Submitted by At the MacWorld Expo today in San Fransisco, Apple announced new versions of iWork and iLife, as well as an updated 17″ MacBook Pro, which promises a battery life of 7-8 hours. More interesting, however, is the fact that yesterday was Mac OS X Server’s 10th birthday.
The history of Mac OS X is pretty well known by most people. Apple’s Mac OS operating system was breaking apart at the seams during the second half of the ’90s; it lacked several modern features that had already become standards on most of its competitors, such as protected memory and preemptive multitasking. In addition, Apple was facing strong competition out of Redmond, which had enormous success with its Windows 95 release, but was also showing the future of Windows with the written-from-scratch Windows NT.
After an impressive list of failed projects to either modernise the existing Mac OS, or to write a new one from scratch, Apple realised it had to buy an existing operating system to serve as the base for Apple next-generation Mac OS. Several options were considered, including a partnership with Microsoft to use Windows NT, but in the end Apple eyed a young but promising company based in Menlo Park, California: Be, Inc.
Be, Inc. was founded by ex-Apple CEO Jean-Louis Gassée, and had produced the BeOS, an advanced but unproven operating system. The deal came close, but Gassée wanted far too much money for Be, and the deal did not work out, and consequently, Be faded out. It is reported that even though Be was valued at about 20m USD, the offers flying back and forth between Apple and Be ran into the hundreds of millions.
Steve Jobs, who was heading NeXT at the time, contacted Apple, and pitched the NEXTSTEP heavily to Apple, claiming it was technology proven in the market – unlike the young and untested BeOS. The pitch was successful, and Apple decided to use NEXTSTEP (by then renamed to OPENSTEP) as the basis for its next-generation operating system.
Several developer preview releases, designated as Rhapsody, made their way into tester’s hands, but the first official, final version released to the public was Mac OS X Server 1.0, on January 5th, 1999 (it didn’t start shipping until March of that year, however).
Apple Computer, Inc. today announced Mac OS X Server, the Company’s new server operating system, which combines the proven strength of Unix with the simplicity of Macintosh. Mac OS X is built on the high-performance Mach microkernel and BSD 4.4, and includes the Apache HTTP web server and WebObjects application server.
Weirdly enough, though, Mac OS X Server 1.0 was not the direct precursor to the desktop variant of Mac OS X; both were developed alongside one another, but would share improvements. Several Mac OS X developer preview releases were released over the course of 1999, and as soon as Mac OS X 10.0 was released early 2000, version numbering schemes between Mac OS X’ client and server variants were synchronised.
The rest is history, as they say.
Yay for the MacOSX Server. Throughout the years it has served me well. A fine tool if you know how and where to apply it.
Despite your own experiences, I would think that it would have to be viewed as a disappointment. Its not even considered as an option by many businesses. Its Unix, but not Linux. Its GUI Administration, but not windows. There isn’t a core of sys admins that are demanding enough of it to move it in the right direction to keep up with the others.
More interesting, however, is the fact that yesterday was Mac OS X Server’s 10th birthday
Hmmm, I wouldn’s say that was ‘more interesting’ than a 17″ notebook with a battery life of 8 hours is (if indeed, it delivers).
it was a truely rubbish expo..
(to clarify rubbish, I wanted a new mac mini and I was itching to go online and buy one!)
I have used OS X server for some time now. I can’t speak for everyone , however for me it has been highly reliable. I have upgraded to new hardware by buying either refurb mac pro’s.
This has allowed the cost of Mac hardware to be a non issue. Rock solid easy to maintain, easy to upgrade. Congrats OS X I can’t wait for 10.6 server, with ZFS goodness.
I think I still have those discs around! Somewhere.
Ive got mine, in the box stamped as 1.1 along with my 1.2 upgrade CD that sadly didn’t allow it to be installed on my AGP g4….
At least the OS X 10.0 public beta was what? $20?
Back in the mid-90s, I used NeXTSTEP quite a bit, and Mac OS X server is basically the next-gen of that operating system. Such a great operating system and environment. I remember the Mac OS X previews that were NeXTSTEP with the Mac OS 9 window treatment running on a Quadra. Ah, those were the days.
The “read more” section of the article isn’t entirely clear on the relationship between the original releases of OS X Server and the current Apple OSes that bear the “OS X” name (effectively, there were two separate-but-related lines of OS X that have been called “OS X Server” – the 1.x line and the 10.x line).
IIRC, OS X Server (the 1.x versions) were effectively updated versions of Rhapsody – using a modified version of the OS 8/9 “platinum” theme, with NeXTStep tech under the hood. It was released a year or two before the original OS X public beta – and OS X Server (or its codebase) was the basis for client versions of OS X.
And after the release of 10.0, Apple released a version with some server-specific tools under the “OS X Server” label. So in a nutshell, OS X Server 10.x is based on client versions of OS X 10.x, which is in turn based on OS X Server 1.x.
BTW, for anyone else interested in the history of OS X, ArsTechnica published very thorough articles on each of the “Developer Preview” releases (from DP2 onward):
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macos-x-dp2.ars
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-gui/macos-x-gui-1.html
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-dp3/macos-x-dp3-1.html
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp4/macos-x-dp4-1.html
When Steve unveiled the AIO G3 (AKA The Tooth), all I could dream of was running OS X Server on that beauty..
The joy of NeXTStep, the lusty hardware that was the height of the PPC era..
I had clippings on my office wall for inspiration..
I have since had the opportunity to own said configuration, and I passed it up without much wincing.
It’s a shame that they couldn’t get more support behind it as NT became 2000, OS/2 and Netware were on their way out.
If they could have quietly offered X86 support for the server, while continuing to offer the 68K and PPC client support, we would have seen the shift to Intel much sooner, and OS X Server would be *far* more evolved than it is today.
I could care less about Aqua. Services are what do it for me..