C

Carbon

Application environment. Carbon is a set of programming interfaces derived from earlier Mac OS APIs that have been modified to work with Mac OS X, especially its kernel environment.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface)

A script or program that adds dynamic functions to a website. It sends information back and forth between a website and an application that provides a service for the site. For example, if a user fills out a form on the site, a CGI could send the message to an application that processes the data and sends a response back to the user.

CIFS (Common Internet File System)

A protocol that allows applications to make requests for files and services on remote computers. It is used by SMB and the open-source SAMBA, among others.

Classic (Abbreviated term for Classic application environment)

Classic makes it possible for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 9compatible applications to run on a Mac OS X system.

Cocoa

An application environment based on object-oriented frameworks that offer both Java and Objective-C APIs.

ColorSync

Color management software used by the Quartz graphics system.

command-line interface

Application environment used to execute BSD commands; accessed via Terminal, single-user mode, >console, X11 Terminal application, and Telnet (SSH).

CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System)

Cross-platform printing solution for UNIX environments, based on the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP).