Macintosh Operating System
<operating system> (Mac OS)
Apple Computer, Inc.'s proprietary
operating system for their
Macintosh family of personal computers.
The part of the operating system that simulates the desktop is called "Finder."
The
multitasking version of Finder was called "MultiFinder" until
multitasking was integrated into the core of the OS with the introduction of System 7.0 in 1990.
The Macintosh series provides a built-in graphics language, called "
QuickDraw", which provides a
standard for software developers.
Mac OS 8, scheduled for delivery in July 1997, contains a number of significant improvements, including new human-interface features, increased system stability and performance, a
PowerPC processor-native Finder, tighter integration of
Internet access through panel-based "assistants," Personal Web Sharing, and the ability to run Java applets and programs through Mac OS Run Time for
Java.
Mac OS X ("X" for 10) is based on
FreeBSD.
Apple released the
kernel of Mac OS X Server as "
darwin", under an
open source license.
See also
Macintosh file system,
Macintosh user interface.
