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Mac OS X : The new millennium
Last week, at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) ,Apple announced its operating system strategy until the next millennium. It was well thought out and, from the reaction of its core developers, very well received. Apple has announced a refinement to its multi-box Rhapsody strategy. Mac OS X (Ten), due in 1999, will be the operating system for all PowerPC-based Macs. Before then Apple will release Mac OS 8.5 (currently known as "Allegro") and Mac OS 9 (currently known as "Sonata"). MacOS 8.5 is in late Alpha testing, with its features still fluid (check out Reality's latest report on allegro). Mac OS 9 is still in the design concept stage, but those wanting a sneak peek at Mac OS X could do worse than checking out Rhapsody DR2 that was handed out at the WWDC. Why? Because MacOS X is going to be the current MacOS running on top of Rhapsody. Unlike last year, however, Apple has now found a way for current MacOS applications to not only run natively on Rhapsody, but to also take advantages of all the improvements Rhapsody brings to the MacOS. Carbon: What all life is made of To get MacOS applications to take advantage of all the buzzwords Rhapsody brings to the MacOS (things like pre-emptive multi tasking, protect memory, and other things not conceived by the designers in 1984) Apple went through the full 8,000+ API's (Application Program Interfaces - think of windows through which programs talk to the OS), and threw out the 2,000-odd API's that could not work with the buzzwords. Developers can "Tune up" there applications to the new standard, a task that Apple says will take mere weeks as 90 per cent of the API's used in Mac applications today are contained in this new subset of API's known as "Carbon." In fact Steve Jobs had senior staff of Microsoft and Macromedia on hand to sing the praises of Carbon when it was announced, not to mention a VP of Adobe who had managed in a couple of weeks, with some assistance, to get PhotoShop 5 compatible with the Carbon API's, and actually displayed it during the keynote address running on a special version of Rhapsody DR2. This new "Carbon" subset of the normal MacOS API's will then be hosted on top of Rhapsody underpinnings. That also goes for the Yellow Box API's and a "transparent" (read "no separate screen") version of the blue box (for compatibility with those applications which aren't tunned) called MacOS X that will be optimised for the G3 (they're still arguing over what that means). MacOS X is due out in summer 1999.
The copyright of the article The Future Speaks in Macintosh/Apple News is owned by Jude Coughlin. Permission to republish The Future Speaks in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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