Originally posted by tex210
I think Bertrand Serlet is the real news here. He will report directly to Jobs. He was involved with Rhapsody I believe.... what was that UI to be like?
Imagine Mac OS 9 and NeXTSTEP parented a child together; that would be Rhapsody (aka the very first Mac OS X Server), which looked superficially like Mac OS 9 (most UI widgets, top-edge menubar, desktop, etc.) but acted like NeXTSTEP (the look'n'feel of most apps, and the inner workings "under the hood"); that child then grew up to establish a distinctive adult identity all its own as Mac OS X, while still retaining subtle resemblance to its child self and to its parents.
The various coloured boxen (among geex like us, I gather this is the preferred plural for "box"
😉 ) were OS X's layers of support for various application programming interfaces -- the Blue Box was OS X's support for the classic Mac OS API (i.e., the Carbon API, and the Classic environment running Mac OS 9 as an app within OS X), and the Yellow Box was OS X's native API (i.e., Cocoa). IIRC, some aborted projects included a Yellow Box for Windows (installing YBW on a WinTel machine would have allowed that machine to run Cocoa apps!), and there was also some rumour of a proposed Red Box for OS X that would have allowed OS X to support Windows APIs (i.e., run Windows apps in OS X
without also running a virtual/emulated Windows OS like VirtualPC!).
I'm thinking the latter, if not the former as well, got the axe as part of the M$ agreement way back when, where the Giant Head of Bill Gates appeared on the Jumbotron (looking eerily like Big Brother from the 1984 commercial -- I kept expecting the chick with the hammer to run in
😉 ), looming behind Steve on the stage at Macworld to promise M$ would invest in Apple and continue developing apps (e.g., IE, Office, etc.) for the Mac for several years, which agreement may well have helped Steve save Apple. Now that the terms of the agreement have expired, and M$-Apple relations seem less peachy (no more IE, iApps muscling in on M$ territory, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if the Yellow Box for Windows or the Red Box projects get pulled out of mothballs and dusted off (ew, mothball dust...
😛 ).
Marklar was tied into this wasn't it? Maybe they've put Marklar away since the G5 is here...
Marklar is an Apple-internal developmental build of Mac OS X rejiggered and recompiled to run on x86 hardware (it occurs to me now that it may incorporate some former YBW and/or Red Box technologies...?). I gather that Marklar was
not primarily intended to support any speculative migration to x86 CPUs in Apple hardware (which move would entail truly Drastic Measures in the way of legacy software support alone); rather, Apple may be preparing Marklar as an "Ace in the hole" to spring on the market as an alternative to Windows on x86 boxen. It will lie in wait for a time when WinTel users realize that the draconian "safety and security features" that M$ is foisting upon them in future versions of Windows, Office, etc. are not in their best interests, leading them to look for an easier, prettier alternative than installing "that Linux thing" they've heard about. Of course, Marklar could not run Classic Mac (Blue Box) apps, but it could run OS X-native Cocoa apps (which might still need a recompile for x86 unless YBW gets revived and efficient enough), and it might also be able to support existing Windows apps, using some adaptation of the Red Box.
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