9 Jun
2014
9 Jun
'14
3 a.m.
On 8 June 2014 00:22, Ken Seefried <seefriek at gmail.com> wrote:
AU/X was a pretty awful Unix cobbled together to meet
a narrow market need
unrelated to the markets Copeland was intended to address. It's singular
grace was it let Apple say with a straight face "yes, you can run Unix on
our hardware" (and to a lesser extent, say "and see, it looks pretty like a
Mac"). It wasn't a contender in the Unix market, much less the "platform
to take Apple to the next level" market.
Interesting. In what way was it pretty awful?
In the mid-1990s Apple needed a proper grown-up OS to face up to the
threat of Windows 95, which for all its faults, was a 32-bit OS where
it counted, which could preemptively multitask both DOS and 16-bit
Windows apps, along with its own new 32-bit apps, with a decent GUI.
Microsoft's long-term plan was NT and it spent from 1993 to 2000
gradually improving NT while selling Win9x to keep people going until
the clean new OS was ready.
Apple tried to create a replacement for MacOS and failed; in the end,
it bought one in.
A/UX was a proper grown-up 32-bit OS with memory protection and
preemptive multitasking. It ran (some) classic Mac apps, had a Mac GUI
but was Unix underneath.
A decade later, Apple bought in... a proper grown-up 32-bit OS with
memory protection and preemptive multitasking. After a lot of work, it
ran (some) classic Mac apps, had a Mac GUI but was Unix underneath.
So how was A/UX unsuitable?
I'm genuinely curious - I'm not saying you're wrong, just that with
hindsight it seems obvious, but I don't remember anyone thinking of it
at the time.
--
Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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