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Mac OS, which stands for Macintosh Operating System, is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh line of computer systems. more...

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The Mac OS is often credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. It was first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh 128K.

Apple deliberately played down the existence of the operating system in the early years of the Macintosh to help make the machine appear more user-friendly and to distance it from other operating systems such as MS-DOS, which were portrayed as arcane and technically challenging. Apple wanted Macintosh to be portrayed as a computer "for the rest of us". The term "Mac OS" did not really exist until it was officially used during the mid-1990s. The term has since been applied to all versions of the Mac system software as a handy way to refer to it when discussing it in context with other operating systems.

Earlier versions of the Mac OS were compatible only with Motorola 68000-based Macintoshes, while later versions were also compatible with the PowerPC (PPC) architecture. Most recently, Mac OS X has become compatible with Intel's x86 architecture.

Versions

The early Macintosh operating system initially consisted of two pieces of software, called "System" and "Finder", each with its own version number. System 7.5.1 was the first to include the Mac OS logo (a variation on the original "Happy Mac" smiley face Finder startup icon), and Mac OS 7.6 was the first to be named "Mac OS" (to ensure that users would still identify it with Apple, even when used in "clones" from other companies).

Until the advent of the later PowerPC G3-based systems, significant parts of the system were stored in physical ROM on the motherboard. The initial purpose of this was to avoid using up the limited storage of floppy disks on system support, given that the early Macs had no hard disk. (Only one model of Mac was ever actually bootable using the ROM alone, the 1991 Mac Classic model.) This architecture also allowed for a completely graphical OS interface at the lowest level without the need for a text-only console or command-line mode. A fatal software error, or even a low-level hardware error discovered during system startup (such as finding no functioning disk drives), was communicated to the user graphically using some combination of icons, alert box windows, buttons, a mouse pointer, and the distinctive Chicago bitmap font. Mac OS depended on this core system software in ROM on the motherboard, a fact which later helped to ensure that only Apple computers or licensed clones (with the copyright-protected ROMs from Apple) could run Mac OS.

The Mac OS can be divided into two families of operating systems:

"Classic" Mac OS, the system which shipped with the first Macintosh in 1984 and its descendants, culminating with Mac OS 9.; The newer Mac OS X (the "X" refers to the Roman numeral, ten). Mac OS X incorporates elements of OpenStep (thus also BSD Unix and Mach) and Mac OS 9. Its low-level BSD-based foundation, Darwin, is free software/open source software.;