Mac OS history

   

Mac OS is the operating system used by Apple Macintosh computers. Here we examine Mac OS history, from beginnings to now.

Pre-System 6

  • System 1.0
  • System 2.0
  • System 3.0
  • System Tools 4.0 (System 3.2, Finder 5.3)
  • System Tools 5.0 (System 4.2, Finder 6.0)

All of these versions could only run one application at a time, though special application shells such as Switcher (discussed under MultiFinder) could get around this to some extent. System 1.0 and 2.0 were released with the Mac 128K and 512K respectively, and supported a flat filing system called MFS (Macintosh File System). System 3.0 introduced HFS (Hierarchical File System) which had real directories - previously the Finder created the illusion of folders on the flat file system. System 4.0 was introduced with the Mac Plus (adding SCSI support, AppleTalk, etc), and System 5.0 with the Mac SE and Macintosh II.

The other significant change that System 5.x brought to the Mac was Color QuickDraw, which debuted with the Macintosh II in 1986. This significantly altered the extent and design of the underlying graphics architecture (and its APIs), but it is a credit to Apple that most users, and perhaps more importantly existing code, were largely unaware of this.

System 6

System 6 added MultiFinder, an add-on replacement for the Finder which could run several programs at once. Time was given to the background applications only when the foreground (or "running") applications gave it up (cooperative multitasking), but in fact most of them did via a clever change on the OS's event handling. MultiFinder had been released with earlier systems, but the 6.x systems were the first to make it official and widely used.

System 6 consolidated the previous releases into a much more complete and stable operating system. It also moved the Mac to true 32-bit memory addressing - necessary with the ever increasing amounts of RAM available. Earlier systems used the lower 24 bits for addressing, and the upper 8 bits for flags. This was a neat solution on the earlier Macs with their very limited amounts of RAM, but became a liability later. Code that assumed the 24 + 8 bit addressing was "not 32-bit clean" in Apple's words, and developers were required to excise such assumptions from their code.

  • System 6.0 (Finder 6.1)
  • System 6.0.5
  • System 6.0.7 (buggy)
  • System 6.0.8 (added System 7 file & print sharing compatibility)

System 7

System 7 was a major upgrade to the Mac OS, but the core of the OS remained the same as in prior versions. Instead the new 7.x OS's included a huge number of "high level" additions, considered by some observers to be less well thought out than they might have been.

Although the name was changed to 8.x and 9.x over its history, the OS remained basically the same internally.

  • System 7.0 (released in late 1991; integrated MultiFinder into the basic OS)
  • System 7.0.1 (introduced with LC II and Quadra series)
  • System 7• (System 7 Tuner) -- update for both 7.0 and 7.0.1
  • System 7.1
  • System 7.1 Pro (version 7.1.1, combined with PowerTalk, Speech Manager & Macintalk, Thread Manager)
  • System 7.1.2 (first version for PowerMacs)
  • System 7.5 (the unofficial developer slogan for this release was "System 7.5 Sucks Less" -- a slogan which some Microsoft developers also tried to use for Windows 95)
  • System 7.5.1 (System 7.5 Update 1.0) -- strictly speaking, first Macintosh system to be called Mac OS
  • System 7.5.2 -- first version for PowerMacs that use PCI expansion cards, usable only on these Power Macs and PowerBooks 5300 and Duo 2300
  • System 7.5.3 (System 7.5 Update 2.0)
  • System 7.5.3L -- only for Mac clones
  • System 7.5.3 Revision 2
  • System 7.5.3 Revision 2.1 -- only for Performa 6400/180 and 6400/120
  • System 7.5.4 -- was never released to the general public
  • System 7.5.5
  • Mac OS 7.6 (name formally changed because of the experimental clone program, later 7.5.x released already used Mac OS name on the splash screen)
  • Mac OS 7.6.1

Macintosh Performa computers used to have their own, exclusive operating system before they were merged into System 7.5.

  • System 7.0P1
  • System 7.1P1
  • System 7.1P2
  • System 7.1P3 -- last release with new features
  • System 7.1P4
  • System 7.1P5
  • System 7.1P6

Mac OS 8

Mac OS 8.x was very much a stop-gap version which was brought out to try and keep the Mac OS moving forward during a very trying time for the platform. 8.0 added a number of features from the stillborn Copland project, while leaving the underlying operating system unchanged. The GUI was changed in appearance to a new greyscale look, and the ability to change the appearance (a.k.a "skins") was added with a new control panel. This was provided by a new "appearance" API layer within the OS, one of the few significant changes. Mac OS 8 also saw the introduction of an updated version of HFS, HFS+, which fixed many of the limitations of the earlier system - in fact it is still in use today on Mac OS X. There were some other interface changes such as separating network features from printing (the venerable, and rather odd Chooser was at last headed for retirement), and some improvements to application switching. However, in most significant respects, System 8 was not very different from System 7.x

Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9.x was a steady evolution from Mac OS 8. In fact the only reason that the version got increased from 8 to 9 was to pave the way to the future OS X ("ten"), rather than leave a gap in the version numbers which might have discouraged some to make the eventual change to OS X. 9 also added some transitional technologies to help application developers adopt some OS X features sooner rather than later, again easing the transition. These included new APIs for the file system, and the bundling of the Carbon library that apps could link against instead of the traditional API libraries - apps that were adapted to do this can be run natively on OS X as well. Other changes were made in OS 9 to allow it to be booted in the "classic environment" within OS X. This is a compatibility layer in OS X (in fact an OS X application, known in developer circles as "the blue box") that runs a complete Mac OS 9 operating system, so allowing applications that have not been ported to Carbon to run on Mac OS X. This is reasonably seamless, though "classic" applications retain their original OS 8/9 appearance and do not gain the OS X "Aqua" appearance.

  • Mac OS 9.0
  • Mac OS 9.0.2
  • Mac OS 9.0.3
  • Mac OS 9.0.4
  • Mac OS 9.1
  • Mac OS 9.2
  • Mac OS 9.2.1
  • Mac OS 9.2.2

Mac OS X

See Mac OS X history.

Mac OS X is the first real replacement for the older Mac OS, based on the OPENSTEP Unix operating system from NeXT. In addition to the original OPENSTEP libraries, OS X adds the Carbon libraries to allow older programming paradigms from the System 7.x core to be run under OS X and gain many of the benefits of this modern OS core. The system also includes Classic, a complete emulator for running older Mac programs.

  • Mac OS X DP1(Developer Preview 1)
  • Mac OS X DP2
  • Mac OS X DP3
  • Mac OS X DP4
  • Mac OS X Public Beta
  • Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)
    • Mac OS X 10.0.0
    • Mac OS X 10.0.1
    • Mac OS X 10.0.2
    • Mac OS X 10.0.3
    • Mac OS X 10.0.4
  • Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)
    • Mac OS X 10.1.0
    • Mac OS X 10.1.1
    • Mac OS X 10.1.2
    • Mac OS X 10.1.3
    • Mac OS X 10.1.4
    • Mac OS X 10.1.5
  • Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
    • Mac OS X 10.2.0
    • Mac OS X 10.2.1
    • Mac OS X 10.2.2
    • Mac OS X 10.2.3
    • Mac OS X 10.2.4
    • Mac OS X 10.2.5
    • Mac OS X 10.2.6
    • Mac OS X 10.2.8
    • Mac OS X 10.2.8 build 6R73
  • Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
    • Mac OS X 10.3.0
    • Mac OS X 10.3.1
    • Mac OS X 10.3.2
    • Mac OS X 10.3.3
    • Mac OS X 10.3.4
    • Mac OS X 10.3.5
    • Mac OS X 10.3.6
    • Mac OS X 10.3.7 (under development)
  • Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger - not yet released)

External links


Mac OS history

Mac OS: System 6 | System 7 | Mac OS 8 | Mac OS 9
Mac OS X | Mac OS X 10.0 | Mac OS X 10.1 | Mac OS X 10.2 | Mac OS X 10.3 | Mac OS X 10.4
Mac OS X Server


it:Storia del Mac OS


Retrieved from "http://www.mywiseowl.com/articles/Mac_OS_history"

This page has been accessed 841 times. This page was last modified 15:04, 19 Nov 2004. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).