Fareham — Nov 13th 2021

Eleven members came to the Victory Hall to hear Stuart's talk on how Apple found a new operating system for the Mac, and saved itself from collapse- not just because that new OS came complete with Steve Jobs. Back in 1984, the Mac was designed & heavily optimised for a single user to run a single application, which could do a single task at once. But given the pace of hardware and software development, those requirements, necessary as they were at first, soon became severe restrictions. Apple needed a new OS to address those problems, and started work on it in 1988, at the same time as IBM and Microsoft started on their own OS projects. Eventually, after two failed OS projects, two CEO sackings, and making huge losses, Apple bought Steve Jobs' NeXT and its operating system in 1996, and Jobs came too, initially as an unpaid advisor to the board. OS X finally released in 2001, and we're still using it today. Its foundations, called Darwin, are a fundamental part of Apple's OS for all its devices, and enabled developments like the iPhone and the move to Apple Silicon. It was an entertaining story including the worst Apple keynote ever, the tale of how an infant inspired one programmer to get OS X working on Intel processors, and how in 2005, one of the biggest beasts of the software world got updated for the then-new Intel Macs in two hours by one man (well, allegedly..).

After that, the usual discussions followed. Much interest was shown in Euan's new M1 Pro MacBook Pro, a very impressive machine indeed.

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Stuart Affleck said…

A few links…Kim Scheinberg's account of how her husband kicked off the Intel switch (read through the comments for some corrections and even more info from ex-Apple staff) is here https://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answer/Kim-Scheinberg?srid=i1
Theodore Grey of Wolfram Research delivering a highly entertaining presentation on how to port to Intel at WWDC 2005https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcfGsOKXO5M&t=21s&ab_channel=KAMiKAZOW
45 minutes of Macworld SF 1996. The worst Apple keynote, ever (but 25 minutes of classic Steve Jobs included) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhhFQ-3w5tE&t=1630s&ab_channel=DirkBockstegers
And finally, Michael Markman (the guy who wrote that keynote) gives his (very funny) take on how the disaster unfolded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsBVyUDs-84&ab_channel=mickeleh
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