What is Mac OS X?
The goal of this document is not to trace the history of Mac OS X in great detail, so this section would be brief. A more extensive history of Apple’s operating systems is covered in A History of Apple’s Operating Systems. All of Steve Jobs’ operational responsibilities at Apple were “taken away” on May 31, 1985. Soon (within weeks), Jobs had come up with an idea for a startup for which he pulled in five other Apple employees. The idea was to create the perfect research computer (for Universities and research labs). Jobs had earlier met up with Nobel laureate biochemist Paul Berg, who had jumped at Jobs’ suggestion of using a computer for various simulations. Although Apple was interested in investing in Jobs’ startup, they were outraged (and sued Jobs) when they learnt about the five Apple employees joining Jobs. Apple dropped the suit later after some subsequent mutual agreements. The startup was NeXT Computer, Inc. Jobs unveiled the first NeXT Computer (running NEXTSTEP 0.8) on Octo
Mac OS X is Apple’s operating system for its line of Macintosh computers. Its interface, known as Aqua, is built on a Unix foundation originally based on the OpenStep technology acquired when Apple purchased NeXT Software, Inc. Although it has much of the look and feel of the former Mac OS, features such as preemptive multitasking, symmetric multiprocessing, multithreading, and protected memory give Mac OS X improved stability and performance. For the current version’s system requirements, see Apple’s Mac OS X Technical Specs. For information about the successive versions of Mac OS X, see What are the major differences between versions of the Macintosh operating system? Currently three Mac OS X-related products are available: Mac OS X: This is the version most Macintosh owners should use. It is a consumer operating system designed for use on your personal computer. For more information, see Apple’s Mac OS X page and Apple’s Developer Connection page for Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server: As it
“. My original motivation in writing this was that somebody had proxy-volunteered me to give a talk introducing Mac OS X to the Linux Users Group at my work place. While thinking over what to say to those folks, most (if not all) of whom are strangers to Mac OS X, I decided to write a supplementary document that they could refer to at their leisure. Since I moved to Mac OS X, I have had a few discussions with people who are curious about Apple and Mac OS X, but have not used the platform. Often, what they think is a somewhat distorted, perhaps even incorrect version of the “truth”: there are many areas in which they think the Mac is worse or better than it really is. Consider (with colloquialisms preserved): • Macs are good only for graphics/media work. • Macs suck for hackers. • There is very little software for the Mac. • Macs are overpriced/not worth the price. • Mac OS X is Unix. • Mac OS X is not Unix. • Mac OS X rocks. Linux is crap. • Mac OS X is crap. Linux rocks. Some such cur
