Macintosh Operating System

operating system (Mac OS) Apple Computer, Inc.'s

proprietary operating system for their Macintosh family of

personal computers.

The part of the operating system that simulates the desktop is

called "Finder." The multitasking version of Finder was

called "MultiFinder" until multitasking was integrated

into the core of the OS with the introduction of System 7.0 in

1990.

The Macintosh series provides a built-in graphics language,

called "QuickDraw", which provides a standard for software

developers.

Mac OS 8, scheduled for delivery in July 1997, contains a

number of significant improvements, including new

human-interface features, increased system stability and

performance, a PowerPC processor-native Finder, tighter

integration of Internet access through panel-based

"assistants," Personal Web Sharing, and the ability to run

Java applets and programs through Mac OS Run Time for Java.

Mac OS X ("X" for 10) is based on FreeBSD. Apple released

the kernel of Mac OS X Server as "darwin", under an opensource license.

See also Macintosh file system, Macintosh user interface.

(2002-06-29)