Rhapsody Still In Development?

[tjwett]

I was under the impression that Rhapsody was abandoned or became OS X and was left behind long ago but I just came across this screenshot at a NeXT site that I read and noticed that this version of Quicktime Player for Rhapsody has a copyright date of 2003 Apple Computer. Any ideas of what this might be? Are people out there still using the developer release of Rhapsody, and why? From what I understand it's the same as OS X without Aqua. Is Apple actually still creating software for it or am I totally missing something here? I'm not trying to stir anything up or suggest this is anything important, just curious and confused.

[iJon]

thats pretty cool, i would be curious to know too.

iJon

[mac15]

old news man, that screens so old. why it says 2003 is beyond me. Maybe it was edited?

[tjwett]

Originally posted by mac15
old news man, that screens so old. why it says 2003 is beyond me. Maybe it was edited?

yeah i've been looking at that NeXT site for a while so i'm sure i've seen that shot before. just never noticed the date.

[Powerbook G5]

That's be cool for a kind of blast from the past...just to poke around and see how different OS X turned out to be and what it could have been if it weren't for certain key decisions that were made. That's if it is actually still around, of course.

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Maybe they're just doing it for fun? Can you post a link to the site?

[tjwett]

Originally posted by XnavxeMiyyep
Maybe they're just doing it for fun? Can you post a link to the site?


http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/rhapsody/markus_rhapsody_special/

[OutThere]

those pics look like a really primitive OS X, with the appearance of OS 9. But Why would quicktime have a ©2003 thing. And chess looks exactly like OS X. Maybe they can port stuff from OS X to rhapsody.

[Wes]

http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/rhapsody/markus_rhapsody_special/omniweb3-about.gif


I don't know much about Rhapsody, but OS X server?

[simX]

Originally posted by Wes
http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/rhapsody/markus_rhapsody_special/omniweb3-about.gif


I don't know much about Rhapsody, but OS X server?

Just a note about that image: the icon for OmniWeb is exactly the same as OmniWeb 4.5's icon! I highly doubt that the icon would be the same, since their "Omni" logo has changed to a more aquafied appearance. I'd bet that that image is doctored.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.

[Powerbook G5]

Did anyone else notice that all the hardware in this pic is PC legacy stuff? Old Intel Pro ethernet, old parallel ports, old PS/2 style mouse, Matrox display driver, etc...

[rainman::|:|]

You will not find the rainbow-colored Apple logo on anything official past i think 2000... And that Quicktime logo is old as well, from version 3 i think (anyone here remember the wait for QT3 anyway:)). at very least the quicktime, and probably the other, have been doctored.

pnw

[tjwett]

Originally posted by OutThere761
those pics look like a really primitive OS X, with the appearance of OS 9. But Why would quicktime have a ©2003 thing. And chess looks exactly like OS X. Maybe they can port stuff from OS X to rhapsody.

yeah that's what i was thinking too. i bet there's some nut job running it on a machine somewhere. heck, i'm running a NeXT Cube at home now;)

[OutThere]

there's some strange pics if you go through the directories that those pics are housed in. take a look for yourself. note the mac OS x 'mockup'


http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/apple_osx_mockup/

[Powerbook G5]

Is it just me, or is everyone glad OS X didn't turn out to look like that...that is one odd looking GUI/OS X mockup.

[Wes]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Is it just me, or is everyone glad OS X didn't turn out to look like that...that is one odd looking GUI/OS X mockup.

This pic made me laugh out loud, the spinning beachball of death has reared it's ugly head, as well as the 'drain':confused: :confused:.


EDIT: Kinda surprising that they had most of the basic OS X apps done in 1997, Grab, Preview, Preferences, Print Manager, and could webster.app be **gasp** early safari?

[Daveman Deluxe]

I remember skimming some back issues of Macworld with reviews of the OSX Public Beta (10.1 was out when I was reading these). They looked VERY foreign to me.

[mstecker]

Originally posted by tjwett
yeah that's what i was thinking too. i bet there's some nut job running it on a machine somewhere. heck, i'm running a NeXT Cube at home now;)

I'm running a NeXT Cube at home too (Turbo Dimension cube to boot) And it runs Omniweb 4 pretty well.

Yes, Rhapsody is still in development. It's just now called OS X.

[Powerbook G5]

Originally posted by Wes
This pic made me laugh out loud, the spinning beachball of death has reared it's ugly head in this pic, as well as the 'drain':confused: :confused:.


EDIT: Kinda surprising that they had most of the basic OS X apps done in 1997, Grab, Preview, Preferences, Print Manager, and could webster.app be **gasp** early safari?

Does this mean it took Apple 6 years of developement for the spinning beach ball of death? That's kind of creepy!

[mstecker]

You need to remember that OSX continues the code of the old NeXT operating system, not the old Apple operating system.

As such, you can trace the origin of the spinning beach ball to the release of NeXTStep 3.0.

I remember the first time I saw it when I was installing it for a customer. A friend and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

[tjwett]

Originally posted by Wes

EDIT: Kinda surprising that they had most of the basic OS X apps done in 1997, Grab, Preview, Preferences, Print Manager, and could webster.app be **gasp** early safari?

yeah it's amazing. if you ever get the chance you should take NeXT OS for a test drive. you'll be blown away by how similar it is to OS X, and it's soooo old. they really had something special going. but like most of Apple/Steve's great accomplishments, it may have been just a little too ahead of it's time.

[mstecker]

Originally posted by Wes
This pic made me laugh out loud, the spinning beachball of death has reared it's ugly head in this pic, as well as the 'drain':confused: :confused:.


EDIT: Kinda surprising that they had most of the basic OS X apps done in 1997, Grab, Preview, Preferences, Print Manager, and could webster.app be **gasp** early safari?

Nope. Webster.app was a dictionary application. You could look up any word in any application by hitting command-equals. But the rest of the stuff dates back to 1988 or so, when NeXTSTEP first came out

[Wes]

Originally posted by mstecker
Nope. Webster.app was a dictionary application. You could look up any word in any application by hitting command-equals. But the rest of the stuff dates back to 1988 or so, when NeXTSTEP first came out

A bit like the integration apple is trying to get within cocoa apps? Services etc etc.?

[mstecker]

Originally posted by Wes
A bit like the integration apple is trying to get within cocoa apps? Services etc etc.?

LOL. I hate to keep beating the same point, but it's not a bit like it, it's exactly like it, because it's more or less the same code.

[benixau]

Originally posted by mstecker
LOL. I hate to keep beating the same point, but it's not a bit like it, it's exactly like it, because it's more or less the same code.

no its not. This one has had the OS9 programmers look at it. I bet they put something nasty in the comments too.

[StrongBad]

Originally posted by tjwett
... I read and noticed that this version of Quicktime Player for Rhapsody has a copyright date of 2003 Apple Computer.


The copyright on that app changes with the current system date and time.

A nice trick to keep copyrights up to date, but proved illegal, and thus is not used anymore.



SB

[mstecker]

Originally posted by benixau
no its not. This one has had the OS9 programmers look at it. I bet they put something nasty in the comments too.

Yes it is. It's the same under the surface. Rhapsody was the NeXTSTEP code with a OS 9 look and feel patched on top of it.

OS X is the greatly-enhanced NeXTSTEP codbase, with Carbon added and an aqua-look and feel (and without Display Postscript - sniff, sniff).

Doesn't mean it's not the same program.

I bet that if you were to throw the source for, say, Grab.app into filemerge with the original NeXTSTEP version, you'd see that about 80% of the source is still the same.

[BrandonRP0123]

Given the strange PC hardware on one of those images, and the similarity of some of the widgets to that of WindowMaker for X11 (www.windowmaker.org) I'd say its an X11 window manager made to look like Rhapsody. Although, the interface itself looks like the ORIGINAL Mac OS X server (theres some talk about it on this SlashDot (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/03/18/0415233.shtml?tid=104) article that might further help us understand.

Then again, it could be a cheeseball on a PC thinking he's 31337 because he's an Apple h4x0r. Or something.

[bwawn]

Originally posted by BrandonRP0123
Given the strange PC hardware on one of those images, and the similarity of some of the widgets to that of WindowMaker for X11 (www.windowmaker.org) I'd say its an X11 window manager made to look like Rhapsody. Although, the interface itself looks like the ORIGINAL Mac OS X server (theres some talk about it on this SlashDot (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/03/18/0415233.shtml?tid=104) article that might further help us understand.

Then again, it could be a cheeseball on a PC thinking he's 31337 because he's an Apple h4x0r. Or something.

Old Rhapsody developer releases ran on both PPC and x86 hardware (they had two separate versions given to developers). It wasn't until OS X public beta, I think, that the OS was made PPC-only.

As far as I'm concerned, these shots are completely legitimate and real. Quicktime's code was just made to keep the copyright up-to-date with the computer's date and time as far as I think.

[BrandonRP0123]

Originally posted by bwawn
Old Rhapsody developer releases ran on both PPC and x86 hardware (they had two separate versions given to developers). It wasn't until OS X public beta, I think, that the OS was made PPC-only.


You're absolutely right. I totally forgot about that little fact.

Along the same lines, an x86 Darwin kernel exists as well - doesn't it?

[Powerbook G5]

Yes, it does, from what I've heard, at least.

[nagromme]

Apple is rumored to keep OS X more or less up to date on x86, internally, as a safety net for the future. If so, who's to say it has the Aqua GUI? They have focussed on the lower layers. So maybe somewhere out there are recent mutant OS X versions sitting on x86 hardware. Unlikely to be what we're looking at I know--just a thought.

[benixau]

Originally posted by mstecker
Yes it is. It's the same under the surface. Rhapsody was the NeXTSTEP code with a OS 9 look and feel patched on top of it.

OS X is the greatly-enhanced NeXTSTEP codbase, with Carbon added and an aqua-look and feel (and without Display Postscript - sniff, sniff).

Doesn't mean it's not the same program.

I bet that if you were to throw the source for, say, Grab.app into filemerge with the original NeXTSTEP version, you'd see that about 80% of the source is still the same.

i was having a bit of fun. a bit of insight - the os9 (apple) programmers dont like some of the things that the osx (neXt) guys are doing:

filename extension based system
dock
no labels (getting fixed)
non-dockable folders
moving menus (app menu moves file menu)
non-mutable apple menu
metal interface
able to access system level (terminal.app, netinfo, etc)

that is what i was saying. i know it is the same code essentially bar the re-compile. go to my web page - i do obj-c. i know what your going on about.

[RacerX]

Just a note about that image: the icon for OmniWeb is exactly the same as OmniWeb 4.5's icon! I highly doubt that the icon would be the same, since their "Omni" logo has changed to a more aquafied appearance. I'd bet that that image is doctored.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Maybe I can iron out some of this...

The OmniWeb 3.1 about panel was from my PowerBook G3 running Rhapsody 5.6 (aka Mac OS X Server 1.2). On both my PowerBook and my ThinkPad (running Rhapsody 5.1 and using OmniWeb 3.0) I changed the icon for OmniWeb to that of OmniWeb 4.x (icons in Rhapsody are just TIFF images).

Many of the Apple applications in Rhapsody had the changing copyright date (including the Workspace Manager).

As for the reference to Mac OS X Server in the OmniWeb about panel, it makes the same reference in the Rhapsody for Intel version and the OPENSTEP version of OmniWeb 3.x.

Apple dropped the name Rhapsody publicly in 1998 when they started working on Mac OS X. Still, beyond a little graphic dressings, the product Mac OS X Server 1.0 still believes that it is Rhapsody. The first public release was in 1999, known only as Mac OS X Server at the time (Apple only thought there was going to be one release), this was actually Rhapsody 5.3. Apple released two updates for Mac OS X Server which represented Rhapsody 5.4 and 5.5. When the Mac OS X project proved to be more time consuming than they originally thought, Apple released a new version designed to work with the new G4 processors in their PowerMacs. This was called Mac OS X Server 1.2 and corresponded to Rhapsody version 5.6. Apple made an additional update for compatibility with newer G4 systems (including the first eMacs). While this was given the product name Mac OS X Server 1.2 v3, the Rhapsody version stayed at 5.6.

Apple stopped shipping all versions of Rhapsody in 2001 months before the release of Mac OS X Server 10.0.3 (the first server based on the Mac OS X client operating system).

Only Rhapsody 5.0 (Rhapsody Developer Release) and Rhapsody 5.1 (Rhapsody Developer Release 2) had versions that could run on Intel hardware. Rhapsody 5.2 was to be the first public release of the Rhapsody OS but was pulled in favor of using Apple's resources on Mac OS X development. Rhapsody 5.3 was to be the Rhapsody Server release and was renamed Mac OS X Server to show that Apple was making progress on their new technologies.

I have since moved my PowerBook to Mac OS X v10.2, but my ThinkPad is still running it's original installation of Rhapsody 5.1 and is still in daily use. I bought a PowerMac 7500 and put a 604e/210 MHz processor in it so I could have a system that would still run Rhapsody 5.6. I own (that is, have fully paid licenses) a lot of Rhapsody software, so my perspective of Rhapsody is usually a little different from those who grab a copy off the internet and install it without any applications. Most of the software titles I use today in Mac OS X are the same as those that I use on my Rhapsody systems... though the Rhapsody versions are much earlier versions (for example I use Create 12.1 on my Mac OS X systems, while I use Create 10.0 in Rhapsody 5.6 and Create 5.1 in Rhapsody 5.1).

Here is a shot of my 7500 with OmniWeb running. I haven't changed the icons on this system.

[brap]

Maybe I can iron out some of this...
<snip>
Here is a shot of my 7500 with OmniWeb running. I haven't changed the icons on this system.
Way to shut up the non-believers. Nice setup you have there.

I'd like to have a poke around, I have a couple of old PCs and System 7 machines doing very little -- would it be considered warez-speak to ask where I could get binaries? I have a bit of a fixation with "how-it-could-have-been", I still use Acorn Risc OS 3 every once in a while - now that was an OS...

[robbieduncan]

Given the strange PC hardware on one of those images, and the similarity of some of the widgets to that of WindowMaker for X11 (www.windowmaker.org) I'd say its an X11 window manager made to look like Rhapsody. Although, the interface itself looks like the ORIGINAL Mac OS X server (theres some talk about it on this SlashDot (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/03/18/0415233.shtml?tid=104) article that might further help us understand.

Then again, it could be a cheeseball on a PC thinking he's 31337 because he's an Apple h4x0r. Or something.
WindowMaker is meant to look like the NeXT window manager. Rapsody is built off NeXT. So it's not really surprising that they look similar. As NeXT ran fine on PC hardware (and so did Rapsody iirc) it's entirly possible to see PC hardware in the system.

[RacerX]

I'd like to have a poke around,

Well, there has been at least one copy of Rhapsody on eBay every week for the last 20 weeks. Most have been PowerPC versions (specifically the Rhapsody 5.3 release), but there have been copies of 5.1 and 5.6 on auction from time to time also (I rounded out my collection by finding a copy of Mac OS X Server 1.2 v3, which was the only version I had been missing).

During that time the price has ranged from a low of about $10 to as high as $76, one went for $50 yesterday (and a current auction for a copy can be found here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5711963542)).

I've never downloaded Rhapsody from the internet (I have the original media for all the copies I use), so I have no idea where to get it that way.

The minimum requirements for the PowerPC version would be a PowerPC 604/120 based system, but faster is better. Also 64 MB of RAM (128 MB of RAM if you plan on using Blue Box).

For anyone wanting to get the most out of Rhapsody, I highly suggest the PowerPC version. One of the problems faced by the Intel version was that many developers only made PowerPC versions of their software. Between the larger amount of PowerPC software and the Mac software that could be run in Blue Box, the Intel version of Rhapsody was facing an applications barrier long before Apple shifted it's attention to Mac OS X.

Most Rhapsody applications have a very liberal demo mode, so even unlicensed apps can be very useful. The best place to start is the Peanuts software archive (http://www.peanuts.org/). It is also good to keep in mind that the software there may not have been updated (a good example is a piece of software for using scanners with Rhapsody... which has become freeware). If you come across something you like or that may be useful, a little more research can often turn up a much more refined version of the software.

A number of months ago I started a Rhapsody section (http://www.shawcomputing.net/rhapsody/home.html) of my web site to help people get started with this software. It is made completely on my Rhapsody systems using Rhapsody native applications (in response to another question I get a lot: "what can you do with Rhapsody?").

I also have a screenshot section of my site which can be found here (http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/index.html).


On a side note, for those looking for Yellow Box for Windows, you can get the same basic software from WebObjects 4.x for Windows which has been going for around $20 - $50 on ebay every so often. Any software designed for Yellow Box for Windows can run on a Windows (NT 4.0, 2000 Pro) system with WebObjects 4 developer environment installed on it.

[Vector]

Here is a site with some more Rhapsody pictures http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/rhapsody/.

[RacerX]

Here is a site with some more Rhapsody pictures http://next.z80.org/graphics/screenshots/rhapsody/.

Ummm, well, one of the problems with images grabbed without the original captions is that they tend to be... misleading.

Like the OmniWeb "about panel", the Blue Box startup panel isn't how it looks by default. I made that panel from a scanned image (from one of my OPENSTEP manuals) in Photoshop and used ResEdit to replace the original startup panel (which was the generic "Mac OS 8.6" startup panel).

I have gotten e-mails asking why the Blue Box startup panel on someone's installation isn't like the one shown there.

This was the image I use to replace the startup panel, there is no way (that I know of) to actually get a screenshot of the actual Blue Box start up.

Just FYI.