Mac OS

Mac OS X1 is a line of proprietary operating systems developed and marketed by Apple, whose latest version (Mac OS X v10.6, "said Snow Leopard) is installed on all Macintosh computers sold today. Mac OS X is known for its simplicity, reliability and user friendliness. Apple engineers had only one ambition for Snow Leopard: Making a marvel of a prodigy. It is more reactive bottom-up and performance has improved at all levels. It offers new features like Spotlight search customization options and an improved icon view that can browse a document or watch a QuickTime movie.

The sixth version of Mac OS X, even if appearance does not seem to be a real "revolution", just a "big update" of Leopard 10.5. However, major changes under the hood ": deletion of PPC, 64 bit, new Finder, Grand Central Dispatch "," OpenCL " etc.... This is another milestone in the long and sometimes tumultuous development of Mac OS X. OS X is more reliable, smoother, faster! It is always possible to use some good old software like "AppleWorks". SNOW LEOPARD does, however, more on Mac PowerPC processor (G3, G4, G5) and only works INTEL Mac. PPC Mac owners will have breaking the bank to taste the joys of " Snow Leopard."

The iMac

In January 1998, Jobs announced the first positive result for over a year. In May, he presented the next release of a new type of Mac: iMac, offering a compromise between power and money to satisfy basic users. He also explained that the project would be based not only MacOS X Rhapsody (NeXT technology) but also on MacOS 8.

The year 1998 was a year of profit for Apple iMacs are selling like hotcakes. In 1999, the output of the PowerMac G3 Blue and the announcement of the release of the iBook kept up the wave motion. Then came the announcement of the generation of G4 PowerMacs.

In January 2000, the release of iTools Internet tools dedicated, demonstrated the new strategy strongly oriented Internet firm to Apple, as Steve Jobs announced that he remained at the head of the company.

Restructuring

In late 1996, while the situation has not changed, Apple announced the acquisition of NeXT and the re-integration of former CEO Steve Jobs. This merger was to integrate the core NeXTStep development of future MacOS (Rhapsody project, scheduled for 1998). In early 1997, Amelio was forced to resign after failing to regain control. Jobs then found himself assigned duties to wider society, and did not need to pray for decisions to restructure the firm at the apple.

In August 1997, at the Boston MacWorld, Jobs turned his speech in a tone of novelty and change, including the announcement of new advertising campaigns, new Macs, the progress of Rhapsody, and especially to an agreement spent with Microsoft. This agreement allows both companies to exchange patent for 5 years, Apple offered $ 150 million in shares to Microsoft, and Microsoft paid an undisclosed sum to Apple's intellectual property problems emerged during the development of Windows.

On the clones, which eventually flew more customers to Apple without increasing sales of Macs, Jobs took the decision to recover the licenses that were granted, thereby halting the production of manufacturers.

In November 1997, Jobs announced that the sale of Macs would also now live: online or by telephone, and the output of Power Mac and PowerBook G3.

The appearance of the PowerBook

The idea of granting licenses to expand production of Macs was abandoned by the new CEO (Michael Spindler, who was appointed in June 1993). In 1991, the PowerBook first appeared. It was a great success. Apple then began to study the Personal Assistants, who later would lead to the release of the Newton in August 1993. The handwriting recognition system, not very developed, does not provide a very favorable opinion of the users. In 1994, the Power Mac first arrived.

These machines, using a processor developed by the joint powers of IBM and Motorola, proved well able to compete and surpass the speeds of the latest Pentium processors. Besides this, licenses were granted to some companies to build Mac clones turning MacOS (Power Computing, Umax ...), but this opening was not sufficient to address the backlog of trade policy from Apple. In addition, the release of Windows 95 did not help things. In January 1996, while Apple crossed its biggest crisis, the Performance machines, low cost, was another failure, and Spindler was forced to resign. Gil Amelio replaced him.

The output of the Macintosh

This event took place January 22, 1984. It was a success until Christmas, when buyers began to hesitate, unconvinced by the lack of connectivity to hard drives. In 1985, disagreements between Sculley and Jobs were getting worse. At that point, following an unsuccessful ploy to Jobs, the board spoke in favor of Sculley. Jobs resigned. The months that followed were not financially profitable.

Sculley capacity to lead a software company was then questioned. The first conflicts with Microsoft appeared: the release of Windows 1.0 was subject to a compromise which indicated that Microsoft would not use technologies utilized by Apple. The Mac came out of the shadows with the emergence of tools and software for desktop publishing (PostScript, PageMaker, ...).

In 1987, the Mac II confirmed this resurgence, to the point that the idea that Windows could not disturb the development of Macs was rapidly expanded (1989). But PC clones appeared, and the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990, capable of running on all these clones, was a major concern for Apple, which remained only manufacturer of Macintosh.