Recently, Bloomberg broke the news that Apple is planning to drop Intel and to start manufacturing and using their own chips. According to this report, the end goal of this move is to unify Apple’s mobile and desktop platforms. This is an interesting idea that just might work in this post-PC world.
by Stephen L. Childress
from the July 1983 issue of Micro magazine
(Note: The figures are not available for this article because they are impossible to read on my source.)
The modularization of the I/O system allows OS-9 to enhance the standard I/O at run time, not assembly or patch time. Device names and addresses are not fixed by the operating system but, rather, the program may attempt I/O to any device name. Of course, an appropriate module of that name must be loaded and ready to go at that time. Device names, driver procedures, register addresses, peripheral idiosyncracies, etc., are stated outside the core of the operating system and may be extended with ease. A device driver and descriptor for any data acquisition device may be loaded and accessed by programs using these techniques. In fact, should RBF and SCF fail to meet the needs of some device, an entirely new manager may be loaded and used alongside RBF and SCF. An example of this might be a 9-track tape drive that is not random-block oriented but is more than a character-oriented device. Perhaps an SBF (sequential block manager) module would be best:
by Stephen L. Childress
from the June 1983 issue of Micro magazine
Unless you’ve been on sabbatical to Siberia of late you will have noticed the swell of interest in the Unix operating system software. Most new and all the old popular 16-bit computers are supporting Unix or one of the numerous look-alikes. Why all the furor? It seems at last we’ve begun to rethink computer programming and usage. Recognizing that software development is expensive and timeconsuming, we must exploit the falling cost of today’s hardware. In this article, I explain how a new operating system software philosphy is being applied to small microcomputers capable of supporting a MC6809 processor. This software is called “OS-9” and is a good example of the rewards of rethinking system software.
by Stephen Beale
from the November 1997 issue of MacWorld magazine
Apple Computer drove spike through the heart of its Mac OS-Iicensing program when it announced on September 2 that it will acquire the core assets of Power Computing, the company that built the largest Mac-clone business. Apple will exchange $ 100 million in common stock for Power Computing’s Mac OS license and 200,000-name mailing list, and also has the right to retain Power Computing executives involved in direct marketing, distribution, and engineering.
by Phil Daley
from the June 1983 issue of Micro magazine
The operating systems that I have seen available for the Apple use essentially the same read/write routines, but they have been modified or changed. All the disks created by any one system can be read by any other system if you know the procedure. Modifying disks to make them copyprotected (unreadable) is a different technique and a different topic. The Operating Systems covered in this article all use standard DOS 3.3 format disks. The list is as follws: DOS 3.3® , Pascal®, ORCA/M®, Flex® , OS-9® and CP/M® . There are also many varieties and colors of patches and fixes for DOS 3.3 on the market, ranging from Craig Peterson’s and the Floeters’ articles in Nibble to ‘DIVERSI DOS’ and ‘MASTER DOS’.
by Steven Noble
from the February 1997 issue of Australian MacUser magazine
Apple computer has bought NeXT Software, and is going to use that company’s high-performance operating system (OS) NeXTstep as the basis of the next major revision of the Mac OS - code-named Rhapsody. This is good news, because NeXTstep has many of the features that bring speed, stability and strength to next-generation operating systems, including protected memory, preemptive multitasking, and a modern virtual memory system.
from the June 1, 1987 issue of MacWEEK
by John Markoff
Apple Computer Inc.’s next generation of computers may be based on a radically new microprocessor architecture that could improve performance dramatically over today’s Macintosh designs.
Such computers would be built around microprocessors combining elements of both Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and multiprocessor design onto a single silicon chip. Apple’s advanced development team is now at work using its Cray XMP supercomputer to simulate the design of the new chips.
by Howard Baldwin
from the November 1997 issue of MacWorld magazine
As Apple celebrates strong sales of Mac OS 8, Be (650/462-4100, www.be.com), developer of one of the oter operating systems for PowerPC CPUs, continues to bop along with new releases of its software.
In July, the company shipped its BeOS Preview Release for PowerPC, followed by an update that adds AppleTalk printing and improves video drivers and IDE support. Hedging its processor bets, Be also demonstrated its BeOS running on a dual-Pentium II PC at an August developer conference held on the eve of Macworld Expo in Boston.
by David Morgenstern
from the February 1997 issue of Australian MacUser magazine
Apple this year hopes to put an extra shine on its Macintosh product lines with Halo, a strategy that will aim models at specific market segments. Sources said the company will offer several high-performance configurations with limited availability.
The Halo systems will reportedly offer the highest-speed single or multiple processors available and will provide unique features via bundled PCI cards. The models may also feature high-style enclosures.
by Clifford Colby with Stephen Howard & Kelly Ryer
from the February 1997 issue of Australian MacUser magazine
On 20 December 1996 Apple announced it was buying NeXT Software for $US400 million and would use NeXTstep - NeXT’s Unix-based operating system - as the underpinnings of its future operating system. The announcement ends all speculation that Apple might acquire Be for the same purpose.
According to Ellen Hancock, Apple’s chief technical officer, the company is committed to releasing a beta version of the next-generation OS to select user sites and developers by the end of 1997. Hancock said the initial release will not include compatibility with System 7 applications, but she stressed that the new OS will run those applications when it ships to customers in 1998.