Architecture of macOS: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:42, 25 September 2016

Revision as of 07:31, 26 September 2016

Line 1:

{{Mac OS X topics}}

The '''architecture of [[macOS]]''' describes the layers of the [[operating system]] that is the culmination of [[Apple Inc.]]'s decade-long search and development process for an [[operating system]] to replace the [[classic Mac OS]].

After the failures of their previous attempts; Pink, which started as an Apple project but evolved into a joint venture with [[IBM]] called [[Taligent]], and [[Copland (operating system)|Copland]], which started in 1994 and was cancelled two years later, Apple began development of their most recent operating system (Mac OS X) with the acquisition of [[NeXT]]'s [[NeXTSTEP]] in 1997.

Note that Mac OS X was renamed to OS X in 2012 and then again to macOS in 2016.

==Development==

Line 22 ⟶ 24:

At the 1998 [[Worldwide Developers Conference]] (WWDC), Apple announced a move that was intended as a response to complaints from Macintosh software developers who were not happy with the two options (Yellow Box and Blue Box) available in Rhapsody. Mac OS X would add another developer [[API]] to the existing ones in Rhapsody. Key APIs from the [[Macintosh Toolbox]] would be implemented in Mac OS X to run directly on the BSD layers of the operating system instead of in the emulated Macintosh layer. This modified interface, called [[Carbon (API)|Carbon]], would eliminate approximately 2000 troublesome API calls (of about 8000 total) and replace them with calls compatible with a modern OS.<ref name="anguish99summary">{{cite web | url=http://www.stepwise.com/SpecialCoverage/WWDC98/Summary.html | title=WWDC 98 Summary | author=Scott Anguish | date=May 1998 | publisher=stepwise.com | accessdate=2006-10-13}} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref>

At the same conference, Apple announced that the Mach side of the kernel had been updated with sources from version 3 of the Mach kernel and the BSD side of the kernel had been updated with sources from the [[FreeBSD]], [[NetBSD]] and [[OpenBSD]] projects.<ref name="anguish99summary" /> They also announced a new driver model called [[I/O Kit]], intended to replace the [[Driver Kit]] used in NeXTSTEP citing Driver Kit's lack of power management and hot-swap capabilities and its lack of automatic configuration capability.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.stepwise.com/SpecialCoverage/WWDC98/Thursday-IOKit.html | title=Rhapsody Core OS: Intro to the I/O Driver Architecture | author=Scott Anguish | date=1998-05-14 | publisher=stepwise.com | accessdate=2006-10-13 }} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref>

At the 1999 WWDC, Apple revealed [[Quartz (graphics layer)|Quartz]], a new [[Portable Document Format]] (PDF) based windowing system for the operating system that was not encumbered with licensing fees to [[Adobe Systems|Adobe]] like the Display PostScript windowing system of NeXTSTEP. Apple also announced that the Yellow Box layer had been renamed [[Cocoa (API)|Cocoa]] and began to move away from their commitment to providing the Yellow Box on Windows. At this WWDC, Apple also showed Mac OS X booting off of a [[HFS Plus]] formatted drive for the first time.

Line 32 ⟶ 34:

== External links ==

*[http://www.apple.com/macosxmacos/ Apple: Mac OS XmacOS] — The official pagewebsite for Mac OS X.macOS

*[http://arstechnica.com/reviewsapple/os2014/macosx10/os-x-10-10.4.ars/2 Ars Technica: Mac OS X (arstechnica.com)Reviews] — Reviews of Mac OS X (10.0 - 100–10.10)

*[http://www.osxbook.com/ Mac OS X Internals] — The web page associated with the book.

{{OS X}}