A question about the original Macintosh.

[AlexN]

What's the OS version of the original Macintosh? Was the OS also derived from Unix?

For the apple II, you have to insert the OS disk at booting to have the OS (DOS 3.3/ProDos) sits inside the memory. What about the OS for the original Macintosh? I imagine it would also be similar in the booting process?

[sevenhelmet]

The original macintosh had a hard disk. And no, I do not believe the original OS was UNIX based. I don't think that came in until OS9.x or 10.0.

[mynameis]

What's the OS version of the original Macintosh? Was the OS also derived from Unix?

It was just Mac OS 0.0, I believe. OS X was the first Mac OS that had anything to do with Unix.

[D3v1L80Y]

The first Mac ran System Software 1.0.
The operating system was known as "System x.x" until version 8.0.
Then and only then, was the Macintosh operating system known as "Mac OS x.x".
There was a version of system software called A/UX (Apple UNIX) in the early and mid 90's, but it flopped and was discontinued.
Apple did not base any operating system on UNIX again until Mac OS 10.

[AlexN]

The original macintosh had a hard disk.

No, it did not. I think part of the OS was in ROM, and part of it was in a disk.

OS X was the first Mac OS that had anything to do with Unix.

Apple did not base any operating system on UNIX again until Mac OS 10.

What about OS 8 and 9? Weren't integrated with NEXTStep? Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and they just introduced the Mac OS 8. If 8 wasn't integrated with NEXTStep, what about Mac 0S 9?

[D3v1L80Y]

If 8 wasn't integrated with NEXTStep, what about Mac 0S 9?

Neither OS 8, nor OS 9 is UNIX based.

[dtravis7]

Like D3v1L80Y already stated, It was just Mac OS. System up to 7.x.

The origional MacIntosh had 128K RAM and a Floppy drive. You put the OS Floppy in the drive and it would boot, Origional Mac OS was designed in house by the Macintosh team which was put together by Jobs. It had nothing to do with Unix in any way. It was the first GUI though that went public although where were other GUI's like Xerox's Small Talk system.

The first UNIX based Mac OS that went public was OSX.

Jobs was kind of stuborn when it came to a few things with the first Mac like 128k RAM and no Hard Drive nor External SCSI port. After he quit Apple, they came out with the 512 with 512Megs RAM but still no Internal nor External Hard drive. Then the Plus came out with a SCSI port in back for an external HDD which the Mac really needed.

OS8 and OS9 were just improved versions of OS7 before them. They did not have a thing to do with Nextstep nor Unix.

[AlexN]

So, why they switched it to Unix core in Mac OS X? Why didn't they improve the previous Mac OS system like what Microsoft did?

Were Mac OS 8 and 9 that bad that they needed to change it to a completely new system?

[dtravis7]

OS8 and even OS9 had Shared level Multitasking, Not premptive. It also had Shared Memory where everything runs in the same memory space. If one app crashes, a lot of times the whole system went down with it. Windows 3.1 95 and 98 were that way too especially with memory usage. Microsoft did not just improve 98/ME and come out with 2k and XP. NT was a completely new core very much like OSX is a totally new system. Windows 2k was based on the NT kernal as is XP. They are not a Redo of the 95, 98 & ME Kernal at all but totally new. With OS9 Apple was WAY behind Microsoft with 2k and XP with Flat Page memory and Premptive Multitasking. They had to do something and do it fast. OSX was born and in my opinion anyway, it is even better than XP in most respects, although XP is a very good OS as was/is 2k. OS9 was holding Apple back, Way back.

[danielbruzual]

Talking about the origins of computers I thought this would be appropiate.
EDIT: Why does it have a steering wheel?

[AlexN]

Thanks for the replies. One more question:

Does Mac OS 8 & 9 have Command line environment? (ie. Terminal) According to wikipedia.org, the classic Mac OS (9 or earlier) does not have Command line of any kind. Is it true?

[mynameis]

Does Mac OS 8 & 9 have Command line environment? (ie. Terminal) According to wikipedia.org, the classic Mac OS (9 or earlier) does not have Command line of any kind. Is it true?

Yes, that is true.

IMO, anything pre OS X sucked.

[Graphite]

Alright ive read enough stupid wrong answers.
Perhaps people I have not read answered this correctly, but I dont really care.

first apple ran dos.
first mac was in 1984 and had no hd, it ran system 1 up to 3.2 it was called something 128k
it was not until system 6 did the OS actually become useful (it is still used today.) system 7 is different from system 6, and all the OS from 7-9 are different from 6. Not until 10 did some features return.
it was not until osx (10.0.0) that unix was brought into the system

[technologist]

Alright ive read enough stupid wrong answers.
Perhaps people I have not read answered this correctly, but I dont really care.

first apple ran dos.

It should be noted that that "DOS" was AppleDOS or ProDOS. No relation to MS-DOS or PC-DOS.

first mac was in 1984 and had no hd,

Eventually there were external HDs...but they were very slow.

it ran system 1 up to 3.2 it was called something 128k
it was not until system 6 did the OS actually become useful (it is still used today.)

Many people did use early versions of the Mac System software. System 1-5 were quite powerful for their time.

system 7 is different from system 6, and all the OS from 7-9 are different from 6. Not until 10 did some features return.
it was not until osx (10.0.0) that unix was brought into the system

[technologist]

Talking about the origins of computers I thought this would be appropiate.
EDIT: Why does it have a steering wheel?

It's funny, but it's a hoax. It's been photoshopped; they took the steering wheel from something else.