Well, even before XPC there was Distributed Objects. In the mid-90s NeXT had a bridge between COM and DO called D'OLE, which remoted COM before Microsoft did. O

Well, even before XPC there was Distributed Objects. In the mid-90s NeXT had a bridge between COM and DO called D'OLE, which remoted COM before Microsoft did. Of course, that didn't really take off, but it was a great example of how flexible a dynamic runtime can be. (They also had a lot of very smart developers.)