Slashdot Mirror
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."
This article is information overload in the extreme. What does Apple II DOS have to do with OS X? Or why Wozniak chose the 6502 over the 6800? Or the Apple III SOS or Apple II Prodos? Or Apple transitioning to PowerPC chips in 1994? Some of the newer stuff is interesting to know, for historical reasons, like the failed OS development projects that led up to OS X, but there's no way this should have been 140+ pages. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the book.
It's not entirely irresponsible at all. We don't even know what the problems of the future will be that we caused! Take a look historically at the problems people thought they were creating for future generations — almost all wrong. Let's worry about how pollution affects us today and let the future worry about itself.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
First, you're upon the twin horns of liability and warrenty issues. You know that some jerks will manage to screw up their modifications and "repairs", and demand the company honor their warrenty after doing so. Also, I could easily see in today's climate how providing specs and diagrams could be construed as "encouraging" people to play with their toys... and the lawsuits that follow after little Timmy electrocutes himself in the process, improvements to the gene pool notwithstanding.
Second, what "specs" did you have in mind? An electronic wristwatch (to pick your example) is basically a big IC, a display, and a battery. Did you want the pinouts? The circuits? The listings to all the code in the firmware? And do most people want to pay more for a 500-page manual included with each one just so a fraction of a percent of the owners can tinker?
"Provide" specs (as in on the website) maybe. Include specs? No way.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Clear Singh has no proper engineering background, can't understand schematics, nor even read a data sheet. Just goes to show that any moron can publish a book. I for one won't waste my money on erroneous bullshit.
Despite that fact that I hate Apple fans with every ounce of my black little heart, I feel the need to defend Singh by pointing out the following issues :
a) You could not possibly be more wrong.
b) Your whining about the whole "over 65K" thing is the weakest bit of pedantry I've ever seen.
c) You are both an arrogant prick and a whiney little bitch, which is a rare and impressive combination.
Basically his kernelthread site is very well respected in the Apple community and therefore your post seems to be a serious violation of groupthink. Somehow I don't think you're going to be staying at "+2 Informative" for very long once they realise.