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In the early years, Microsoft had written some system hacks that they used to run Word and Excel on Apple computers. Apple had to be careful not to break those

by donarb 6y ago

In the early years, Microsoft had written some system hacks that they used to run Word and Excel on Apple computers. Apple had to be careful not to break those hacks when releasing OS updates. Eventually Apple got tired of a vendor dictating changes on it's own OS and got Microsoft to remove these hacks.

mrkstu 6y ago
Yep, some vendors have that kind of pull, which is exactly why the Carbon API was created and persisted for a long while. But, like Carbon, Apple will eventually sunset anything that drags at them evolving the platform.
Someone 6y ago
I only remember that they postponed the move from a 24-bit address bus to a full 32-bit one because about every program would have crashed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_management#32-bit_clean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_manageme.... Many programs flipped bits because it was a lot faster than making the system call that did the same) I don’t remember any Excel-specific code to keep Excel running, but there was a special error code from the “launch program” system call saying “program has special memory requirements”, but AFAIK, it actually meant “program is Excel version such and such” (changing the programs’s creator code made “launch program” succeed, but the program almost immediately crashed.
GeekyBear 6y ago
I'm curious as to what hacks these were? I can remember when Microsoft decided to port some of the underpinnings of early versions of Windows to the Mac so they could run a unified code base for Word 6 on the Mac and on Windows, but they had to abandon that effort almost immediately as it was bloated, too slow, and didn't use the native UI. >Mac Word 6.0 was a crappy product. And, we spent some time trying to figure out how not to do that again. In the process, we learned a few things, not the least of which was the meaning of the term “Mac-like.” https://web.archive.org/web/20040514091238/http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02/26/80193.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20040514091238/http://blogs.msdn... That's the only time I can remember them doing something unique that other vendors weren't also doing.

by donarb 6y ago

mrkstu 6y ago

Yep, some vendors have that kind of pull, which is exactly why the Carbon API was created and persisted for a long while. But, like Carbon, Apple will eventually sunset anything that drags at them evolving the platform.

Someone 6y ago

I only remember that they postponed the move from a 24-bit address bus to a full 32-bit one because about every program would have crashed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_management#32-bit_clean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_manageme.... Many programs flipped bits because it was a lot faster than making the system call that did the same) I don’t remember any Excel-specific code to keep Excel running, but there was a special error code from the “launch program” system call saying “program has special memory requirements”, but AFAIK, it actually meant “program is Excel version such and such” (changing the programs’s creator code made “launch program” succeed, but the program almost immediately crashed.

GeekyBear 6y ago

I'm curious as to what hacks these were? I can remember when Microsoft decided to port some of the underpinnings of early versions of Windows to the Mac so they could run a unified code base for Word 6 on the Mac and on Windows, but they had to abandon that effort almost immediately as it was bloated, too slow, and didn't use the native UI. >Mac Word 6.0 was a crappy product. And, we spent some time trying to figure out how not to do that again. In the process, we learned a few things, not the least of which was the meaning of the term “Mac-like.” https://web.archive.org/web/20040514091238/http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02/26/80193.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20040514091238/http://blogs.msdn... That's the only time I can remember them doing something unique that other vendors weren't also doing.