Re: OS X & Rhapsody

Ernest Prabhakar (prabhaka@apple.com)
Tue, 11 Aug 98 17:38:09 -0700


From: Joe Barrera <joebar@microsoft.com>
So basically,
OS 8.x and below ~= Win16 (Windows 3.11 and below) - cooperative
multitasking, single address space
OS X = Win32 (Windows NT) - preemptive scheduling, separate address
spaces

Well, if you're talking about APIs, Win16=ToolBox, Win32=Carbon.
But the difference is about 25%, not a factor of 2. :-)

> So again, it's unfortunate that when Steve/Avie/et. al. showed up, they
didn't spec out an interface for OS X

Huh? They did. The interface is called Carbon, and it was
provided in draft form at WWDC. Methinks you assume too much.

> and that they didn't provide a thunking (translation) layer to
that interface on top of System 8 when they shipped System 8.

They did. Its called "System 8." Carbon is a *subset* of the Mac
OS 8 APIs, getting rid of the cruft that's accumulated since 1984.
So, apps which get rid of those calls *are* Carbon-compliant, and
can be compiled to run on either Mac OS 8 or Mac OS X.

We don't *need* no stinking thunking layer. :-)

-- Ernie P.

P.S. Okay, there's likely to be a few minor items that require
some new wrapper APIs, and if so we'll make that available, but its
really not a big deal.