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

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.