[Am-info] Steve Jobs and the History of Cocoa

[Mitch Stone]

Two interesting articles on the NeXT connection in OS X, mainly of=20
interest to programmers, but also for some comments in Part Two on=20
"Project Star Trek," Apple's port of the MacOS to Intel. As clearly =
stated=20
as anywhere I've read it is Microsoft's hand in Project Star Trek's =
demise.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/03/cocoa_history_one.html
=
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/10/cocoa_history_two.html?pa=
ge=3D
1

"In the summer of 1992, a group of 18 engineers -- 14 from Apple, 4 from=20=

Novell -- moved into an office in Santa Clara, Calif., on a secret =
mission:
  port the Macintosh operating system to Intel-based hardware. The =
project,
  dubbed =93Star Trek,=94 was designed to beat back the threat of =
Microsoft by=20
giving PC makers an easy-to-use operating system they could install on=20=

their own hardware.

Better than Windows 3.1 and with the whole suite of Macintosh =
applications,
  Star Trek could have beaten Windows 95 to the market by more than a =
year=20
and turned Apple into the dominant market player.

The Star Trek group pulled off its mission, delivering a working =
operating=20
system by Oct. 31. But shortly thereafter, the Star Trek group ran into=20=

problems. One reason was politics: a key supporter of the project, Apple=20=

Vice President Roger Heinen, was hired away by Microsoft. Then Dell=20
Computer told Apple that Dell would not be able to pay any money for =
Apple=92
s product, since Dell was already purchasing a copy of Windows for every=20=

computer that Dell shipped -- whether or not Windows was actually=20
installed on those systems."

[...]



   Mitch Stone
   mitch@accidentalexpert.com