If you want a classy laptop, then look no further than the 24 karat gold Macbook Pros from PowerMax. For $6499 you can get a 15.4″ Macbook Pro with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo with a gold plated case. You can get a 17″ for $7999, and for $9499 you can have the Apple on the case encrusted with diamonds.

Macbook Pro gold plated:

Gold plated Macbook Pro with diamond encrusted Apple:

To check these out go to: http://www.powermax.com/parts/code/PM_CN_GM

Prologue: The Forefathers, Part 1

I hyperlinked many of the words below to other sites for more detailed information, some of these links might go down or the url might change. Sorry if this happens.

The computer industry has grown much since the 20th century. It’s now a primary asset to the world, but what is the story behind it? How did it begin? This is a series of articles, dedicated to the historical events to the industry of computing.

Many have come to the idea that the term, computer, refers to some type of electronic machine that is programmable. Yes this is the modern definition, but the term computer came about in the 17th century. It originally meant a person that computed numbers. Yet the idea of computers is even older than this.

One of the oldest known mechanical computers is called Antikythera. Found in 1900 underneath the coast of Greece. It was discovered in a Roman shipwreck, and is about 2000 years old. This Greek computer has been a mystery for many years, one person came to the theory it was used for astronomy. In 1971, a scientist x-rayed it, and found this theory to be accurate. He also discovered it’s complex gear based design, being of 18th century clockmaker quality.

This computer is but one example of ancient mechanical computers. The real concept of how computers work today however, didn’t come around till 1725.

Basile Bouchon, a French textile worker, created what is called a punch card, used as a better form of perforated paper rolls for making textiles. Later, in 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard would use the punch card technique to build a profitable mechanical loom.

Charles Babbage, using the punch cards, was the one who came up with the concept of programmable computers. Sadly, he never finished his work because of low funding. Many of his uncompleted inventions were finally replicated and finished in the 90s, and in fact worked. This includes his Difference Engine, and a printer for it.

In 1911, the largest and most influential corporation at the beginning of the computer industry would form through a merger of three companies: Tabulating Machine Company, Computing Scale Corporation, and International Time Recording Company. It was called Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation(CTR).

In 1914, a man by the name of Thomas J. Watson became the general manager of CTR. He became president a year later. In 1917, the company tried to get into the Canadian business with the name: International Business Machines. In 1924, the chairman, George Fairchild died at age 50. This left Watson in charge, who took control of the corporation. The first thing he did was rename the company after the Canadian name, International Business Machines, or simply IBM.

Originally IBM was a punch card data processing equipment Monopoly. They even created their own type of punch card, called the IBM card. As with many companies IBM was international, and when the Nazis, in the 1930s, wanted to use computers for recording information, they choose IBM.

“When Hitler came to power in 1933, his goal was to dismantle and destroy the Jewish community. This was an enterprise so vast, that it required the resources of a computer, but in 1933 there was no computer. What there was, was the IBM Punch Card System.” - Edwin Black, Author: IBM and the Holocaust

To make it worst, the machines weren’t bought, but Leased from IBM.There was an IBM system in every concentration camp, each needing to be serviced by an IBM engineer once a month. The punch cards were also printed exclusively by IBM, who collected the profits after the war.

Of course, once the United States entered the war, IBM joined them. They started to work on warfare machines, like SAGE(Semi Automatic Ground Environment) with help from MIT.

A video about SAGE created by IBM in the 50s:

After WWII, IBM continued to build newer forms of computers, including the first 64bit Super Computer in 1961. The industry’s nickname at the time was IBM and the seven Dwarfs, the Dwarfs being Burroughs, CDC, GE, Honeywell, NCR, RCA and Univac. The nickname lasted until the 1970s, at this time RCA and GE got out of the computer business, it then changed to BUNCH. So it could be said IBM and the BUNCH.

Of course there are more companies besides IBM who have molded the computer industry into what we know it today. Another big contributor, is AT&T.

Many people don’t know, but with out AT&T, the industry wouldn’t be what it is today. Some of the assets of the computer industry that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for AT&T, would be flash memory, digital Cameras, “micro” computers, Linux, Windows, and even OS X. All of these are built off of what AT&T Bell Labs created.

continues to, Prologue: The Forefathers, Part 2

If you own or have looked at a low end laptop, you might have noticed it doesn’t have a video card. What it does have is an Intel GMA. A GMA, or Graphics Media Accelerator, is a GPU that rests on top of the motherboard with the CPU. Now you might be laughing about this article, I mean, how can an integrated GPU that shares the main memory with the CPU outperform a dedicated video card? Well it has to do with Intel’s new technology.

The GMA has been spotted on HP and Dell laptops, but the number one place people seem to notice it is on Apple’s MacBooks. Many people have complained that the MacBook’s gaming capabilities are low. This is true — they are — but the GMA has improved much since then. The MacBook started out with the GMA x950; this card could use 64 MB of system RAM for graphics and run up to 133-250 MHz. Since the last update, the MacBooks gained the Santa Rosa chipset. If you’re a little slow with computer technology, Santa Rosa is code name for the newest Centrino chipset. Although the speed (hertz) didn’t increase much, the performance of the MacBooks did. They also gained a new GPU: the GMA x3100. This GPU can go up to 500 MHz and 384 MB of RAM, a big upgrade from the previous models. Apple has limited the MacBook one to only use up to 133 MB of RAM.

In the second quarter of 2008, Intel plans to ship the GMA x4500. Intel says the x4500 is going to be three times as fast as the x3100, using DDR3 memory. Now of course other chips are already using DDR3, but Intel plans to use something else in late 2008-2009.

In 2009, Intel plans to finally release an all new form of graphics processing code named Larrabee. Larrabee is a GPU that can contain multiple cores. Now when I say multiple, I don’t mean four or six cores. I’m talking about 16-20 cores pact all in one GPU. By the end of 2008, Intel plans to release a form of this, which is a hybrid CPU/GPU chip all in one. With two to four cores in 2008, and possibly up to 16 in 2009 working as both the CPU and GPU, it seems Intel plans to wipe out the dedicated video card market.

It sounds like the cores will be virtually separated. This means four cores will act like eight cores (four for CPU, four for GPU). The technology behind “splitting” the cores is called HyperThreading (HT). Intel says the HyperThreading technology creates a thread-level parallelism on each core providing more efficient use of processor resources.

At this point, I’m not sure if Intel will make dedicated cards obsolete, but I do know it is progressing on a new next generation graphics chipset.

Now I wont lie, lower-end Macs are priced higher than low-end PCs. The weird thing is, High-end Macs are cheaper than High-end PCs. Why is this? It’s because Macs are premium computers. They contain expensive materials, like Aluminum or Poly Carbonate. As the Macs gain better specifications(RAM, CPU, etc), The don’t gain much more material volume wise. In Other words, the more powerful the Mac, the less it will cost. A Mac Pro that cost $18,000 is equivalent to a Dell XPS that costs $22,000.

Steve Jobs - August 08, 2007:

“We can’t ship junk. There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. The difference is, we don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.”

So how much do you think the iPhone costs Apple? Maybe $25, might be as high as $80. Well the fact is, the iPhone costs Apple about $220 (originally, Steve said in September that the price to manufacture the iPhones fell). This information comes from a company called iSuppli. iSuppli tears-down products and calls up manufactures to estimate the cost of making a product.

After this new information, guess how much it cost to make an iMac ($1299, from 2006). At the time a 17 inch iMac at the price of $1299, cost Apple $898 to manufacture. The processor alone costs Apple about $250. This means Apple makes $401 for every iMac ($1299) sold.

The cases that Apple uses for their computers come in three different materials: Aluminum, PolyCarbonate, and Glass. Aluminum is the most expensive, durable for its weight metal. Poly-Carbonate is the plastic Apple uses, this form of Poly is normally used for bullet-proof glass. Glass is a new material Apple just started using with their iMacs. Aluminum and PolyCarbonate are not cheap, in fact they are the priciest of their class, this is a big reason why the baseline computers start out at such a high price. When you get a baseline Mac, the majority of the cost is just paying for the case alone. As you add in more RAM, and other components the cost starts to bend like a quadratic graph, eventually the Mac becomes cheaper than an equivalent PC.

Now that you see the reason of Apple’s pricing, let’s move onto ownership. One big difference between a Mac and PC is the life they have during ownership. After you get a Mac, you might start realizing that the cost you paid for it will soon save you much in your wallet. The first thing you will come to notice is the software. Software on the Mac side is normally cheaper. I believe that the amount of software you buy for your computer can eventually equal or surpass the cost of the computer. Well this is just one reason why a Mac can save you money.

For High-end Users:
Say you’re a programmer. You might want a good computer for development, so you go over to Apple and buy a Mac Pro. Now let’s say someone wants a development system from Dell so they look at the Precision line. They buy a customized Precision 690. Now lets look at the Specs:

Mac Pro (3,646):
Two 2.66 GHZ Dual Core Xeon Processors
2 Gigs of RAM
250 Gigs Hard drive space
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
Apple Cinema Display (20″ flat panel)

Precision 690 ($3,821):
Two 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon Processor
2 Gigs of RAM
250 Gigs Hard drive space
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3450, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
Dell 20 inch UltraSharp

Now as for software, for the person that bought the Mac Pro, Apple’s Xcode comes with their computer. Xcode is Apple’s development kit, and it’s completely free. If you don’t have it for your Mac, you can download it from developer.apple.com. As for the one that bought the Dell computer, it’ll cost another $700 ($668 at pcmall.com) for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Now let’s add up the totals: Mac Pro is still at $3,646, the Precision is now at $4,489.

For Students:
I’m going to change companies now, since everyone uses Dell. This time I’m going to use HP. Let’s say Student1 gets a MacBook from Apple for $1,299. Student2 gets a HP Pavilion dv2500t for $799.99. Now unlike the above, I’m showing you the tagged price. This price you will normally see in ads, but is not the actually price you’ll pay. $799,99 is too good to be true, unless you want a paper weight.

Let’s see those Specs and “real” prices:

MacBook ($1,548):
2.2 ghz Core 2 Duo
1 gig RAM
120 GB Hard drive
Intel GMA X3100
OS X recover disc (Free)
AppleCare Protection ($249) - All I added

HP Pavilion dv2500t ($1,372.98):
2.2 ghz Core 2 Duo
1 gig RAM
120 GB Hard drive
Intel GMA X3100
Vista Recover Disc ($29.99)
3-year HP Accidental Damage Protection with Pick Up and Return ($309.99)

Now let’s add on what a student might want. Student1 buys iWorks for $69 (Student Discount), while Student2 buys Microsoft Office Student Edition for $149. iWorks and even OS X can read and write Office documents natively so there is no compatibility problems with the two different Suits.

In the end, the two laptops about equal in price. The big difference is the technology behind them. The MacBook comes with OS X Leopard, while the HP comes with Vista Home Premium. The MacBook has a motion censor while the HP doesn’t. The censor is patented by Apple and is used to protect the hard drive if the computer falls, it’s also used in many Mac games. Another item that comes with the Macbook, is the built-in camera; this too is not on the HP laptop.

The last little bit I want to talk about, is durability. The fact is, the Mac has a lower percentage of breaking down and OS X is much more secure and stable then Windows. The main reason for this, is Apple designing and building both the computer and the OS. I still use my Apple Performa 550 from 94 and it has never died on me yet. Of course that was back in the 90s, a lot has changed since then. Computers now use extremely small components, and in a larger amount. This increases the chances of problems. My PowerMac G5 for instance only lasted 3 years, then I had to get it repaired by Apple. The cost for repair was $1300, but since I had AppleCare, Apple paid for everything.

PC Magazine has had an annual consumer survey for the past 19 years. If you go through them you’ll realize that Apple is first over all in every single one for the past decade. Not only is Apple first, but the second placer isn’t even close.

“Look no further than Apple, the leader of the pack, whose overall score holds steady at 9.1. Last year, Apple’s score on units needing repair was an impressive 11 percent — well below that of any other company in the survey. But according to readers, the company has managed to cut repair rates even further over the past 12 months. This year, Apple’s score on units needing repair drops to 8 percent. Among first-year systems, it’s only 5 percent. That’s nothing less than astonishing.” - PC Magazine, 19th Annual User Survey.

In the end you might now know Apple is not a greedy monster whose after every penny you have. They sell premium quality products, which few computer manufacturers do.

I was reading this article from BBC, a minute later I’m writing this post.  In the article it talks about the October Trojan horse.  A Trojan is a malicious progam; it hides its self as a friendly file or application.

Now Mac OS X has a UNIX core,  UNIX has an advance permissions system.  The only way to access a vital section of OS X is by an Admin password, when in an Admin Account.  You can also access a vital section by being in the Root Account.  The Root Account, is the main account in UNIX systems.  You can do anything in the root account,and this is with out typing in a password.  This account is used by OS X to run secure processes. The graphical user account for Root is disabled by default, and can be enabled in Netinfo.app(Tiger and down) or the Terminal.  For some reason the Netinfo.app was replaced with Directory.app and other programs.  This application has a menubar item just for enabling the Root account. In OS X the main account the normal user is in, is the Admin Account.

When a normal user downloads a file, first the file is put into the download folder.  If using Safari and the auto open file setting, Safari will check the downloaded file.  If it finds an executable in the file it will double check with you if it should open it.

In Leopard, all files downloaded are marked.  When the file is about to opened for the first time, Leopard will show an alert box.  It gives the date the file was downloaded and the website where it came from.  The user must hit “Ok” to open the file.  There is no coding structure in OS X for an Application or file to open it’s self with out user interaction.  When you finally install a file with the file installer, if needed, it will prompt for a password if the file needs to access secure data.

In total, a file needs up to 4 user interactions to install.  This means it’s just about impossible to make a virus for OS X.  I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I do believe it’s 99.9% unachievable.  A trojan horse on the other hand is possible.

In the article on BBC, it says the October Trojan is the first security breech of many for OS X.  This is false, there have, so far, been over 8 Trojans for OS X.  A Trojan on the Mac is nothing new.

Here are some articles about other Trojans for OS X, 3 Trojans came out in 2004:

Intego says Mac OS X Trojan AppleScript applet in the wild(2004)

ALERT: New Mac OS X ‘Nugatory’ Trojan found on Web, deletes all iTunes music(2004)

New Mac OS X Trojan warning(2006)

Apple: ‘Opener’ is not a virus, Trojan horse, or worm(2004), others same the opposite

Remember this is just for fun, Halo and Marathon are not confirmed by Bungie to be related:

The Bungie universe, is filled with many twist and turns. If you’ve played at least two of Bungie’s series, you might have notice a similarity. Now of course I’m not counting the Myth series or Gnop! or Abuse. I’m talking about the games: Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, and Halo.

There have been many counts of people saying these games are related, and they have good reasons to. Already known, a terminal console in Marathon holds the information of Earth’s history. This information is actual the scrambled up story line of Bungie’s other game Pathways into Darkness. Showing that this game is before the Marathon series.

Then there is Halo, Halo is before Marathon as well. Halo 3 ended in 2553 AD, while Marathon 1 begins in 2794 AD. This game is filled with connections to Marathon. Not only does the Marathon logo pop up many times, but Master Chief is even wearing the same armored suit.

Below you have Marathon’s logo and Halo’s. If you look between the A and L in the Halo Logo, you might see Marathon’s. I also did a zoomed in enhanced version:

As you see in the picture above, this is a normally thing that Bungie does. They never tell you anything, they only leave clues. In Marathon for instance, it was filled with riddles and clues, which you had to decipher to figure out the story line and plot.

In the Marathon series, the main Character is a human soldier who wears a MJOLNIR Mark IV armored suit, by the first game, the Character is believed to become a cyborg consumed by the suit in some way. In the first Halo you start out with the MJOLNIR Mark V armor and later move on to MJOLNIR Mark VI armor.

If you know the story line of Marathon, the ship was sent off on a 300+ year course to another planet on the outskirts. It left in 2472 AD, possibly before the creation of MJOLNIR Mark V. The date is during the time(in Halo) when the colonies are spreading out through space, the Marathon was one of those Colony ships.

What’s weird, is that if you know the timeline of marathon, the 26th century, or 2500-2600 AD, is left completely blank. Nothing happens at all. This is when Halo takes part and the Covenant Wars begin, starting in 2525.

During development, Former Bungie Head Alex Seropian even stated in an interview that Master Chief and the main Character from Marathon are different incarnations of the same character.

Changing the subject a bit, Bungie was primarily a Mac developer. They had only, at the time, ported one game over to Windows. That game being Marathon 2. Halo was going to be their next big game, along with Oni. In 1999, after much anticipation from fans, Steve Jobs introduced Halo publicly, giving the stage to Jason Jones of Bungie. It was set to come out in 2000 for the Mac and Windows PC. Instead, however, Microsoft was looking for a headliner for it’s new game console it was developing and saw Halo. Only a few months later Bungie was bought by Microsoft and the Halo project as it was known was gone. Halo wasn’t released for Mac or PC until 2003.

Bungie showing Halo at Macworld 1999 in NewYork, NY:

Shortly after Bungie released Halo 1, they started posting about Marathon and Halo being two completely different games. They even took down their marathon/Halo connections page: www.bungie.net/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/site/0/news/stories/the_marathon_connection.html.

So how does the Marathon story line and Halo story line fit together? Well after looking through the dates and events, I’ve discovered that it fits very well. In fact it fits perfectly(as far as I know). Remember though this is just theory not fact. The only real problem I’ve run into is a few names. In Marathon you have the UESC(United Earth Space Council), while in Halo it’s called the UNSC(United Nation Space Command). Also some of the technology is a little different.

I believe that most of the differences, mainly with technology, lie with the fact that Microsoft bought the franchise and halo was redone from scratch for their Xbox system. In the end Halo feels like an after market add-on to a car. It was designed for the car, but it doesn’t fit quite right.

For a timeline of Marathon and Pathways into Darkness go here:
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/timetable.html

For Halo, go here(note, it’s not completed yet):
http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/mstimeline2.html

On Wednesday the 21st of November 2007, Verizon released what they considered to be the iPhone killer.  This is the third phone so far claiming this title, yet none have taken it yet.  The phone’s name is the LG Voyager.  It sells for $299 with a two year contract.

The graphical interface on the Voyager looks very similar to the iPhone.  At the top left of the screen you have the network info and on the right side you have the battery life.  In the middle, the Voyager has some more indicators like bluetooth, while the iPhone shows the time.  Below this, the Voyager lays out what it calls the shortcut menu.  This strikingly looks like the desktop/dashboard on the iPhone, but with different icons.  At the bottom, the phone uses a dock to host the more common applications, just like the iPhone.

 LG Voyager, picture is hosted on MacNN.com:

Now onto the hardware side, the phone has a nice shape, it has a similar bevel to the iPhone, but more rounded.  It also has real buttons, including a hidden keyboard that pops out.

opinion:  I’m not sure why people say that the iPhone doesn’t have a keyboard, when it does.  Just because it’s touch screen, doesn’t mean it’s not a keyboard.  Apple didn’t making the iPhone touch screen just so you didn’t have to use it that way.

Now overall the LG Voyager is a good start, but it’s still not there yet.  The problem I see with companies like Verizon, is the fact that they care more about the money and competition than the product.  They probably spent only six or so months on the Voyager, while Apple spent 4 years developing the iPhone.  If a company truly spent some time on making a good product, maybe it would be an Apple killer, but this hasn’t happened yet.

Even Microsoft can’t seem to make a good innovative product to go against the iPod.   The new Zunes they showcased back in October had very few new features if at all.  Where did the innovation go with these companies, why can’t they create something new and better?  All most every product I see today, besides ones from companies like Nintendo and Apple, are stale and repetitive.  Apple actually uses this problem to create a competitive product.

Apple looks for stale industries, it feeds on them.  One big thing about competition, is you don’t want to be one of the first to start it.  A late comer is normally the one that wins in the end, and that is what Apple does.  For instance, the phone industry has been a very slow moving world, so when a company comes in with a new phone unlike any other with a whole new idea on the concept the consumers get very interested.  Apple did this with the iPhone.  Apple also did this with their Newton, coining the name PDA.

Nintendo had a different, but similar strategy.  They used innovations in an industry they were already in.  Instead of going for high-end graphics, they focused on changing the form of gameplay.  Nintendo is now the leader in the game console wars, having already outsold their last console the Gamecube.  The Gamecube sold 12,000,000, while the Wii has sold over 15,000,000 so far.

Google is another great example of a competitive company.  If you go to their search engine, what do you see?  Well there is a small little strip at the top, the google logo in the middle of the screen, and underneath is a text box for searching.  It’s very clean and contains, at least to the eye, very few features.  This might surprise some people, but fewer features actually increases customer satisfaction.  Now of course google has thousands of features, but they aren’t all jumping out at you, they’re hidden until you want to use them.  Yahoo or MSN on the other hand, have all their features and applications attacking you once the page is loaded.  This can make a website very hard to navigate and understand, especially for new people.  This tremendously brings down customer satisfaction, and also slows down your browser.

Now back to the LG Voyager.  If Verizon truly spent more time on it, they might have been able to compete against the iPhone.

RIM, is finally doing something right.   They are starting to work on a new next-gen touch screen OS.  They plan to follow Apple, getting rid of the physical keyboard and using touchscreen alone.

I really hope that companies will get back into innovation and worry about the products, not the money.  You need to care about what you do to do it right, otherwise your in the wrong business.

Through the years, I’ve used many applications to develop Web sites. I first started with simple applications like TextEdit and NotePad, then moving on to more complex programs like Dreamweaver and GoLive. What I found with these programs was complexity, bugs, and simply an uncreative wall I couldn’t get past. I learned in the end that using high-end programs like these is a waste of time and money.

I eventually got so frustrated that I ended up going for a hunt on the Web for a new program; a simple application that had basic features the complex apps left behind. Well after two days I found a program called TextWrangler. It was a program made by Bare Bones, a well-known Mac developer company that created BBEdit. It turns out that TextWrangler is actually a freeware light version of BBEdit. It doesn’t contain a debugger, but it does have a color scheme system (for keywords) for over 20 different languages, something Dreamweaver is limited on.

With TextWrangler, the color scheme is in the XML mode:

I found TextWrangler to be the best code editor I have ever used. Yet I still needed a good debugger. I searched for over a week, but found nothing. At this time I had the Safari 3 beta, I’ve used the debug menu in Safari 2, but there wasn’t much in there besides a console. Well one day I was going through macdailynews.com, and like I always do, I opened up all the articles I wanted to read first by tabbing them. I do this by command (the key on an Apple keyboard) clicking on the links. Well I accidentally control clicked one, which I do sometimes. This of course opened the contextual menu. I noticed at the bottom there was a new menu item called Inspect Element. I clicked on this with curiosity. Suddenly the Web page went semitransparent black, except where the link under the mouse was. Also a new window popped up showing the structure of the link and even the CSS code going with it.

I had found my debugger. Using the inspector, you can see every document that the Web page is using at the time. The inspector can also show all the errors visually and give you the reason for it. Another great feature is the speed inspector. This allows you to see visually how fast every file was downloaded and rendered.

Safari’s Element inspector. I selected the Store button at apple.com. The inspector is highlighting the code, and showing the attributes of it on the right side (like CSS). The left side shows all the files used for the Web page, like scripts and images:

Below is the debugger:

Below is the speed inspector:

Of course there are too many features to talk about, but one last one that is crucial is the “Open Page With” submenu in the debug menu. This has a list of all the Web browsers on your computer and will open the current Web page with the browser you selected. This is useful to test out your work on multiple platforms and is just a nice little add-on Safari has.

To enable the debug menu in Safari, open the terminal and type out: defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

So in the end, complex, expensive software is not always the best solution. I found that multiple freeware applications make it easier to get the job done. I do have to confess I still use Adobe CS for my graphics.

This is an article about the origins of OS X:

Now to make this easier to understand later: Mac OS X is atop an operating system called Darwin. Right now Darwin is at version 8.8.1, which is the only part of OS X following the right version number.

Mac OS X’s origins start in 1984, The Macintosh has just been released. It has been a great success, but sadly it wouldn’t last. After only a few months, problems were being found. The Mac OS was the first OS to be completely based on GUI, meaning no command line. This was a little scary for many people. Programmers had to struggle to get their command line programs working on the Mac, some didn’t even bother with it, calling the Macintosh a toy or a gimmick. This created a lot of stress for Steve Jobs, he became irritated and irrational. A person he hired for CEO of Apple, John Sculley, a person that he gotten along with very well, soon became an enemy in Steve’s eyes. He blamed Sculley for a lot of the problems, saying he had bad judgements.

Eventually, in 1985, the Board of directors lost their patience with Steve and stripped him of operational responsibilities. Steve left soon after with a few of his friends. In the same year Steve bought Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group for $5 million. He then renamed it Pixar. Pixar would later become the leader in cgi technologies, with almost every movie coming out of hollywood using Pixar’s Renderman. A list of movies rendered with Renderman are listed here.

Soon after, again in the same year(1985), Steve founded a new computer company called NeXT. Steve and his friends from Apple now working under NeXT created a plan to get a computer out by 88. They succeeded with the NeXTCube, but the OS wasn’t finished until 89. This OS, NeXTStep, is the origin of OS X.

NeXTStep 1.0 in 1989. You might notice the Dock on the side:

In 1990 NeXTStep 2.0 came out, this slowly progressed the system. NeXT though, was facing hardware problems. It’s computers were ranging from $6,000 to $10,000. Very few were being sold and NeXT was losing money. There were some people that bought the computers though, a few items developed on a NeXT computer included: The World Wide Web, the first “Web” browser(WWW), Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and Lotus Improv. 1992 marked a landmark with NeXTStep, bringing out version 3. NeXT started to port their OS to other processors besides Motorola, including Intel’s and PowerPCs. In 93, NeXT finally left the computer business and stayed with Software only. Some OS X Apps you might know that were first created in NeXTStep include: Mail.app, Preview.app, and Interface Bulder.app. Another, Edit.app, became TextEdit.app.

A well known video of Steve Jobs Demoing NeXTStep 3 in 93:

NeXT modified their plans of NeXTStep and wanted to redesign it. They wanted it to be portable, to be able to run on any platform. They partnered with Sun Microsystems and created OpenStep 4. OpenStep isn’t an actually OS, it’s an Object oriented API that can use almost any OS as it’s core. Because of OpenStep’s portability Sun Microsystems started seeing it as a competitor to Java.

OpenStep 4.2 on my iBook G4, The program opened is Edit.app:

In 1995, Apple was looking for a new OS for their computers. They were fading away and needed something to revitalize their products, they need a new OS. One of the first they looked at was Windows NT, this OS is now being used with XP and Vista. They didn’t like what they saw, so they continued looking. Then they saw OpenStep 4 and of course, Steve Jobs. By 1996 Apple bought NeXT for $400 million. In 1997 Steve came back to Apple to save it as the iCEO, a company that in 1995, even he thought would die.

“The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad. The problem is this: no one at Apple has a clue as to how to create the next Macintosh because no one running any part of Apple was there when the Macintosh was made–or any other product at Apple.” - Steve Jobs, 1995

In July(1997), the last “real” full version of the Mac OS was created, Mac OS 8. This was designed to finish up the Mac OS while Apple continued to develop a new OS using OpenStep. Mac OS 9 was a transitional OS to switch from the Mac OS to Apple’s new OS called Rhapsody 5. The 5 was to continue the version number from NeXTStep. The first version came out at WWDC97 with developer Release 1. It had Openstep at the core with the Mac OS GUI look. Apple released Rhapsody as an OS for Macs and Intel PCs, as well as an API add-on to Windows, Solaris, and Linux.

Rhapsody, commonly called Yellowbox, on Windows.You’ll notice that Apple’s Interface Builder is open, It also has a menu bar at the top:

Apple created three application environments for Rhapsody: bluebox(Mac OS), Yellowbox(OpenStep), and Java. The Windows side of Rhapsody wouldn’t have Bluebox since this was just added for old mac apps that hadn’t been ported yet to Yellowbox. Eventually Apple stopped the development of its OS on Windows and the other platforms, the last release of Rhapsody for windows was Dev release 2. No one fully knows why, but part of the reason was low support from developers at the time. Another aspect that could of added to this was Apple and Microsoft going through disputes at the time.

In 1999 Apple released OS X server 1.0, aka Rhapsody 5.3. By this time Apple renamed Bluebox, classic, and they renamed Yellowbox, Cocoa. The name Cocoa was to make it fit better with the other application environment, Java. Another application environment that was added later was BSD. In 2000 Apple finally shared their new interface they had been working on for sometime, Aqua. This changed the industry look of a graphical user interface, giving it a more real and beautiful look and feel. At the time Steve Jobs showed Aqua, OS X looked similar to NeXTStep, but with a better GUI. To get rid of licensing problems, Apple created Quartz to render the graphics. Quartz uses Pixar’s Renderman technology to composite and render the graphical user interface. It’s imaging Model is very similar to the PDF technology.

This is the what Aqua originally looked like, for some reason they put the Apple icon in the middle of the menu bar:

On March 24th, 2001 Apple finally released OS X 10.0 Cheetah, it still was in beta form, the Darwin OS underneath was at version 0.1. Six months later 10.1 Puma comes out. Darwin then becomes 5.1 with version 10.1.1. Apple started with version 5 after OpenStep 4, this was to override Rhapsody 5. Apple started to make OS X portable again with the release of 10.2 Jaguar. The introduction to this version brought the first version of OSx86, although it was only used internally until Tiger, it showed that Apple was thinking about a processor switch. They were tired of there partners Motorola and IBM(mostly Motorola), who wasn’t advancing fast enough with the Powerpc.

OS X 10.0(2001). The Dock became a transparent strip. This is after thousands of Developer feedbacks(Apple does read them):

At this point OS X 10.5 Leopard uses Darwin 9, which is another words, “Openstep” 8. The classic environment in OS X has faded away through the years, and now is removed from the latest version of OS X. This means the original Mac OS is now completely dead. So what is OS X? Well it derived from an OS, but it is in fact an object-oriented API that rests atop an operating system. The OS it is atop is Darwin, which is built out of a modified version of FreeBSD and Mach. Apple has shown that the portability of OS X is still there. They have so far ported it from PPC to x86 and ARM processors. Darwin is an opensource OS with an open community. it has a few distros with it, including openDarwin. Apple hosts the Darwin project on Macosforge.org.

Although OS X is an API, through the years it has created many deep roots into Darwin, making it less and less portable to other operating systems. There are many people still waiting for Apple to bring back Yellowbox for windows, but most have instead gone to GNUStep(an alternative). GNUStep is similar to Openstep, but is older and still has an active community. GNUStep is a multi-platform developer environment, using objC and a similar API to Cocoa.

iPhone’s OS X:

I’ve read many articles saying OS X on the iPhone is not really OS X, but a stripped down version. Well the truth is, they’re wrong. OS X like I wrote above is an object-oriented API. The reason why OS X looks different on the iPhone than a Mac is the applications used. OS X on a Mac uses programs like the Finder.app and the Dock.app to create it’s GUI, while the iPhone uses it’s own applications.

Yes it is true, a Mac OS X Trojan is now out in the internet. It has been found on several pornographic sites.

Summary:
The people that made the Trojan have spammed mac forums to get people to download this file. When installed it will change the Mac’s DNS server and lead you to phishing sites, so it may say “www.ebay.com,” but of course it wouldn’t be.

Now of course this is a Trojan, since it’s hard to get past the UNIX permissions with out an admin password. This means that once downloaded, OS X Leopard, which marks newly downloaded files, will first ask you if you want to open it. It also gives you the website link and Date of the download. Second, to install you need to also type in your password.

This Trojan marks about the 9th Trojan in 7 years since OS X came out. OS 9/Classic had a recorded 69 viruses.

link: intego.com

Tags: mac os x, trojan, leopard. virus