A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems

An anonymous reader writes "As part of his 1680-page book Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach, Amit Singh of kernelthread.com wrote a very detailed technical history of Apple's operating systems. Since he had to cut down on the history chapter because of the book's already too-large size, most of this chapter didn't make it to the printed book. Singh has made available the history chapter as a free PDF. The file is 140 pages long, and is generously filled with figures and screenshots. It starts with the internals of the original Apple I and goes through a tour of all operating systems Apple dabbled with, including internals of A/UX, Lisa OS, and such. It even covers details of outside influences like the Xerox Alto, STAR System, Smalltalk, and Sketchpad, and closer to home things like Mach, NeXTStep, and OpenStep."

Apple ][

[BWJones (18351)]

One of the coolest things about the Apple I and Apple ][ was that Apple Computer included the schematics for *all* of the motherboard and CPU design. Everything was documented so that users could build interfaces with both the software and the hardware with a minimum of fuss. So, even though Amit Singh calls the manual included with the Apple ][ as a "preliminary manual, it was remarkably complete.

Despite how far we've come, there are time I really miss my old Apple ][.

Re:Apple ][

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

was that Apple Computer included the schematics for *all* of the motherboard and CPU design.

God, we have come a long way haven't we - now Apple will cease & desist you for linking to their Service Manual.

God, how I miss the old Apple :-(

Re:Apple ][

[Mattintosh (758112)]

If companies would package their products to include tech specs and schematics, people who don't want to mess with their purchased property wouldn't have to, but the people who want to modify, repair, or extend their purchased property could do so with ease.

And don't give me the old, tired, whiny excuse that people would simply build their own from the specs they got from a friend. It's not true. As you alluded to, most people aren't hobbyists and don't want to be bothered to build their own. And there isn't a problem from a commercial competitor, either, since patents and copyrights are there to protect against this exact form of abuse. There are adequate legal protections against ripoffs.

Companies should be required to include specs with every electronic and mechanical device they sell, whether it's as small as a wristwatch, or as large as a car.

Re:Apple ][

[beadfulthings (975812)]

My Aged Mum, now in her eighties, bought the first Apple ][ ever sold in her small Southern city and shortly thereafter traded up to the ][c. She was an artist by trade. The first thing she did was to construct a couple of cables that she needed for her work (video was one that I recall). Then she sat down with the manuals, learned Applesoft BASIC, and wrote a program or two that enabled her to generate patterns for complex weaving with a large loom. Eventually she acquired an interface that allowed the Apple to actually drive the loom--it was a complicated system of switches and relays that raised and lowered the various harnesses or frames on the loom. She did all of this when she was past fifty and with no prior training at all, though she was regular in attendance at users' group meetings once a users' group was formed.

I still have (and treasure) bits of cloth of complex, intricate design, created and produced with the aid of that Apple. She truly made it an extension of herself.

Not as good as the Beeb though

[Space cowboy (13680)]

For me, the best 8-bit computer ever was the BBC micro - I doubt it ever gained any traction over here in the US, but *man* was that a well-designed and elegant machine.

The OS was fully vectored and modular, the BASIC language had procedures and functions, as well as a built-in assembler that could access BASIC variables, but the hardware design was what made it stand out. It had every i/o port under the sun - serial, parallel, "user i/o", other dedicated ones for a network (Econet), to support floppy disks and hard disks, and even plug in a second co-processor (there were 8086, Z80 and 32000 variants I think). You could get Pascal and C for it, and it supported 80-column text on a monitor.

And to bring it slightly back on-topic, the documentation was simply excellent - the "Advanced user guide" told you just about everything you needed to know about the machine, from the event i/o to interrupt-programming, documenting the OSxxx calls, and all the port i/o etc.

Nothing since has come close to the flexibility of that machine given the design limitations at the time, and it's a tribute to the designers.

Of course, such largesse can be abused [grin] See My first and only virus-writing incident [slashdot.org] ...

Simon

Re:Apple ][

[Amouth (879122)]

I had an old sony tv that needed a delay loop replaced.. it isn't a hard task when you have the schematics.. i called sony.. they said they could sell them to me for 150$.. i told them they where crazy.. and i bought a new tv

Re:Apple ][

[booch (4157)]

I think that's what they wanted you to do. Even if you didn't buy a Sony TV, a substantial percentage of people will, so Sony wins by making you buy a new TV instead of fixing your old one. Or they win by charging you an outrageous price for the schematics and repair manuals.

And the reason that they do this is that they (and you) don't have to pay the real cost of disposing of the old TV. Instead of recycling the TV and reclaiming all the materials, you'll probably just toss the old TV in the trash. And the hazardous chemicals will leak into the soil. Our descendents will have to clean that shit up eventually, which will cost tons of money. But we don't have to pay that, so we just go get a new TV cheap.</rant>

Re:Apple ][

[mrchaotica (681592)]

That doesn't change the fact that assuming that the future will magically fix all the problems is entirely irresponsible.

In Soviet Russia...

[Cryptnotic (154382)]

In Soviet Russia YOU fix old TV's.

Uh, wait.

Amit's Book

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

I did a technical review of the book, and I can thoroughly recommend it (I got a free copy). It's very technical in places (lots of code snippets) but does a very good job of explaining the 'why' as well as the 'what' and 'how' of XNU.

First, the Earth cooled.

[ettlz (639203)]

Then, the UNIX came, bit it got too big and fragmented, but it didn't die out, and turned into BSD.
Then Steve Jobs came, and he brought forth NeXTStep.
And then Apple bought up NeXTStep, added some more BSD, and gave it some pretty clothes and called it OS X. I couldn't believe it. They opened the closet, took out the best eye candy, and walked straight into town...

Archeological dig

[OakDragon (885217)]

From TFPDF:

Lisa was discontinued in 1985. In September 1989, Apple buried about 2700 Lisa computers in the Logan landfill in Utah. The value of the computers had depreciated so much that the tax break received from scrapping the computers resulted in more money for Apple than could be obtained by selling them.

Anybody feel like digging? :)

Re:Archeological dig

[boarder8925 (714555)]

I'll go with you, just so long as we make a video of it like these guys did when they dug up E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [keithschofield.com] for the 2600 [wikipedia.org]. ;)

Lisa OS

[MooseDontBounce (989375)]

My CS Prof. at the time (Summer of 1982 or 1983, an old retired IBM'er who worked on the first computers for the Military) had a daughter that worked for Apple on the Lisa project. He had a pre-production model on his desk with a serial number under 300. She needed Steve Jobs personal okay to send him the computer for his testing. (So I was told) I remember it was the coolest thing I'd every seen back then. We took the cover off and his daughter's name was one of the names inscripted on the inside cover. Blew away the Apple II & Trash-80's we were using at the time.

Surprised at so little mentioned about GSOS

[Solr_Flare (844465)]

GSOS and the Apple IIGs was quite the sophisticated platform and I'm surprised the author left out the little bit about how Apple alienated a large majority of its customers thanks to the Apple IIGS. The GS was my first "real" computer as a kid. My parents had and I had dabbled with an Amiga long before the GS, but the GS was my first real "work" computer where I did word processing and more with it. It was also my entry point into the early days of the internet and the first computer I ever upgraded with double density disk drives, a 40mb hard drive, various dial up modems, etc.

For me the AppleIIGS was really the "begining" of my current career in the computer industry. It was also a really slick operating system. But the most significant impact the AppleIIGS had on the market was it was the start of Apple's trend of abandoning old technologies. Almost as soon as the AppleIIGs was released, Apple had abandoned it and the Apple II platform for its new Macintosh systems. When Apple did this they abandoned the large majority of their customers. The early Macs were relatively expensive versus the bargin prices on Apple IIs, and a number of schools were deeply invested in the Apple II platform.

When Apple abandoned the II with the GS it was the start of the first major shift in the personal computer marketplace. A number of Apple customers felt gilted by Apple so they began to look for alternatives. Compared to the expensive Macintosh, the relatively cheap PC clone industry seemed like a huge bargin. It was at this moment that Microsoft really took control of the Operating System/platform market as a large portion of Apple's customer base abandoned the company and switched over to PC clones powered by Microsoft's Operating Systems. In truth, it has only been with Mac OS X and their Mactel platforms that Apple has truly succeeded in significantly expanding their marketshare since the AppleIIGS fiasco.

As I said, for an operating system and product that had such a profound impact on the future of Apple, I'm surprised to see so little mention of the AppleIIGS and GSOS.

Re:What I want to know is

[Penguinisto (415985)]

Actually, it wasn't that bad... in the earliest iterations, it was miles above what Windows could provide, and for ordinary users, it was rather slick. I remember as a 16-year-old the day I saw the Macintosh 'Classic' for the first time when my mother brought it home from work for the weekend (the Mac Classic form factor was fairly brand new then) - compared to the Windows 2.0/DOS rig on my parents' shiny new Amstrad "2286" (remember DOSSHELL? - Windows 2.0 it was pretty much like that)? The Mac blew away Windows/DOS in usability, presentation and performance. It was damned slick.

Of course, time went on, and things changed radically since then, but Mac UI development was, in its early days, miles beyond what Microsoft could muster.

Now - why MacOS decided to stick with the same setup in spite of Win95/98? Dunno.

/P

Re:What I want to know is

[TomHandy (578620)]

It's not so much that Apple "decided" to stick with the classic Mac OS for so long despite Win95/98 as much as that they were just in a total mess in terms of their next gen OS stuff. Apple spent a lot of the 90's trying to figure out a new Mac OS, and a lot of the future was supposed to be in the original projects codenamed Copland and Gershwin (the original Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9...... what eventually came out as Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 had little to do with this). Copland was originally supposed to be a totally modern OS, and Gershwin would apparently have had even more radically new elements, a lot borrowed from the Taligent collaboration with IBM on an OS codenamed "Pink". But none of this ever panned out, and all Apple could do was release the commercial Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 OS's as stopgaps. Apple had considered buying BeOS once it became clear that the internal Copland project wasn't working out, and they ultimately ended up buying NeXT. For all intents and purposes, Apple became NeXT, and Mac OS X can be seen in many ways as the ultimate development of NextStep, rather than the classic Mac OS.

Re:What I want to know is

[TomHandy (578620)]

Actually, looking through the Mac OS X Internals PDF, there's a whole section there about Apple's quest for a new OS........ this goes into a lot of detail about all the options Apple considered. This is actually some great reading if you're curious about all of this.

I did

[LKM (227954)]

Daring Fireball wrote about this recently [daringfireball.net]. Here's the most important quote of the article:

The difference between the old Mac OS and Mac OS X isn't that it used to suck but now it's great. The difference is that Mac OS X's appeal is broader; it is good in more ways than the old Mac OS was.

Yeah, I did use and like Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8 and System 7. I did smoke lots of weed, but that had nothing to do with it. There are two things to consider: First, it went up against crap like Windows 3.11 and Windows 95. Second, it was the prettiest, most easy-to-use OS, even with cooperative multitasking and lack of memory protection.

Mac OS X added a lot to what makes a Mac great, but Mac OS 9 had a lot going for it, too.

Re:I did

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

... it was the prettiest, most easy-to-use OS, even with cooperative multitasking and lack of memory protection.

Memory protection used to be explained in the following way:

• UNIX - if a program needs more memory, the system gives it more memory
• MacOS - if a program needs more memory, the system tells you and you have to give it more manually and try again.
• Windows/DOS - if a program needs more memory, your computer just crashed.

For all practical purposes this was the state of things for many years.

Re:I did

[Haeleth (414428)]

For all practical purposes this was the state of things for many years.

It's a rather misleading description, though. More accurately:

• UNIX/Windows NT/OS X - if a program needs more memory, the system gives it more memory; if there is no more memory to give, the program is terminated.
• Windows 9x - if a program needs more memory, the system gives it more memory; if there is no more memory to give, your computer crashes.
• MacOS 8/9 - if a program needs more memory, the system tells you and you have to fiddle around with a fussy little dialog box to give it more manually and try again, at which point another program will complain that it no longer has enough memory. Repeat ad infinitum, all the while gritting your teeth and reciting the mantra "this is better than Windows, this is better than Windows" until you almost believe it.

Re:I did

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

It's a rather misleading description, though. More accurately: UNIX/Windows NT/OS X

Umm, the memory management issues changed long before OS X existed and this predates even Windows NT for the most part. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to describe, but you fail to describe either the state of the art now, or the situation as it existed in the past, but rather have presented a muddled, mix of both, while leaving out most of the concepts of modern memory management. "if there is no more memory to give, the program is terminated" is certainly not the case with any modern UNIX or with OS X, as it jumps to swap and then frees memory from other systems according to how they are "niced" among other things.

Repeat ad infinitum, all the while gritting your teeth and reciting the mantra "this is better than Windows, this is better than Windows" until you almost believe it.

The first computer I ever personally owned was dual motherboard, dual processor 66mhz ppc and 486/66 simultaneously running both Windows 3.11 and MacOS 7.x (with a cool key combo to swap the input and display and some nifty utilities to copy and paste between them). I'm about as close to an impartial observer at the time as you could have ever had. The fact was, Windows memory allocation was in theory, much better than MacOS, but in practice was so unstable that it caused an even bigger problem than it solved. If you don't remember this than you either never ran both side by side or you are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses.

Re:What I want to know is

[peragrin (659227)]

I loved Mac OS 8. I never really used OS 9 but by then it was going up againist win2k.

Mac OS 8 went head to head with win98. The only better choice at that time was BeOS . Yet another good OS killed by an illegal monopoly of a bad OS.

Hell BeFS featured a database File System of the likes MSFT still can't create. and they did it on hardware that even Linux would require recompile and lightweight window manager to run on.

MSFT to this day is still trying to copy cool features found in competitor's now old products.

Re:What I want to know is

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The features that MacOS Classic lacked were mainly:

1. Good multi-user support.
2. Pre-emptive multitasking.
3. Protected memory

If you wanted these three, you had two choices; UNIX or Windows NT[1]. Other consumer operating systems didn't have them. Windows gained Pre-emptive multitasking with Windows 95, but it didn't get the other two until MS abandoned 9x in favour of NT. BeOS didn't have the first, but did have the second and was quite popular with Mac users.

What it did have was a heavily Raskin-influenced GUI, which left pretty much anything else in the dust when it came to usability. NeXTStep was in the same area, but much more expensive.

[1] Or VMS and a few others if you had a huge budget.

Re:Being too greedy?

[MacDaffy (28231)]

A bunch of us engineers spent the time between Copland's abrupt halt and the NeXt acquisition trying to figure out which operating system the company was going to try. There was a lot of experimentation with MkLinux and some talk about beefing up A/UX but the biggest buzz was coming from the BeOS. A few of us made the pilgrimage to Menlo Park, saw their presentation, and were mightily impressed with its performance, but we agreed that the lack of available consumer applications made it a non-starter.

From the time Copland died in the summer of 1996 until we got laid off in March of 1997, we waited for the Big Decision and learned a lot about UNIX-based operating systems because we knew that's where the company had to go. NeXt and Steve Jobs's return were complete surprises. Smartest move Gil Amelio made--just as was Steve's immediately getting Gil out of the way and resuming leadership. Apple's customers needed a reason to believe and Gil only provided silence. As one Rumor-Monger wag said, "he couldn't market pussy in a prison."