Mac operating systems: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:53, 12 September 2005

Revision as of 06:36, 3 October 2005

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{{main|Mac OS X}}

Mac OS X brought Unix-style memory management and [[pre-emptive multitasking]] to the Mac platform. It is based on the [[Mach kernel]] and the [[Berkeley Software Distribution|BSD]] implementation of [[Unix|UNIX]], which were incorporated into [[NeXTSTEP]], the [[object-oriented operating system]] developed by [[Steve Jobs]]'s [[NeXT]] company. The new memory management system allowed more programs to run at once and virtually eliminated the possibility of one program crashing another. It is also the second Macintosh operating system to include a command line (the first is the now-discontinued [[A/UX]], which supported classic Mac OS applications on top of a UNIX kernel), although it is never seen unless the user launches a "[[terminal" programemulator]].

However, since these new features put higher demands on system resources, Mac OS X only officially supported the [[PowerPC G3]] and newer processors, and now has even higher requirements (the additional requirement of built-in [[FireWire]] (IEEE 1394), as of [[Mac OS X v10.4]]). Even then, it runs somewhat slowly on older G3 systems for many purposes.