Why does Mac have two OSs?

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by Snowy_River
Quite so. The only significant difference is that NT (at least as of NT4) looses some of the compatibility and speed of DOS, because it is only an emulation.

true. but it's %$#@ing DOS! it's not like there are any apps that really suffer from that. processors at astronomically higher speeds than any DOS app was written to take advantage of.

FYI... NT stands for New Technology, which is what MS intended the OS to be, a new level of OS tech built from the ground up to get away from the problems of building shells on top of DOS. Unfortunately, they have yet to get a good internal architecture in the system. (It's better than it used to be, but that's not saying much...)

Just like everything else they do. i was aware what NT stands for

Uh, let's not say 'linux'. Say 'unix' or 'BSD', but 'linux' is, at least to some extent, a different beast.

my bad. i meant unix and typed linux. it's something that happens to my mind often... absent minded, i guess. sorry.

Regarding processing structure, here's a picture that should give you some idea of how there are 'parallel' processes that function inside of OS X, including the BSD process (unix), the Cocoa process (NeXTSTEP), the Classic process (Blue box), and so on. These are all part of the whole operating system that is OS X.

thanks, i have seen the aquified version of that diagram on the apple development section on their site; i thought of linking it, but felt too lazy