reported sales of 3.36 million Macs during the 2009 holiday season.

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

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Pre-foundation

By the early 1980s, Apple Computer faced increasing competition.

While the Apple II was already established as a successful business-ready platform because of Visicalc, Apple was not content. The Apple III (Apple 3) was designed to take on the IBM PC in the business environment.

The Apple III was a relatively conservative design for computers of the era. However, Steve Jobs did not want the computer to have a fan; rather, he wanted the heat generated by the electronics to be dissipated through the chassis of the machine, forgoing the cooling fan.

Unfortunately, the physical design of the case was not sufficient to cool the components inside it. By removing the fan from the design, the Apple III was prone to overheating. This caused the integrated circuit chips to disconnect from the motherboard. Customers who contacted Apple customer service were told to “drop the computer on the desk”, which would cause the ICs to fall back in to place.

Thousands of Apple III computers were recalled and, although a new model was introduced in 1983 to rectify the problems, the damage was already done.

The Apple IPO

On December 12, 1980, Apple launched the Initial Public Offering of its stock to the investing public. When Apple went public, it generated more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly created more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history. Several venture capitalists cashed out, reaping billions in long-term capital gains.

In January 1981, Apple held its first shareholders

Steve Jobs started his prepared speech, but after being interrupted by voting several times, he dropped his prepared speech and delivered a long, emotionally charged talk about betrayal, lack of respect, and related topics.

Xerox PARC and the Lisa

While Apple Computer’s business division was focused on the Apple III, a separate group was focused on a computer that would change the world. While the Apple III was another iteration of the text-based computer, this new machine would feature a completely different interface and introduce the words ”mouse”, ”icon”, and ”desktop” into the lexicon of the computing public.

In December, 1979, Steve Jobs and a group of Apple Computer engineers toured the Xerox PARC laboratories and witnessed Xerox’s research into the GUI as demonstrated on the Alto computer. It was this moment that Steve Jobs realized that the future of computers was in the GUI, rather than the standard text-based interface.

In return for the right to buy US$1,000,000 of pre-IPO stock, Xerox granted Apple Computer three days access to the PARC facilities. After visiting PARC, they came away with new ideas that would complete the foundation for Apple Computer’s first GUI computer, the Apple Lisa. (Popular folklore states that “Lisa” was Steve Jobs’ first daughter; Apple maintains it means Locally Integrated Software Architecture.)

Apple Computer’s engineers did not come up with the LISA interface overnight. In fact, the first iteration of the soon-ubiquitous WIMP interface was a poorly-drawn picture of a floppy disk. It was only after months of usability testing and work that Apple settled on the LISA interface of windows and icons.

The Lisa was introduced in 1983 at a cost of US$9,995. Because of the high price, it failed to penetrate the market, however it was a useful proof of concept.

The release of the Macintosh and the 1984 commercial

The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. Its debut, however, was announced by a single national broadcast of the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial, “1984″. It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 24, 1984, and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece.” ”1984” used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother). These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, ”Nineteen Eighty-Four”, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.”

For a special post-election edition of ”Newsweek” in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about US$5,000 in 2007).

Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some, who labeled it a mere “toy”. Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that many software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft’s MultiPlan migrated over from MS-DOS, followed by Microsoft Word in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year with the lemmings ad, infamous for insulting potential customers. It was not successful.

Macintosh also spawned the concept of Mac evangelism which was pioneered by Apple employee, and later Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki.

Despite initial marketing difficulties, the Macintosh brand was eventually a success for Apple. This was due to its introduction of desktop publishing (and later computer animation) through Apple’s partnership with Adobe Systems which introduced the laser printer and Adobe PageMaker. Indeed, the Macintosh would become known as the de-facto platform for many industries including cinema, music, publishing and the arts.

While it did briefly license some of its own designs, Apple did not allow other computer makers to “clone” the Mac until the 1990s, long after Microsoft dominated the marketplace with its broad licensing program. By then, it was too late for Apple to reclaim its lost market share and the Macintosh clones achieved limited success before being axed after Steve Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997.

1985: Jobs leaves Apple

After an internal power struggle between Steve Jobs and the new CEO John Sculley in 1985, Apple’s board of directors sided with Sculley and Jobs was asked to resign. Jobs then co-founded the visual effects house, Pixar. He also went on to found NeXT Inc., a computer company that built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NeXTstep operating system. NeXTSTEP would eventually be developed into Mac OS X. While not a commercial success due in part to its high price, the NeXT computer would introduce important concepts to the history of the personal computer (including serving as the initial platform for Tim Berners-Lee as he was developing the World Wide Web).

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

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* Keyboard: Full-stroke mechanical, 85 keys,

* Mouse: 2 button opto-mechanical

* Central processing unit: Motorola 68040, 25 MHz or 33 MHz (Turbo)

* Memory: 8 MB (8 MiB) (12 MB for a NeXTstation Color), up to 32 MB in non-Turbo models, 128 MB in Turbos

* Display resolution: 1120 × 832

* Colors: NeXTstation: 4 (black, white and two shades of gray)

**NeXTstation Color: 4,096 colors (12-bit) with 4-bit alpha channel

* Digital signal processor Motorola 56001 @ 25 MHz (16 bits, 44.1 kHz, stereo, 24 kB (24 KiB) RAM upgradable to 576 kB)

* Speaker built-in the monitor

* Size/Weight: 39.8 (W) x 36.5 (D) x 6.4 (H) cm / 6 kg

* Input/Output: SCSI internal connector, SCSI2 external port, DSP, video output, proprietary port for NeXT laser printer, two RS-423 serial ports, 10BASE-T and 10BASE-2 Ethernet

* Media: 3.5 in floppy disk drive (2.88 MB (2880 KiB)), hard disk from 105 MB (105 million bytes) to 4 GB (4 billion bytes). (Larger sizes may work but the OS cannot use partitions larger than 4 GB)

* Operating System: NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP. NetBSD supports some of the NeXTstation’s hardware.

* Peripherals: Modem

* Pricing: NeXTstation US $4,995, NeXTstation Color US $7,995, NeXTstation Turbo US $6,500

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

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OS core

* Stored in ROM – This gives a fast bootup time and safety from operating system corruption. RISC OS 4 and 5 are stored in 4 MB of Flash ROM, allowing the operating system to be updated without having to replace the ROM chip.

* Module-based – The operating system is made up of a number of modules. These can be added and replaced, including soft-loading of modules not present in ROM at run time and on-the-fly replacement. This design has led to OS developers releasing rolling updates to its version of RISC OS, while third parties are able to write OS replacement modules to add new features. OS modules are accessed via software interrupts (SWIs), similar to system calls in other operating systems.

* Single user, co-operative multitasking – While most current desktop operating systems use pre-emptive multitasking (PMT) and multithreading, RISC OS remains with a co-operative multitasking system and basic pthread support. Although this is preferential for RISC OS’ many embedded applications, many users have called for the OS to migrate to PMT. The OS also has only rudimentary memory protection, and all users have full superuser privileges.

* Volume-oriented filesystem – The top level of the file hierarchy is a volume (disc, network share) prefixed by the filesystem type. The OS uses metadata to determine file type; file extensions are not used. Colons are used to separate the filesystem from the rest of the path; the root is represented by a dollar ($) sign and directories by a period (.). Extensions from foreign filesystems are shown using a forward slash (‘example.txt’ becomes ‘example/txt’). For example, ”ADFS::HardDisc4.$.” is the root of the disc named HardDisc4 using the ADFS filesystem.

* Image filing systems – A filesystem can present a file of a particular type as a volume in its own right – similar to an automatic loopback device. This allows transparent handling of archives and similar files – they just appear like a directory with some special properties, and files inside the archive (”image file”) appear in the hierarchy underneath the parent archive. It is not necessary for the archive to contain the data it refers to: some symbolic link and network share filesystems simply put a reference inside the image file and go elsewhere for the data.

* Filters and vectors – Almost everything in RISC OS has a defined ABI. The OS provides many ways the programmer can intercept and modify operation of the OS, which makes it simple to write modules that modify OS behaviour – either in the GUI or deeper. Through this mechanism there is a multitude of third-party programs which allow customising of the OS look and feel.

The Desktop

* Intuitive window manager – Launched during the time of Windows 2.0 and Mac OS System 6, the RISC OS WIMP incorporates three-buttoned mouse operation (named ‘Select’, ‘Menu’ and ‘Adjust’), context-sensitive menus, window order control (i.e. send to back) and dynamic window focus (a window can have input focus at any position on the stack).

* Icon bar – Similar to the NextStep/Mac OS X dock and the Windows taskbar, but predating both. The bar holds icons which represent mounted disc drives and RAM discs, running applications and system utilities. These icons have their own context-sensitive menus and support drag and drop behaviour. These represent the running application as a whole, irrespective of whether it has open windows.

* Filer-based – The GUI is centred around the concept of files. The Filer displays the contents of a disc. Applications are run from the Filer view, files can be double clicked to open them, and dragged to and from the Filer view from applications to save and load them.

* Full drag-and-drop support – The user is able to copy and move data between application windows and disc locations via the Filer by direct manipulation.

* Self-contained application view – Applications are represented by a directory whose name begins with an exclamation mark (pronounced pling). Double-clicking on such a directory launches the application rather than opening the directory. The application’s executable files and resources are contained within the directory, but normally they remain hidden from the user. Because applications are self-contained, this allows drag and drop installation and removal.

* Sub-pixel positioning anti-aliasing – The outline font manager provides anti-aliasing of fonts. RISC OS was one of the first operating systems to include such a feature.

* Consistent look and feel across all applications – Introduced by Acorn with RISC OS 3, the RISC OS Style Guide is a 130-page document specifying the rules on application appearance and behaviour.

Bundled applications

Applications bundled with RISC OS vary slightly between versions, but typically include:

* !Paint – a basic pixel-based drawing program

* !Draw – a vector-based (or object-based) drawing program

* !Calc – a basic calculator application

* !Edit – a text editor

* !Maestro – a simple scorewriter, with playback

* !Alarm – an iconbar clock program, with ability to set alarms

* !Chars – a special character insertion utility

* !Help – an interactive, context sensitive help feature giving help for items under the mouse pointer

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

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The concept of a ”resource manager” for graphics objects, to save memory, originated in the OOZE package on the Alto in Smalltalk-76. The concept is now largely universal in all modern operating systems. However, the concept of the resource fork remains peculiar to the Macintosh. Most operating systems used a binary file containing resources, which is then “tacked onto” the end of an existing program file. This solution is used on Microsoft Windows for instance, and similar solutions are used with the X Window System, although the resources are often left as a separate file.

Although the Windows NT NTFS can support forks (and so can be a file server for Mac files), the native feature providing that support, called an alternate data stream, (introduced for this very reason) has never been used extensively — certainly not as a true resource fork. However, Windows operating system features (such as the standard Summary tab in the Properties page for non-Office files) and Windows applications are using them more often now, and Microsoft was developing a next-generation file system that has this sort of feature as basis.

Early versions of the BeOS implemented a database within the filesystem, which could be used in a manner analogous to a resource fork. Performance issues led to a change in later releases to a system of complex filesystem attributes. Under this system resources were handled in a fashion somewhat more analogous to the Mac.

AmigaOS does not use forked files. Its executable files are internally divided into a modular structure of large

NeXT operating systems NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, and its successor, Mac OS X, and other systems like RISC OS implemented another solution. Under these systems the resources are left in an original format, for instance, pictures are included as complete TIFF files instead of being encoded into some sort of container. These resources are then placed in a directory along with the executable code and “raw data”. The directory (called a “bundle” or “application directory”) is then presented to the user as the application itself. This solution provides all of the same functionality as the resource fork, but allows the resources to be easily manipulated by any application – a “resource editor” (like ResEdit) is not needed. From the command line interface, the bundle appears to be a normal directory. This approach was not an option on the original Mac OS, since the file system (MFS) did not support folders/directories. Mac OS X does retain the classic Resource Manager API as part of its Carbon libraries for backward compatibility. However, the resources themselves can now be stored in separate data files within the filesystem — the Resource Manager now hides this implementation change from the client code.

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

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Pink

In March 1987, technical middle managers at Apple held an offsite meeting to plan the future course of Mac OS development. Ideas were written on index cards; features that seemed simple enough to implement in the short term (like adding color to the user interface) were written on blue cards, longer-term goals like multitasking on pink cards, and “far out” ideas like an object-oriented file system on red cards. Development of the ideas contained on the blue and pink cards was to proceed in parallel, and at first the two projects were known simply as “blue” and “pink”. Apple intended to have the “blue’ team (which came to call themselves the “Blue Meanies” after characters in ”Yellow Submarine”) release an updated version of the existing Macintosh operating system in the 1990–1991 timeframe, and the “pink” team to release an entirely new OS around 1993.

The “blue” team delivered what became known as System 7 on May 13, 1991, but the “pink” team suffered from second-system effect and continued to slip its release into the indefinite future. Some of the reason for this can be traced to problems that would become widespread at Apple as time went on; as “pink” became delayed, engineers on the project jumped ship to work on “blue” instead. This left the “pink” team constantly struggling for staffing and suffering from the problems associated with high employee turnover. Management ignored these sorts of technical development issues

At the same time, the recently-released NeXTSTEP was generating intense interest in the developer world. Features that were originally part of “red” were folded into “pink” and the red project (also known as “Raptor”) was eventually cancelled. This problem was also common at Apple during this period; in order to chase the next big thing, managers would allow new features to be added to their projects with little oversight, leading to enormous problems with feature creep. In the case of “pink”, development eventually slowed to the point that the project appeared moribund.

Taligent

On April 12, 1991, Apple CEO John Sculley demoed Pink running on an PS/2 Model 70 to a delegation from IBM in a top-secret mission. The system was not fully functional, but looked a lot like System 7 running on a PC. IBM proved extremely interested and over the next months the two companies formed an alliance to further development of the system. These efforts became public in early 1992, under the new name “Taligent”. At the time, Sculley summed up his concerns with Apple’s own ability to ship Pink when he stated “We want to be a major player in the computer industry, not a niche player. The only way to do that is to work with another major player.”

Infighting at the new joint company was legendary and the problems with Pink within Apple soon appeared to be minor in comparison. Apple employees made T-shirts graphically displaying their prediction that the result would be an IBM-only project, a prediction that came true on December 19, 1995 when Apple officially pulled out of the project. IBM continued working with Taligent, and eventually released its application development portions under the new name “CommonPoint”. This saw little interest and the project disappeared from IBM’s catalogs within months.

Business as usual

By modern standards, the original Mac OS was not an operating system at all, but a collection of application support libraries. There was nothing equating to a kernel that was responsible for mediating application access to limited resources like the CPU or hard drive. Instead, applications were placed in control of the entire system, using the libraries to handle common chores. Originally intended to support a single user running a single application at a time on a non-networked monochrome machine with a single floppy disk drive for storage and printing to a dot matrix printer, placing the applications in control of the system made sense, and allowed the developers to improve performance compared to a system with a kernel. The introduction of MultiFinder in 1987 greatly confused matters, placing the current application in control of not only the system, but other applications as well.

Further complicating matters was the way that new functionality was added to the system. Through the early 1990s, Apple continued to add new functionality to the system. As many of these these were optional expansions, they were generally added through a patching mechanism known as CDEVs and INITs. This mechanism had no central control to coordinate these patches, so it was not at all difficult for two extensions to interfere with each other. As they were operating at the level of the underlying OS (equivalent to a kernel patch on a modern system) these often resulted in system crashes. These sorts of problems would normally be protected against through the use of protected memory of some sort. However, as the original model of the Mac was a single-user system, the developers had made a fateful choice to share certain important bits of data between the applications and the system libraries. This was widely used within QuickDraw for instance, which allowed the system to have reasonable performance in spite of the limited hardware it ran on. This made the addition of a protected memory system very difficult – not impossible, but at the price of greatly reduced performance.

While Taligent collapsed, system development had continued on in a business as usual fashion. During the early 1990s Apple released a series of major new packages to the system, among them were QuickDraw GX, OpenTransport, OpenDoc, PowerTalk and many others. Some of these were larger than the operating system itself. Problems with stability that had existed even with small patches grew to a crescendo as the size and requirements of these packages grew, and by the mid-90s the Mac had a reputation for instability and constant crashing.

Another try

The problems with the underlying system were well known within Apple, but as long as Taligent was still a going concern, it was difficult to gain any traction. Several new projects started during this time, notably the Star Trek project which reached demo quality. Invariably these projects were cancelled for one reason or another. However, even as Apple was unable to modernize their system, others were not suffering from the same problems. By 1994 the press buzz surrounding the upcoming release of Windows 95 started to grow to a crescendo, often with questions about Apple’s response to the challenge it presented. Apple had launched a number of new initiatives in the early 1990s that had disappeared almost without notice; PowerTalk, GeoPort and CL/1 among the many examples. Press coverage turned on the company, who’s new efforts were often presented as failures in the making due to vacillating management.

Given this pressure, the collapse of Taligent, and the growing problems with the existing operating system, after System 7.5 was released in autumn 1994 Apple management decided that the decade-old Macintosh operating system had run its course. A new system addressing these problems was needed, and soon. In order to regain the trust of the press and the industry as a whole, the project simply ”had” to ship.

Since so much of the existing system would be difficult to re-write, Apple developed a two-stage approach to the problem. In the first stage, the existing system would be moved on top of a new kernel-based OS with built-in support for multitasking and protected memory. The existing libraries, like QuickDraw, would take too long to be re-written for the new system and would not be converted, so user-facing programs would not be able to take advantage of these features. Once the new kernel in place and this basic upgrade was released, development would move on to re-writing the older libraries into new forms that could run directly over the new kernel. At that point, applications would gain the modern features that would only be available from Microsoft in Windows NT.

As System 7.5 was code-named “Mozart”, the next-generation operating system that was intended to address the looming architectural issues was dubbed “Copland” after composer Aaron Copland. The follow-on system, “Gershwin”, would complete the process of moving the entire system to the new platform.

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

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