Ideas were written on index cards features that seemed simple enough to implement in the short term (like adding color to the user interface) were written on blue cards, longer-term goals like true multitasking on pink cards, and "far out" ideas like an object-oriented file system on red cards. In March 1988, shortly before the release of System 6, technical middle managers at Apple held an offsite meeting to plan the future course of Mac OS development. By the late 1980s, the list of new upgrades and suggested changes to the existing model was considerable. Numerous examples of this sort of problem could be found throughout the system.įinally, the widespread adoption of hard drives and local area networks led to any number of new features being requested from users and developers. Yet, as MultiFinder was still optional, such a step had not been taken. If the system were able to support multiple tasks, this one-off solution would no longer be needed - desk accessories could simply be small programs, placed anywhere. For instance, to support a limited form of multitasking, the original Mac OS supported small co-resident programs known as desk accessories which had to be installed into the system using special tools. While additions had been relatively limited, so had fixes to some of the underlying oddities of the system architecture.
Running MultiFinder normally required a larger amount of RAM and a hard drive, but these became more common by the late 1980s. Most notable among these was the single-tasking model, the replacement of which had first been examined in 1986's "Switcher" and then replaced outright with MultiFinder in System 5. However, many of the assumptions of this model were no longer appropriate. That is, the machine was geared towards a single user and task running on a floppy disk based machine of extremely limited RAM. These limited changes meant that the original Macintosh system remained largely as it was when initially introduced. This initially shipped in three volumes, adding another to describe the changes introduced with the Mac Plus, and another for the Mac II and Mac SE. Some perspective on the scope of the changes can be seen by examining the official system documentation, Inside Macintosh.
The development of the Macintosh system software up to System 6 followed a fairly smooth progression with the addition of new features and relatively small changes and upgrades over time.
0 kommentar(er)
