Chapter 1: Introduction and Installation of Mac OS X

From the moment you see Mac OS X, you know that it’s different from any other computer operating system on the planet, including earlier iterations of Mac OS. Nothing else looks quite like it. Yet, use it a bit and you will see that there is familiarity about its operation. Apple has made great efforts to ensure that Macintosh users can leverage their OS 9 skill sets. Although on the surface Mac OS X may seem familiar, its internal workings have no relation to any Apple desktop OS to date.

This Chapter provides an overview of the core technologies that comprise Mac OS X. Knowing the core technologies can help you master the overall operation of OS X. We conclude this Chapter by examining the system requirements of Mac OS X and its installation.

What Is Mac OS X?

Mac OS X is Apple’s answer to the quest for a modern operating system. It combines the power and stability of Unix with the simplicity of the Macintosh. In 1996, after continual failed attempts to develop its own next-generation operating system, Apple management looked outside the company and acquired NeXT Software Inc. NeXT’s OS at the time was called OpenStep. It had all the features that Apple desired in a modern OS: protected memory, preemptive multitasking, multithreading, and symmetric multiprocessing. With OpenStep as the foundation, Apple initially designated the code name Rhapsody for the its new OS, but as the project matured, it was renamed to Mac OS X, keeping in line with the progression of Apple’s existing system software monikers. Apple has enjoyed phenomenal success with Mac OS X, which has been adopted by over 5 million users and is now generally considered the largest vendor of Unix-based systems on the planet.

Mac OS 10.3 is an evolutionary step in the OS X product line. It has numerous user enhancements that are covered throughout this book. One of the more prolific enhancements is that the OS has been updated to run on the IBM PowerPC 970 processor, which is the heart of Apple’s G5 64-bit computer. But Mac OS 10.3 is not a true 64-bit OS; rather, it’s what’s referred to as a hybrid OS. This means that while Mac OS 10.3 has been optimized to take advantage of the 64-bit data paths of the G5 processor and is capable of utilizing up to 8GB of memory access and native double-precision (64-bit) arithmetic, it still allows 32-bit applications to run.