I know Apples WWDC was a couple of weeks ago, and even the printed press has given reports of it by now, but I still think it would be nice if I at least listed the big happenings of it, and gave a run down of why I think they were important.
Apple clarified the Rhapsody scene. Rhapsody is Apples next generation operating system. It is being based on the operating system of NeXT Computing which was bought out by Apple. NeXT Computing's operating system is presently running, mostly, on Intel machines, and parts of the operating system are used by Sun in it's operating system Solaris. When Apple bought out NeXT it publicly committed itself to supporting NeXT's current users. Apple has now stated how it is going to do this.
To understand how Apple is going to do this, some technical aspects of Apples new operating system, Rhapsody, must first be understood. Anyone who has been following Apples announcements on Rhapsody can skip on to the run down of Apples plan. Everyone else, here goes.
Rhapsody should first be explained.
Rhapsody, as it is commonly used, describes the new operating system that Apple is writing to run on Macintosh computers, combining the look and feel of Apples current operating system, MacOS, with the operating system it bought from NeXT that has all the advanced components Apple unsuccessfully tried to implement in its failed Copland operating System. Rhapsody for Macintosh will have two components running on top of this advanced operating system, they are called the Yellow box, and the Blue box.
So what are they?
The Yellow box is the new look of the Rhapsody operating system. It is the part that will merge NeXT OS (operating system) API's with Macintosh API's to make up a "superset" of the NeXT API's. The Blue box is the part of the operating system containing the same API's as today's MacOS, allowing current Macintosh programs to be run under Rhapsody. So what are API's?
API's are the interface between operating systems and application programs. When your favorite word processor wants to draw a window, it interacts with the operating system, telling the operating system the size, shape and contents of the window, and the operating system draws the window. It is through the API's that the operating system and application program communicate.
Now are we all still here? We now have enough information to understand
