Libor Kubín Since 1984, Macintosh has been using System. In the early 90s, however, it became clear that the existing operating system needed a fairly fundamental innovation. Apple announced a new generation system in March 1994 with the launch of the PowerPC processor copland.
Despite a generous budget ($250 million a year) and the deployment of a team of 500 software engineers, Apple was unable to complete the project. Development was slow, there were delays and non-compliance with deadlines. Because of this, partial improvements (derived from Copland) were released. These started appearing from Mac OS 7.6. In August 1996, Copland was finally stopped before the release of the first development version. Apple was looking for a replacement, and BeOS was a hot candidate. But the purchase was not made due to excessive financial requirements. There was an attempt to use, for example, Windows NT, Solaris, TalOS (together with IBM) and A/UX, but without success.
The announcement on December 20, 1996 surprised everyone. Apple bought NeXT for $429 million in cash. Steve Jobs was hired as a consultant and received 1,5 million Apple shares. The main goal of this acquisition was to use NeXTSTEP as the basis of the future operating system for Macintosh computers.
March 16, 1999 is released Mac OS X Server 1.0 also known as Rhapsody. Looks like Mac OS 8 with Platinum theme. But internally, the system is based on a mix of OpenStep (NeXTSTEP), Unix components, Mac OS, and Mac OS X. The menu at the top of the screen comes from Mac OS, but file management is done in NeXTSTEP's Workspace Manager instead of the Finder. The user interface still uses Display PostScript for display.
The first user beta version of Mac OS X (codenamed Kodiak) was released on May 10, 1999. It was intended for registered developers only. On September 13, the first public beta version of Mac OS X was released and sold for $29,95.
The system brought a number of novelties: command line, protected memory, multitasking, native use of multiple processors, Quartz, dock, Aqua interface with shadows and system-level PDF support. However, Mac OS X v10.0 lacked DVD playback and CD burning. It required a G3 processor, 128 MB of RAM and 1,5 GB of free hard disk space to install. Backward compatibility was also ensured thanks to the possibility to run OS 9 and programs designed for it under the Classic layer.
The final version of Mac OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001 and cost $129. Although the system was named Cheetah, it did not excel in speed or stability. Therefore, on September 25, 2001, it was replaced by a free upgrade to Mac OS X 10.1 Puma.
What is Mac OS X
An operating system based on the hybrid XNU kernel (in English XNU's Not Unix), which is composed of a Mach 4.0 microkernel (communicates with the hardware and takes care of managing memory, threads and processes, etc.) and a shell in the form of FreeBSD, with which it tries be compatible. The core together with other components make up the Darwin system. Although the BSD system is used in the base, for example bash and vim are used, although in FreeBSD you will find csh and vi.1
Sources: arstechnica.com and quotes (1) with wikipedia.org
