11 ms·

nit: did macos x even exist in the 90s? Or did you mean macos 9?

by elromulous 5y ago

techrat 5y ago
MacOSX was released in 2001, so it would have had to have been System 7/8/9 by that point.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Work porting System 7/8/9 to Intel would have been completely wasted.
  - flenserboy 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
    - jandrese 5y ago
      It might have been worth it in 1992. By 1998 there was no point. That is a really interesting what-if scenario, but I don't think the mid-90s Apple corporate management would have been willing to go through with it. At the very least they would have tried to lock it down to Apple designed Intel hardware, they've never been able to let go of being a hardware company.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  If that's the case, that would be fun. Give Dell an outdated OS, and launch a brand new OS yourself
Synaesthesia 5y ago
I think at that stage it was still NextStep morphing into Rhapsody/OS X
wtallis 5y ago
Mac OS X was a work in progress during the late 90s. The Apple/NeXT merger was in 1996, there were developer releases of Rhapsody (with x86 support) in 1997 and 1998, and Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released in 1999. But the first public beta of Mac OS X with the Aqua UI was in 2000, and OS X version 10.0 was in 2001. So any deal negotiated in the late 90s to bring Mac OS X to Intel PCs would have taken a few years to come to fruition, but Apple did have a usable x86 operating system to base negotiations on in the late 90s.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  OPENSTEP was running on x86 even before the merger. The work would have been mostly to make it look and feel more like what Mac OS users were familiar with, and adding the ability to run "Classic" Mac OS applications.
  - wtallis 5y ago
    True, but OPENSTEP on its own would not have been of much interest to Dell given the very small software ecosystem. The promise of also inheriting the Mac application ecosystem made Mac OS X far more marketable.
  - thewileyone 5y ago
    I used to work on OpenStep and it was nothing like the previous version of MacOS; I used to work on MacOS before OpenStep.

nit: did macos x even exist in the 90s? Or did you mean macos 9?

techrat 5y ago

MacOSX was released in 2001, so it would have had to have been System 7/8/9 by that point.

jandrese 5y ago
Work porting System 7/8/9 to Intel would have been completely wasted.
- flenserboy 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
  - jandrese 5y ago
    It might have been worth it in 1992. By 1998 there was no point. That is a really interesting what-if scenario, but I don't think the mid-90s Apple corporate management would have been willing to go through with it. At the very least they would have tried to lock it down to Apple designed Intel hardware, they've never been able to let go of being a hardware company.
jbverschoor 5y ago
If that's the case, that would be fun. Give Dell an outdated OS, and launch a brand new OS yourself

Synaesthesia 5y ago

I think at that stage it was still NextStep morphing into Rhapsody/OS X

wtallis 5y ago

Mac OS X was a work in progress during the late 90s. The Apple/NeXT merger was in 1996, there were developer releases of Rhapsody (with x86 support) in 1997 and 1998, and Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released in 1999. But the first public beta of Mac OS X with the Aqua UI was in 2000, and OS X version 10.0 was in 2001. So any deal negotiated in the late 90s to bring Mac OS X to Intel PCs would have taken a few years to come to fruition, but Apple did have a usable x86 operating system to base negotiations on in the late 90s.

throwawayboise 5y ago
OPENSTEP was running on x86 even before the merger. The work would have been mostly to make it look and feel more like what Mac OS users were familiar with, and adding the ability to run "Classic" Mac OS applications.
- wtallis 5y ago
  True, but OPENSTEP on its own would not have been of much interest to Dell given the very small software ecosystem. The promise of also inheriting the Mac application ecosystem made Mac OS X far more marketable.
- thewileyone 5y ago
  I used to work on OpenStep and it was nothing like the previous version of MacOS; I used to work on MacOS before OpenStep.