Re: [MacPerl] looking at Mac OS X

[Richard Gordon <gordon@mindspring.com>]

On 1/27/99 at 17:04, vlb@cfcl.com (Vicki Brown) wrote:

> Not that anyone told _us_ :-)
> 
> The original reason, as presented to and by the Copland team, was 
> that Mac OS 8 would be a serious sea change to the MacOS.  That was 
> why it was going to have a new major number. For the same reasons 
> that System 7 was System 7 and not part of the 6.x line. It was 
> radically different. It was a complete redesign and rewrite of the 
> system software, from the ground up.
> 
I was referring to the buzz in the Mac (and other) media during the
Winter-Spring of 97 to the effect that what by all rights should have been
System 7.8 (or 9) was being rebranded as OS8 because the clone makers'
licenses died as soon as the OS went above 7.x. The distinction that Apple
offered for going to another major version number was that OS8 would offer
CHRP (or whatever they started calling it) support, so it was different even
if it was the same. That was plausible enough to get the cloners to the
table and Apple stonewalled from that point until the clones were dead.
Given that Apple was on its knees at the time and had to do something to
stop the bleeding very quickly, I would say that there wasn't much choice
even if the ethics of the situation were dubious.
 
> No.  Copland was originally going to be very radical
>
I guess we may be talking about different time frames. Originally, Pink was
the system of the future too. :-]
 
> No.  Not Copland as Copland was meant to be or as it was designed. 
> OS 8.5 bears many of the Finder changes that Copland was going to 
> wear, but inside, in the system code of the OS, it is not Copland.

My perception is that 8.5 was cobbled together by cherry picking the pieces
of Copland that worked and melding them with conventional Mac OS stuff after
it became apparent that implementing Rhapsody was not going to be quite as
practical as Amelio/Hancock suggested originally. The parallels with
Copland/Gershwin will be lost altogether by Sonata, if not Veronica, but I
still view 8.5.x as an expression of Copland if not the real thing.

Richard Gordon
Gordon Consulting & Design
Voice: 770-565-8267  Fax: 770-971-6887



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