The development environment is not standing still. In fact, a new language 'Objective Modula-2' based upon an old one 'Modula-2' is being worked upon. The compiler is based upon the GNU/Modula-2 compiler which intergrates with GCC. ObjM2 uses the same runtime as ObjC, and will seemlessly intergrate with Cocoa.
When Apple Computer first came out, they were sued by "Apple" a music company owned by the Beatles (a very popular music band from the United Kindom). Apple was protecting their trademark against this upstart computer company.
They finally settled, with the priviso that Apple Computer not sell any music, or device that could play music. Hmm, my Macintosh plays MP3s real nicley, I guess they amended that agreement.
What I would like to see is a 64-bit integer arithmetic benchmark. If you are comparing two types of machines with different register widths, then you should do benchmarks, that examine each of their capabilities.
You could compare a 32-bit machine (say a 386) running in 16-bit mode against a machine that only has 16-bit registers? Sure, the 386 will run DOS a faster than the 8086, but that ignores all the capability that the 386 gave over the 8086, or even the 286.
What the 32-bit machine gives above the 16-bit machine is enormous. A 16-bit machine is severly limited when trying to do 32-bit arithmetic. The difference in address size alone, allows applications that simply could not run on a 16-bit machine.
A 32-bit machine is also severly limited when doing 64-bit operations. The same is true about a 64-bit machine compared with a 32-bit machine.
It is a bit less than 16 years since the 386 (a 32-bit machine) came out. Although it is slightly more than 16 years since DEC's VAX was first released.
If we assume that high-end application memory requirements double each year, then it will take another 32 years before we need to jump register sizes again.
MacOS was based on (and originally was) NeXT Step, which was a BSD based OS running on x86 hardware.
No, the first NeXT cube ran on a 68020. This was followed by the 68030, and 68040 in the pizza box shaped NeXT machines.
The OS was a BSD personality sitting on top the Mach micro-kernel. The device drivers were in Mach not the BSD personality.
Re:Are details of the internals of OS X available?
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MacOS-X is as some other comments indicated based upon the Mach micro-kernel, with a BSD personality. The baseline version of Mach used by Apple (and Next before it) is 2.5. This is lower than version 3.0 used by Carnegie mellon University, and the Open Systems Foundation (OSF). Mach invented lots of new ideas. These included Copy-On-Write (COW) memory pages, and threads as executable units. It expanded upon earlier concepts of a micro-kernel Here is CMU's Mach home page. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/w ww/mach.html Here are some papers about 3.0 from CMU. http://pecan.srv.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project /mach/public/doc/published/ You may also want to look at the micro kernel version of Linux which is also based upon Mach. Here, the Linux OS is a personality on top of Mach. In fact, BSD and Linux could both coexist in the same machine at the same time as personaities running on Mach. MKLinux/PPC was available a few years ago, instigated by Apple. I think it was to let the Linux community optimize the Mach/PPC micro-kernel for them. MkLinux is still necessary for the nuBus versions of the PowerMac. NeXT (and its version of Mach) was originaly developed on the M68K processor family, just like the Macintosh. When Steve Jobs decided to port NeXT (now code named Rhapsody) to the PowerMac the Mach micro-kernel had to be ported, and device drivers written for the new hardware. Apple funded the work done by the OSF. Yes Apple paid to have Linux ported to the PowerMac. The source was released as open source. A lot of experimentation was performed using the Linux personality to optimize the communication between the personality and the micro-kernel. This work was then used by apple. Meanwhile some other Linux fans didn't like micro-kernels. They wanted Linux to run straight on the hardware. They didn't have any documentation about the hardware, until MkLinux/PPC was available. Once it was they read its source code, and were then able to create a monolithic version of Linux. The Open Systems Foundation (OSF) "www.osf.org" seems to be down (maybe slash-dotted). Unfortunately apple's web site mklinux.apple.com also seems to be down (its DNS entry is gone).
Don't use -display (with a single dash), rather use --display (a double dash). Single dashes introduce a sequence of single character options. A double dash introduces a 'long' option. So yes, Virginia, gnome can use a networked display system.
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The development environment is not standing still. In fact, a new language 'Objective Modula-2' based upon an old one 'Modula-2' is being worked upon. The compiler is based upon the GNU/Modula-2 compiler which intergrates with GCC. ObjM2 uses the same runtime as ObjC, and will seemlessly intergrate with Cocoa.
They finally settled, with the priviso that Apple Computer not sell any music, or device that could play music. Hmm, my Macintosh plays MP3s real nicley, I guess they amended that agreement.
You could compare a 32-bit machine (say a 386) running in 16-bit mode against a machine that only has 16-bit registers? Sure, the 386 will run DOS a faster than the 8086, but that ignores all the capability that the 386 gave over the 8086, or even the 286.
What the 32-bit machine gives above the 16-bit machine is enormous. A 16-bit machine is severly limited when trying to do 32-bit arithmetic. The difference in address size alone, allows applications that simply could not run on a 16-bit machine.
A 32-bit machine is also severly limited when doing 64-bit operations. The same is true about a 64-bit machine compared with a 32-bit machine.
It is a bit less than 16 years since the 386 (a 32-bit machine) came out. Although it is slightly more than 16 years since DEC's VAX was first released.
If we assume that high-end application memory requirements double each year, then it will take another 32 years before we need to jump register sizes again.
Peter
No, the first NeXT cube ran on a 68020. This was followed by the 68030, and 68040 in the pizza box shaped NeXT machines.
The OS was a BSD personality sitting on top the Mach micro-kernel. The device drivers were in Mach not the BSD personality.
MacOS-X is as some other comments indicated based upon the Mach micro-kernel, with a BSD personality. The baseline version of Mach used by Apple (and Next before it) is 2.5. This is lower than version 3.0 used by Carnegie mellon University, and the Open Systems Foundation (OSF). Mach invented lots of new ideas. These included Copy-On-Write (COW) memory pages, and threads as executable units. It expanded upon earlier concepts of a micro-kernel Here is CMU's Mach home page. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/w ww/mach.html Here are some papers about 3.0 from CMU. http://pecan.srv.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project /mach/public/doc/published/ You may also want to look at the micro kernel version of Linux which is also based upon Mach. Here, the Linux OS is a personality on top of Mach. In fact, BSD and Linux could both coexist in the same machine at the same time as personaities running on Mach. MKLinux/PPC was available a few years ago, instigated by Apple. I think it was to let the Linux community optimize the Mach/PPC micro-kernel for them. MkLinux is still necessary for the nuBus versions of the PowerMac. NeXT (and its version of Mach) was originaly developed on the M68K processor family, just like the Macintosh. When Steve Jobs decided to port NeXT (now code named Rhapsody) to the PowerMac the Mach micro-kernel had to be ported, and device drivers written for the new hardware. Apple funded the work done by the OSF. Yes Apple paid to have Linux ported to the PowerMac. The source was released as open source. A lot of experimentation was performed using the Linux personality to optimize the communication between the personality and the micro-kernel. This work was then used by apple. Meanwhile some other Linux fans didn't like micro-kernels. They wanted Linux to run straight on the hardware. They didn't have any documentation about the hardware, until MkLinux/PPC was available. Once it was they read its source code, and were then able to create a monolithic version of Linux. The Open Systems Foundation (OSF) "www.osf.org" seems to be down (maybe slash-dotted). Unfortunately apple's web site mklinux.apple.com also seems to be down (its DNS entry is gone).
Don't use -display (with a single dash), rather use --display (a double dash). Single dashes introduce a sequence of single character options. A double dash introduces a 'long' option. So yes, Virginia, gnome can use a networked display system.