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."

Comments

What I want to know is

[Clockwurk]

Who liked MacOS prior to OSX?

What were you smoking?

Where can I buy some?

Re:who cares?

[Midnight Thunder]

MAC OS is cool and all, but is this really necessary?

Too early for existential type questions. I think I need my coffee :)

First, the Earth cooled.

[ettlz]

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...

Re:I did

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

... 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.

Archeological dig

[OakDragon]

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? :)

1680-page book ?

[DavidD_CA]

This is what happens when you get a contract that says you're paid by the word.

Why it didn't appeal to christians...

[winphreak]

"The Apple I was introduced at a price of $666.66." Coincidence? Conspiracy? Nah, just a good price.

Re:What a load of crap

[2nd Post!]

In your post, it says "I give up sometimes I really do..."

NO YOU DON'T, YOU JUST WASTED YOUR TIME explaining, "This page is intentionally left blank" SO YOU HAVEN'T GIVEN UP!!! :P

1680-page "nut"?

[Anonymous Coward]

No! THIS is a large nut.

In Soviet Russia...

[Cryptnotic]

In Soviet Russia YOU fix old TV's.

Uh, wait.

Re:Apple ][

[Mister Whirly]

Oh yeah...I miss the days when people had to wait one at a time for the BBS line to open up, just so they could rant away at a smokin' 300 baud...

Re:Apple ][

[Anonymous Coward]

She truly made it an extension of herself.

So your mother was the world's first human/loom cyborg? I hope she used her powers for good.