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An open encyclopedia of software history
Did you know...
- ...that Windows 98 build 1387 has a hidden button in display properties to enable title bar gradients, and is also the first build of Windows to support this feature?
- ...that an updated version of Reversi (normally not preinstalled) is included in the Windows 3.1 Driver Library?
- ...that Apple has officially released several developer releases of what would later become Mac OS X for the x86 architecture as a part of its NeXT legacy, and secretly continued to maintain the port until Tiger?
- ...that there was an E variant planned for Windows 7 in addition to K, N and KN, which didn't include Internet Explorer?
- ...that Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.x have a hidden easter egg with a list of members of the Windows team?
- ...that every Classic Mac OS version since Mac OS 7 renames the "Special" menu to a unique word beginning with S in beta builds for easy identification of such?
Featured article
macOS is a series of operating systems developed by Apple for their Macintosh platform. It was first introduced together with the original Macintosh in 1984. The system from the very beginning made use of a graphical interface, similar to the one used by the earlier Lisa. In its early versions, it only supported running a single application at a time, although it was later extended with cooperative multitasking support via MultiFinder.
Shortly after Apple bought NeXT in 1997, Apple gained NeXT's object-oriented operating system called NeXTSTEP based on Unix. The Unix core of NeXTSTEP was renamed to Darwin, released as open source and in the following years, it was modernized partially by using code from FreeBSD and other projects. Building off from the kernel, the classic Mac OS was eventually succeeded by Mac OS X in 2001 with the release of Mac OS X Cheetah. Since then, the system went through several architecture transitions, first from PowerPC to Intel x86 in 2006. In 2020, Apple began another transition, this time from x86 to the ARM-based Apple silicon.
