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From: toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: System 8 (What enhancements do people want?)
Message-ID: <1990May3.222413.11989@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu>
Date: 3 May 90 22:24:13 GMT
References: <1990Apr20.193426.16869@uswmrg2.UUCP> <5566@okstate.UUCP> <1990Apr25 <67@victoria.cs.utexas.edu>
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s881@cs.utexas.edu (Dan Connolly) writes:

>I heard the Mac OS is derived from S.O.S. (sophisticated operating system),
>written in pascal for the Apple ///. Is this true?

God, I hope not. ProDOS was derived from S.O.S.'s low level interface, and
it's written entirely in assembly (like much of the Mac toolbox).

I thought the Mac OS was supposed to be a much cleaner break: S.O.S. was never
that bad, the Apple /// designers just bit off much more than they could chew
about a year too soon (64k DRAMs were still too expensive... wow) and by the
time the got the problems fixed the machine had a horrid reputation and nothing
could save it. The machine was a mistake, really: it really needed things which
didn't show up until the IIGS. (Of course, by that time the Mac OS was already
beginning to show some 20/20 hindsight, and that helped too...)

> Oh well, I guess it's better than CP/M-derived stuff.
>But why not a scaled down unix (OS-9, Minix, etc) in the first place?

I always wondered that. I heard the Lisa design team had worked from that
frame of mind, but the Mac team didn't borrow enough from them and the Mac OS
paid for it later (Multifinder tech notes, 32 bit clean, etc).

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu