The Evolution of the

Macintosh Operating System

System 1 to 7 and Mac OS 8 & 9
Introduction
The most amazing thing about the Mac OS is it is taken for granted. Before the
Macintosh Operating System, the user interacted with their computers using the
command line prompt, which is it has to said is very quick but very dull.

The Macintosh introduced the Graphical User Interface, with Windows, a

cursor operated by a mouse and a whole new concept of interacting with
your computer.

Most of the concepts were borrowed from Xerox after a visit by Steve
Jobs and Mac team in 1979. After some stock option dealing,
these original concepts developed for the Xerox Alto, plus
Apple's own innovations of the menu bar, pop-up menus and
click and drag, created the Mac OS - or System Software as it
then was called.

System 1
When a computer boots it runs through a few basic routines. Including POST (power on self test)
and BIOS (basic input output services). These are held in the computers ROM or Read Only
Memory.
The original Mac
ROM was 8 times
larger than its IBM
PC contemporary
using 64kb and held
some of the key
components of the
operating system.
The majority of this
ROM coding was
programmed by
Andy Hertzfeld.
Three other key
members of the
operating system
team were Susan
Kare who designed
the graphical icons
for the OS and
Steve Capps and
Bruce Horn who
wrote the Finder.
In charge of the whole Mac project was Apple legend Jef Raskin, also key to the development of
Mac software was Bill Atkinson who designed the Mac interface, also creator of MacWrite and
HyperCard.
An interesting web site to visit is System 1.0 Headquarters by Dan Vanderkam.
http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/

Here's what Dan says about Mac OS 1:

"On your first sweep through this [OS 1]screenshot, there are probably a few things you noticed.
Here's what they probably are:

• If you look closely, you see that the lines on the trash can go the opposite way that they do
in system 7.
• There aren't any zoom boxes
• There's a folder called "Empty Folder"
• There's no "Label" menu
• The open disk's icon has the "open" look, but it's icon has no border.
• The open window has a program, a document, and a SYSTEM FOLDER, and only uses
196K!"

Dan also show's us a screen shot of the Apple menu, which at that
time only contained Alarm Clock, Choose Printer, Control Panel,
Key Caps and Scrapbook.

There is also a screen shot of 'About Finder' and the application is

credited to Bruce Horn and Steve Capps, version 1.1. As of writing
(April 2007) we are are on Finder version 10.4.7, and credits only
Apple Computer Inc. Which is interesting because as we know
Apple Computer Inc. no longer exists. Today we are also told that
Finder is, I quote, "The Macintosh Desktop Experience"!

An interesting site
to visit that
documents both the history and events that
happened at this time is http://www.folklore.org.
The authors of this site include Andy Hertzfeld and
Bruce Horn among others.

OS 1 could only support one folder and no sub

folders beneath it. On the desktop of OS 1 there is
a folder called Empty Folder. To create a new
folder you renamed Empty Folder and pressed
enter, magically a new empty folder appeared!

The first Mac OS was

released in 1984 (note the
significance of the date - 1984
wont be like 1984!) version 1
and version 2 of Mac OS used
the Macintosh File System. As
I've said this file system only
allowed Folders but no sub-
folders within them. Another
restriction was only one
Application could run properly
at once.
System 2 - 5
The progress of the Mac Operating
System saw new features with new
versions - some of them were;
System 2.1 saw a new File System -
Hierarchical File System or HFS, which
gave us a true hierarchical method of
organising our files and sub-files -
hence the name!
System 3 and 4 gave us SCSI and
AppleTalk support - plus the bulging
Waste Paper basket!
System 5 introduced co-operative
multitasking, or MultiFinder. You could
now run more than one application at a
time!
System 3

System 6
System 6 saw the Mac OS really become a mature operating system by bundling all the updates
and fixes from previous incarnations of Apple Macintosh System Software into one solid and stable
platform.
A interesting web site is System 6 heaven.
http://www.euronet.nl/users/mvdk/system_6_heaven.html

It's more elegant and user-

friendly than any other
operating system ever
made.

It is more inspiring for

creative people than any
other operating system ever
made.

It's nicer and easier to work

with than any other
operating system ever
made.
System 6 Heaven
 System 7
System 7 was the last of 'systems',
the next incarnation of the
Operating System would be Mac
OS 8, which also saw Steve Job's
second coming.
System 7 introduced;
32 bit operating system support
Aliases
Apple Script
True Type
and finally Trash that didn't
automatically empty itself when
you closed down the computer!

Mac OS 8
Mac OS 8 - the operating
system that never was...
Actually OS 8 was a OS 7
upgrade re-branded so
Steve Jobs could take
advantage of a legal loop
hole that allowed him to
drop support for non-Mac
computers running the Mac
Operating System.
Mac OS 8 offered interface
skins and a few other
improvements, but more
importantly introduced HFS
plus file system - the file
system we still use today in
OS X.

In 1998 an Apple engineering t-shirt declared that Mac OS 8.5 'sucks less' than Mac OS 8!
It was at this time in Apple's history that the Apple we know today was really born. In 1996 Apple
lost $740 million dollars in one financial quarter. In 1997 Apple laid off 2700 employees. In that
same year Microsoft invested $150 million dollars to keep Apple a float. And in that same year,
Steve Jobs returns to Apple, and we start to think different.
With Apple's newly acquired operating system from Next Computers, the ground work for OSX is
established. The code name for OSX was Rhapsody.
Mac OS 9
But Mac classic has one last trick up its sleeve before it bit the dust - and that is OS 9.
Mac OS 9 released on October 23, 1999 was a steady evolution of the Mac OS.
In OS 9 we see;
Multi-user support
Mac OS update
Better memory handling
and better USB support
Mac OS 9 is what you see when you boot into Mac Classic within OS X.

The evolution from OS1 to OS9 was a gradual one, If you look at the
screen shots of OS 1 compared to OS 9, it is very obviously the same
beast, 101 is a great pictorial history of all OS's, where you can compare
the Mac OS transition
http://r-101.blogspot.com/2006/08/evolution-
of-desktops.html

Also visit Low End Macs being the

ultimate source.
http://lowendmac.com/