So you’ve decided to switch your business to Macs, and you’re wondering how to move over all of your data from Windows, and get everything else setup?  In this article, I will discuss some of the process, and show you that switching to the Mac isn’t as hard as you think.

Email, Contacts, and Calendars

These days, businesses can’t function without staying in touch with their customers, and keeping all of their employees on schedule, and organized.  Microsoft Outlook has served businesses very well, but there is no version yet available for the Mac.  Outlook holds email, contacts, and calendar data inside of one file, the PST file.  While you can move the PST file to the Mac, the Mac cannot read, or import the file.  Therefore, we must convert the data inside the PST into a form that is readable by the Mac.  There are many methods to make this conversion.  You need some type of conversion software to make your Outlook data compatible with the Mac.  Some of my favorites are Outlook To Mac, and two apps made by Mozilla — Thunderbird, and Sunbird.

Outlook To Mac (O2M) was created by a company called Little Machines.  O2M exports your email into mBox format, which is an open format.  Since the Mac also uses mBox to store email messages, your converted email can easily be imported onto your new Mac.  mBox is also used by many other mail clients such as Thunderbird, and Eudora.  O2M will convert your contacts to vCard, which can then be imported into Address Book on the Mac.  Calendars are exported by O2M into iCalendar, another open format.  The new iCalendar files can then be imported into iCal on the Mac.  If you choose instead to use Microsoft Entourage for email, contacts, and calendars, Entourage can also import your converted data.  Outlook To Mac costs only $10, but if you want a free option, there’s Mozilla Thunderbird.

Like Mail.app on the Mac, Thunderbird uses a variant of mBox to store email.  After you have installed Thunderbird onto your PC, you can then import your email and contacts into Thunderbird.  Once the import is complete, you will be able to export your contacts into LDIF.  Your emails are stored inside of the current user’s local application data in Windows.  Once you’ve moved the converted email to your Mac, all you have to do is import it into your email client of choice.  Address Book, on the Mac is able to import the contacts stored in the LDIF file created by Thunderbird.  Since Thunderbird does not handle calendars, you’ll need to import your Outlook calendars into Sunbird.  Once you’ve completed the calendar import into Sunbird, you can then export the calendar data into iCalendar format.

They key is to free all of your information from Outlook.  This process seems complicated, but it’s really not.

Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, Music, Pictures

All of your files created in Microsoft Office, pictures, music, PDFs will just work.  Microsoft makes a great version of Office for the Mac.  It includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage.  If you’ve decided to abandon Microsoft altogether, Apple’s iWork suite of applications can open files created by Microsoft Office.  In addition, there are several office suites such as Neo Office, and Open Office, which will allow you to open, and create Word, and Excel documents.

Mac OS X already includes an application called Preview, which will open, and combine PDF documents, and even allow you to notate them.  Any document that can be printed can be exported to PDF on the Mac.  PDF exporting has been built into Mac OS X since day one.  There’s no need to purchase additional software to export documents to PDF, or to combine PDF files.

Since late 2003, Windows users have enjoyed using iTunes on their PCs.  If you’ve been using iTunes on your PC, moving your music to the Mac is simple.  All of the pictures on your PC can be easily imported into iPhoto on the Mac.  Both iTunes, and iPhoto are included on every Mac at no additional charge.

Setting up your all Mac office

Gone are the days when Windows ruled the business world.  Macs can serve all of your computing needs from basic office tasks to serving up files, websites, and email.  Accounting applications for the Mac have greatly improved over the last few years.  Intuit’s Quickbooks, and Quicken have finally achieved feature parity with the Windows versions.  There are even several point of sale applications available for the Mac.  The medical industry has several EMR (electronic medical records) options for the Mac.  MacPractice works really well for most types of medical practices.  Two months ago, I helped move an orthodontics practice from Windows to the Mac.  Their choice of EMR software was Tops Ortho.  Tops doesn’t require Mac OS X Server, which will save time, and money during setup, and the support team at Tops is awesome.  Law offices have been making the switch to Mac.  Recently, my colleagues from Kinetic Technology Group and I migrated two law firms to Mac.

Mac OS X Server includes a built in email server in addition to calendar server.  For a lot of small offices, Mac OS X Server’s built in messaging technologies work really well.  For businesses who need a messaging solution with more features, I recommend Kerio Connect from Kerio Technologies.  Like Exchange, Kerio Connect includes a robust email server, calendar server, and contacts server.  Kerio Connect is a great cross platform messaging solution.  It works seamlessly with Macs, Windows PCs, iPhone, and several other mobile devices.  Your email, calendars, and contacts stay synched between all of your devices, and computers.  Kerio Connect provides easy administration, and it is compatible with most smartphone platforms such as iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile.  If your business continues to run Windows servers, Kerio Connect will integrate easily into Active Directory, so that all of your user accounts are available in Kerio.  If you need to migrate Exchange accounts to Kerio Connect, Kerio provides an Exchange migration tool which will transfer all of your user accounts, their email, contacts, and calendars directly into Kerio Connect.  Kerio Connect runs on Mac OS X Server, and Windows Server.  If your business intends to keep its Exchange server, your new Macs will be able to work with Exchange.

If you plan on keeping some Windows PCs, or servers, have no fear.  Macs, and Windows PCs get along quite well on the same network.  Macs can use file, print, email, and web services hosted by Windows servers, and Windows PCs can do the same with Mac servers.

While the transition from Windows to the Mac isn’t as difficult as you might have believed, there are thousands of Apple Consultants around the U.S. who can assist you.  Apple Consultants are independent contractors who are Apple certified.  Their skills range from setting up home, or small office networks to enterprise level deployments.  They’re fanatical about Apple technology, and they will always try to find the best solutions for their customers.  If you have questions about moving to the Mac, feel free to contact me.

Whats New in Kerio Connect 7.0 | Kerio.

Today, Kerio announced the release of Kerio Connect 7.0.  The name change from Kerio Mail Server reflects the evolution of the product away from just being a mail server.  Kerio connect is a great alternative to Microsoft Exchange.  It enables cross platform collaboration, wireless mobile synchronization, very robust and easy to manage email security, email archiving, and automated backup.  Also, new in Kerio Connect is full web access to administration.  Click the link above to learn more.

If you’re in or near Dallas/Fort Worth, Kinetic Technology Group can help you deploy and manage Kerio Connect for your business.  In addition to deploying your new server running Kerio Connect in your office, we also offer colocation at our data center near downtown Dallas, and Kerio hosting through Rocket Fast.

*Kerio Mail Server has been renamed Kerio Connect. Many new features have been added since the time this entry was written.

One of the few drawbacks to using a Mac in a business environment has been the lack of a solid, business class groupware email, calendar, and contacts solution.  With the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), Apple has introduced built in support for Exchange, but for small businesses who are concerned about cost of deployment, and maintaining the solution once it has been deployed, Exchange is not always the best choice.  Why should an all Mac office deploy a Windows server just for email?

Two years ago, when I left Apple to become an Apple Consultant, I was introduced to Kerio Mail Server by the new company that I was working for.  I was impressed that my email, contacts, and calendars could easily be synced between my Mac, and any other computer that I wanted to configure with my Kerio account.  In the Summer of 2008, Kerio added full iPhone support which allowed my contacts, and calendars to stay synced with my Mac.  If I ever found myself without access to my Mac, or my iPhone, Kerio Mail Server’s webmail feature had everything that I needed.  All of my contacts, calendars, and email were there.

Although I have worked with a lot of customers who run all Mac offices, most have been a mix and Mac and Windows PCs.  Mac OS X Server provides a really great email solution, but it doesn’t have a true cross platform groupware features.  That’s where Kerio Mail Server comes in.  For small businesses who need cross platform groupware features, Kerio Mail Server (KMS) is a great solution.  Kerio Mail Server runs on Mac OS X Server, Windows Server, and on Linux.  It has full support for Open Directory, and Active Directory, and it allows businesses to run LDAP services on one kind of server (Mac or Windows), and Kerio Mail Server on another server.  One deployment that I worked on involved setting up Mac OS X Server with KMS, but the user accounts were stored in Active Directory on a Windows Server.  This enabled the customer to easily integrate Mac OS X Server into their network without having to make major changes to their existing server/network configuration.

The cost of deployment is always a major concern for small businesses. [Comparison Chart]  This is another reason why Kerio Mail Server is a great choice.  For 50 users, the minimum licensing cost for Kerio Mail Server is $1299.  The same amount of users in Exchange 2007 will cost your business over $5000.  Depending upon your server and workstation configurations, you could also be facing additional client access license (CAL) costs which is a problem that does not exist with Mac OS X Server.  Mac OS X Server includes licensing for unlimited users.

Click for a larger view.

For years, Mac users in business have languished without a good, business class email solution.  Exchange compatibility in some form has existed on the Mac for quite sometime.  However, I.T. departments often don’t know how to get Exchange to work properly with Macs, or they are unwilling to make changes to accommodate Mac users.  Entourage, which is part of Microsoft Office for the Mac, includes Exchange compatibility, but it requires more configuration than Outlook.  Most of the time, the I.T. staff has no idea how to properly configure Entourage to take full advantage of Exchange, and all of its groupware features.  Even when Entourage is configured with all of the necessary LDAP information, there are often features missing from the product due to a company’s unique security requirements, or server configuration .  Access to Kerio Mail Server can be configured on numerous email clients on the Mac.  Apple’s own Mail app that is included in Mac OS X works very well with Kerio Mail Server, as does Microsoft Entourage.  Apple’s Address Book app, and iCal work very well with KMS.  There is no complicated setup process, and Kerio Mail Server includes auto configuration scripts for Entourage, and iCal.  For contacts syncing, Kerio Mail Server provides the Kerio Sync Connector to ensure that contacts stay synced between your Mac, smartphone, webmail, and other computers that you choose to setup.  Kerio Mail Server (soon to be renamed Kerio Connect) will support CardDav, which was recently introduced  into Mac OS X.  Kerio Mail Server supports iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm smartphones to allow access to email, contacts, and calendars from anywhere.  Let’s not forget Windows, of course.  Kerio Mail Server works great with Microsoft Outlook.

For administrators, KMS offers easy installation and updating, as well as easy management, and maintenance.  The installation process for KMS averages about 2 minutes, and updates can be performed while the server is actively serving clients.  If you need to migrate from Exchange to KMS, Kerio provides an Exchange migration tool which will move all of your users from Exchange to Kerio Mail Server, including all of their email, contacts, and calendars.  Kerio also provides a tool to migrate users from IMAP email systems.  KMS includes built in backup and archiving, and can be bundled with anti-virus software built in.  Administrators will have some great anti-spam tools at their disposal.  KMS can be administrated remotely using a web interface, or by using the Kerio admin console that can be downloaded from Kerio’s website.  The admin console is included in every KMS install.  If you need support, Kerio offers some of the best phone support that I have ever received.  Their techs are extremely knowledgeable, and they are always willing to give advice on how to find the best configuration for your needs.  There is also a growing number of Kerio resellers, and support providers throughout the U.S.  who can setup your new Kerio Mail Server, and offer onsite support when you need help.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about Kerio Mail Server.

While working as a Mac Genius at the Apple store at Willow Bend, I dealt with thousands of customers over four and a half years. I took great pride in my job, and I always tried to do what was best for the customer, even if the customer did not always realize right away that I made the right choice. Often, customers came to me expecting a specific resolution, but left with a different one not realizing that if they had treated the Mac Geniuses with more respect, and courtesy, they may very well have received exactly what they wanted, or maybe something better. To help out customers seeking help at the Genius Bar, I have put together a list of 10 tips on how to get the best service.

1. ALWAYS treat your Mac Genius with respect, and courtesy. The Mac Geniuses, out of all of the Apple Store employees, have the most stressful jobs. If you add to that stress, you can expect to get their bare minimum effort. Yelling at them only makes things worse. Do you really want the people who are going to replace your hard drive to be mad at you? I can guarantee that they will not work very hard to retrieve data from your defective hard drive. Screaming and yelling never made me work faster, and it never made me have sympathy for the customer. Remember that the bridge you burn today over your smashed iPhone could be the ass you kiss tomorrow when your MacBook Pro fails just one day after the warranty has expired.

2. Remember that backups are YOUR responsibility. You are the one to blame if all of your data is lost. If you’re running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), or Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), you can use the built in backup software called Time Machine to keep your data backed up.

3. There is no “3 strikes” policy in place for computer replacements. The Mac Genius, along with the Apple store managers, make the determination to replace a computer in lieu of repairing it on a case by case basis. Remember tip number 1 in this situation. Being an ass to the Mac Genius will mean that he or she will follow Apple’s procedures to the letter instead of trying to make an exception.

4. iPods are fragile. When you drop them, they tend to break. This goes for iPhones too. If an iPod or iPhone shows damage consistent with accidents, or abuse, it will not be replaced under warranty no matter how much you scream and yell. Apple designs beautiful devices, but it’s up to you to protect them after you buy them.

5. If you jailbreak your iPhone, and it fails, don’t complain if Apple refuses to replace it for free. Jailbreaking invalidates your warranty. If you want to jailbreak your iPhone, just make sure to un-jailbreak it before you have a Mac Genius look at it. Sometimes, the Mac Genius that you’re working with also has a jailbroken iPhone. He or she may sympathize with you, but don’t count on it. If you jailbreak, then you need to take responsibility for the consequences no matter how much you disagree with the policy.

6. Listen to instructions, and allow the Mac Genius to teach you how to do some of the simple fixes on your own Mac. This will save you a lot of time, and annoyance in the future. Most Mac Geniuses really do care about helping you, and they know that teaching you some basic fixes will do you more good than simply fixing the issue, and pushing you out the door.

7. If the Apple Store is extremely busy, don’t expect to be bumped to the head of the line. EVERY one of the Apple Store’s Genius Bars work on an appointment basis. You can make your appointment in advance. Just because you have a flight to Europe in two hours, it does not mean that you are entitled to faster service. It’s up to you to plan your schedule on your own.

8. If you think you know the cause of the problem you are experiencing with your Apple product, speak up. Do this even if you think you caused the problem. The Mac Genius will be grateful for your honesty. It saves him time, and it may mean that he might make an exception to the rules. I have replaced a lot of hard drives under warranty despite the problem being caused by accidental damage because the customer was honest, and didn’t try to cheat us by insisting that they never dropped their laptop. I have always felt that sometimes, compassion is more important than following policy to the letter. Of course, being mean to me causes my compassion fly out the door.

9. Even if you bought the first Mac that came off of the assembly line, and you’ve been an Apple customer for 30 years, you don’t deserve any better service than the first time Mac buyer standing in line behind you. It’s awesome that you’ve been a loyal customer, but Apple can’t treat you better than their new customers.

10. Be patient. Sometimes, the Mac Genius will need to check your Mac in for diagnostics so that they can study the issue longer. The Apple stores are very busy. Every problem cannot be solved in 15 minutes or less. I hate leaving my own computers with someone to be repaired, but that’s sometimes the way it is. Being impatient won’t help.

The first time I had ever seen a Macintosh computer was in the Summer of 1986.  Having first learned how to use a computer on a TI 99-4A, I was fascinated by the graphical user interface, and being able to place objects on the screen exactly where I wanted them.  In the 1980s, the Mac was a revolution not just because of its use of the graphical user interface, but more so because of the creativity that it unleashed.  Although I have always been obsessed with learning and knowing how things work, my first impulse when I first used a Mac was to create something.

I eagerly signed up for my high school’s journalism class when I found out that the school had purchased 2 Macs to use for the high school newspaper.  The first applications that I used on the Mac were MacWrite, MacPaint, and what was then called Aldus Pagemaker.  By today’s standards, these Macs were slow, but in 1987, they were powerhouses.  It didn’t bother me at all that I had to play an interesting game of swap the disks every time I wanted to save a “large” file.  Macs at that time were very limited on RAM, and therefore, they had to temporarily cache data onto floppy disks in order to save files that were larger than a few kilobytes.  If your Mac used one of the floppy disks to boot from, the only way for the Mac to save large files was so eject the system disk, and then ask for another disk that had more available space.  Later, when I was using a Mac SE with an attached external hard drive, the disk switching routine went away.

Did I mention the first Macs that I ever used had only small, 9 inch monochrome screens?  The Mac II was capable of 256 colors.  I had made some really kick ass graphics on the Mac SE, but they were lacking color.  On the Mac II, I could add color using Pixel Paint.  This was a bit like being blind before, and now, suddenly being able to see.  These Macs ran at a blazingly fast 16MHz, and they started out at only $5500!  Desktop publishing had been born on the Mac.  Adding color to applications like Pagemaker, and Pixel Paint unlocked even more possibilities.

I wasn’t a computer geek back in the 80s and 90s.  I didn’t actually become that until after I left the Navy, and bought the first Mac I had ever bought for myself.  That was a Performa 6360.  I had no idea what all of the different model numbers meant, but I had my choice of a Power Mac 4400, a Performa 6400, or the Performa 6360.  In the end, I just bought the one that was the cheapest.  The Performa 6360 came with a lot of really nice multimedia software.  This was back when Apple was touting the Mac as being a great family computer.

Nightmare before Christmas

My next computer was a bondi blue iMac.  I was worried at first about not having a floppy drive, but I loved the “large” built in 15 inch display, and the fast processor. I immediately had my RAM beefed up to 128MB.  That made Mac OS 8.5 run blazingly fast.  My twice daily AOL crashes were reduced to only once per day.  Backups?  I didn’t worry about backups back then, but then, I really wasn’t doing much on my Mac that was all that important.  When I bought my second iMac in May 2001, I was able to use its built in CD burner to perform my first backups.  Since then, backups were a regular regimen that I was happy that I remembered to do after my huge 10GB hard drive died a few months later.  It was on this second iMac that I began using Mac OS X as the default operating system.

I started working for Apple in January 2003.  I was working full time as a Mac tech for a commercial printing company, but I wanted to see what opportunities would come my way by working for Apple.  For the first couple of months, I held onto my pay from working at the Apple store, and saved up for a nice new 17 inch iMac G4.  It had a dvd burning SuperDrive, and 80GB hard drive, and I configured it with 1GB of memory.  By this time, I had started to create very basic websites using graphics that I made in Photoshop.  The large screen really made that a great deal easier.

Just two months before Steve Jobs’ famous announcement of Apple’s switch to Intel processors, I bought a 12 PowerBook.  The idea was that I would be able to do everything on the go.  I never really liked being tied to a desktop computer.  I kept my iMac G4, but I found myself using the PowerBook even when I wanted to create something in Photoshop.  Having a nice, compact laptop that I could use anywhere was a huge plus – even if the display was much smaller than the one that the iMac had.  I later gave the iMac go a friend, and bought a 20 inch Apple Cinema Display to attach to my PowerBook while I was at home.  Just over a year after buying the PowerBook, I eagerly bought a black MacBook.

WWDC 2005 – Apple switching to Intel processors

I encountered several customers at the Apple Store who thought Apple has sold their soul to the Devil.  Some of them told me that they would never buy a Mac with an Intel processor.  They told me that the new Macs were not REAL Macs.  This was all ignorance.  Since I was working in an Apple store, and dealing with Apple customers, I took the high road.  I reminded them that the predecessor to Mac OS X (NeXTSTEP and OpenSTEP) had already been compiled for Intel several years before Apple purchased NeXT in 1996.  It really didn’t matter what processor Apple used in their computers.  What mattered was the operating system, and Apple’s unique engineering of the OS and the hardware to work seamlessly together.  Intel was never the enemy of the Mac.

Up until the introduction of the first Intel Macs, Mac OS 9 had lingered like a bad smell in a small room.  Because Mac OS X was totally new, a lot of long time Mac users needed to upgrade, or stop using the Classic apps that they had used for years.  For the most part, this was actually a good thing.  The Mac OS X versions of these apps were far more stable, and more powerful.  However, when you like something a lot, and you’re comfortable with it, it’s difficult to give it up.  The loyal following that the original Mac OS had was one of the biggest barriers that Apple had on its transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.  The Intel transition killed Mac OS 9 completely.  I couldn’t have been happier.

I started out working in I.T. at CompUSA corporate headquarters in late 2000.  At the time, Mac OS X was just a public beta.  Mac OS 9 was the workhorse of the publishing, and graphic design trades.  A well configured Mac at that time with a lot of RAM and, and plenty of hard drive space could run circles around  a Windows PC.  However, in the hands of designers, Mac OS 9 could crash 2 or 3 times a day.  This was mostly a result of font conflicts, or apps like Quark Xpress, and Adobe Illustrator that hogged memory.  Mac OS X promised to do away with those annoyances.  Unfortunately, designers can be the most difficult users to persuade into trying something new.  I never had the opportunity to help switch the users at CompUSA to Mac OS X.  That opportunity presented itself almost 2 years later when I worked for IntegraColor.  There, I helped transition several users over to Mac OS X while they kicked and screamed along the way

When I was promoted to Mac Genius at the Apple Store at Willow Bend, I was able to help a lot of people move from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.  What was a more enjoyable task was helping customers move from Windows to the Mac.  These new Mac users had never known Mac OS 9.  I made it my personal mission to switch as many people as possible from Windows to the Mac.  When I worked as a consultant for Digital Criterion, I had the opportunity to help move whole companies to the Mac, and also create some great cross platform environments where Macs and Windows PCs could live together in harmony.  This has become my specialty while working as an Apple Consultant.

As I look back on my long history with the Mac, I can’t help but marvel over the growth of computing power over the last 20 years.  My iPhone contains more processing power than the first Macs that I used, and even my first iMacs.  My MacBook Pro that I’m using to type this blog entry has over a million times as much processing power as the Mac Classic that I keep on a shelf in my bedroom as decoration (Yes. I really am that much of an Apple fan boy!).  I am forced to wonder what I would be doing for a career if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had not taken a risk, and founded Apple Computer, Inc.  I just don’t have the personality to be a Windows user.

]]> http://www.howiesweb.com/wp/2009/12/04/mac-history/feed/ 0 http://www.howiesweb.com/wp/2009/12/03/before-mac-os-x-there-was-next/ http://www.howiesweb.com/wp/2009/12/03/before-mac-os-x-there-was-next/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:54:39 +0000 Howie http://www.howiesweb.com/wp/?p=201

Most Mac users that I know these days are relatively new to the platform.  For them, Mac OS X is all that they have ever known.  What most people are unaware of is that Mac OS X was not some shiny new operating system that sprang onto the scene just 9 years ago.  It is derived from an operating system that was first launched in 1989 by a company called NeXT.

NeXT, Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple in 1985.  After being sidelined by Apple’s board, Jobs took with him some of Apple’s best and brightest employees, some of whom worked on the original Macintosh.  Jobs also recruited Avie Tevanian from Carnegie Mellon University.  Tevanian had been one of the engineers who developed the Mach Kernel.  His work was instrumental in the creation of NeXTSTEP, the operating system created for all of the computers that were manufactured by NeXT.  NeXTSTEP was light years ahead of everything else on the market at the time.    It had many features contained in operating systems today such as multitasking ability that was not common in the late 80′s.  NeXTSTEP, similar to Linux is based upon UNIX which gave it rock solid stability.  NeXTSTEP also incorporated Adobe’s display postscript technology, which is also part of Mac OS X today.  This is what gives Mac OS X its beautiful, smooth appearance on the screen.  NeXTSTEP, like Mac OS X, and the iPhone OS today, incorporated the Objective-C programming language, and included tools for developers to create applications.  Perhaps the most important contribution made by NeXTSTEP was that a NeXT computer was used by Tim Berners-Lee to develop the World Wide Web.

Video of Steve Jobs demonstrating NeXTSTEP

By the late 1990′s Apple had gone into a tailspin.  Apple’s product line was made up of a myriad of different models that were confusing to customers.  The Power Macintosh, and Performa lines were made up of model numbers such as 6360, 6400, 4400, etc. that were meaningless to consumers looking for a new Mac.  To make matters worse, no one selling Macs knew the difference either.  Apple was not only struggling to stay afloat financially, but they were also struggling to develop a successor to the operating system that had ran on every Mac since the original Macintosh shipped in 1984.  The road to a new operating system included a developmental OS named Copland.  Copland was to feature protected memory, and multitasking – features that are present in Mac OS X today.  Copland experienced many setbacks, and was eventually killed off after failing to launch by 1996 as promised.

In December 1996, Apple Computer, Inc. purchased NeXT from Steve Jobs for $429 million.  By then, NeXSTEP had become OpenSTep.  OpenStep had already been ported to run on Intel processors.  Apple was able to bring over all of OpenStep’s frameworks, and develop a version to run on Apple’s PowerPC processors.  In 2005, it was revealed publicly that Apple had also maintained an Intel build of the operating system which had been named Mac OS X (‘X’ stands for ’10′).  As part of the deal, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as a consultant, then later took over the reigns of Apple officially in 2000.

Apple’s transition from the ‘Classic’ Mac OS  to Mac OS X took on two major phases.  When Mac OS X released officially to the public in March of 2001, it included a built in operating environment called Classic which would launch on top of Mac OS X when ever the user launched an application that had not been recompiled for Mac OS X.  This feature allowed Mac users to begin using the new Mac operating system while still being able to use their old apps.  The downside of this was that running applications in Classic required more memory, and the older apps running in Classic could not take advantage of the new features in Mac OS X such as protected memory, and pre-emptive multitasking.  Many users also continued to boot their Macs into Mac OS 9, the last major release of the Classic Mac OS, until Apple began to officially stop hardware support for the older OS.  Most of us who have used Mac OS X since its initial release agree that Mac OS X v. 10.2 (Jaguar) was probably the first version of Mac OS X that was truly ready for mass use.  The release of the iMac G4, and later the iMac G5 brought Mac OS X further into the mainstream.  The second phase of the transition happened much later with Apple’s adoption of processors made by Intel.  This effectively killed off Classic.  Apps that were built for Mac OS 9 and below could not run on an Intel processor.  Mac OS X v. 10.5 (Leopard) did not even support the Classic environment.

Check out this article for more history on Mac OS X

In a way, NeXT took over Apple, instead of the other way around.  The infusion of intellectual property that the NeXT acquisition brought to Apple helped Apple move forward with OS development, and it helped Apple become more developer friendly.  If you watch the video of Steve Jobs demonstrating NeXSTEP, you’ll notice that the features that he described and demonstrated are commonplace in Mac OS X today, and even in Windows.  Today, NeXT is in almost everything that Apple sells.  Your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch are all running a variant of the original NeXSTEP operating system developed over 20 years ago.

TUAW reports Psystar’s sells numbers from their attempt to sell Mac clones.  Like a lot of Apple fans, I have watched this legal battle with a lot of interest.  What really confuses me is why a lot of people seem to be hell bent on finding ways to get Apple to license their OS to other manufacturers.  They tried this before in the late 90′s, and it was a total failure.  Apple makes the bulk of their profits through the sale of hardware, not software.  Why else is there only one version of Mac OS X for consumers, and one server version?  Every time someone buys a new Mac, or buys a new version of Mac OS X, they’re getting the “ultimate” version.  Apple does not see the need to nickel and dime their customers for features that should be in the OS anyway.

I don’t have a problem with people wanting to hack Mac OS X to run on unapproved, and unsupported computers.  However, those people do not have the right to re-sale their hacked versions of Mac OS X, and they don’t have a right to expect Apple to support their modifications.  Apple is free to kill off compatibility with unapproved hardware any time they see fit to do so.  Those of us who buy Apple computers enjoy having computers that run well, and are free of the annoying bugs associated with driver issues that plague Windows PC users.  For that, I don’t mind paying more for a Mac.

Psystar’s predictions… they’re a bit off.