12 Jun
2012
12 Jun
'12
2:12 a.m.
On 6/11/12 5:21 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
But surely, the same reasons that made it feasible to
develop and
maintain for 7 years and 3 major versions would have still applied on
PowerPC, no?
Well, there was the problem of no toolchain for PowerPC. That wasn't
a problem if they switched to AIX. A/UX was also based on Unisoft System
V, which may have had licensing problems in volume, but I have no real
knowledge of that. The only compiler people Apple had at the time were in
the MPW group, and they would have had their hands full with MacOS tools
which used a completely different object format (PEF).
It seems to me that there must be some reason why it
didn't happen, as
with hindsight, it just seems a very obvious move. Apple knew it
needed a more modern, real multitasking OS to rival Win9x and NT, and
it needed to be to some degree MacOS-compatible - and yet, it had one,
sitting there.
It just seems incomprehensibly strange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_%28operating_system%29
It is very difficult to explain what was going on if you weren't in the
middle of it, but that Wikipedia article gives you a pretty good idea of
how dysfunctional and out of control Apple was in the 90's. Remember,
this is the same company that let someone develop "Graphing Calculator"
and let them keep their office when they didn't even WORK for Apple any
more.
Note that there is NO mention of A/UX or Unix anywhere in there. As far
as anyone was concerned, Unix didn't exist. If it was brought up as an
alternative, it was immediately dismissed as not useful as a basis for
the Mac OS, either because of size, or perceived performance.