The first
Inside Macintosh documentation, for the first
Macintosh, was distributed in two large binders with photocopied
3-hole punched pages. Every few months, updated sections were distributed for insertion into the binders. Some of the original sections were written by very early members of the Macintosh group, including Chris Espinosa and Joanna Hoffman. All of these volumes were designed to be read together, with no information repeated. In July 1982, Caroline Rose was hired to take over the software documentation, while Bradley Hacker focused on documenting the hardware. In addition to being the lead writer, Rose edited Volumes I–III and was the project supervisor. In 1984, additional writers joined the effort, including Robert Anders, Mark Metzler, Kate Withey, Steve Chernicoff, Andy Averill, and Brent Davis. Due to numerous last-minute software changes, the official version to be published by
Addison-Wesley was delayed. In the meantime, a $25 Promotional Edition (known as the "phone book edition" because it was published by phone book publisher
Lakeside Press) became available in April 1985. Addison-Wesley published Volumes I–III in July 1985 in two formats: as three separate paperback books and as one hardcover book combining all three volumes. It is the official technical documentation for the original Macintosh, the
Macintosh 512K ("Fat Mac"), and
Macintosh XL. Since Volume IV, authorship is attributed only to Apple Computer in general. Volume IV (October 1986) documents the changes to the system software in the
Macintosh Plus, which was introduced in January 1986. Volume V (February 1988) documents the
Macintosh II and
Macintosh SE, which were introduced in 1987. It discusses Color
QuickDraw, the Mac II and Mac SE hardware, and other new software components. Volume VI (April 1991) describes
System 7. With 32 chapters, it is thicker than the first three volumes combined. Shortly after Volume VI was published, Apple revamped the entire
Inside Macintosh series, breaking it into volumes according to the functional area discussed, rather than specific machine models or capabilities. In this form, the series is far more coherent and a much better reference for programmers. As new functionality was added to the
classic Mac OS, new volumes could be written without invalidating those published earlier—in contrast to the first series, which became increasingly obsolete over time. In the late 1990s, Apple stopped publishing
Inside Macintosh as a printed book, instead as a CD-ROM at least since 1994, and online. Since then, the CD variant has been phased out, though Apple developers still received online documentation as part of the developer CDs. In its online form, the information is much easier to maintain, but some developers still prefer a printed format.
Inside Macintosh covers only the
classic Mac OS and a new set of documentation was introduced for
Mac OS X. Initially this documentation includes only the Carbon Specification identifying the
APIs in
Carbon and the
Cocoa documentation inherited from
OpenStep. Later, the Carbon Specification was refactored into the Carbon Reference, which actually documents the APIs, taking much content from
Inside Macintosh. The Carbon Reference and Cocoa Reference are bundled together in the
ADC Reference Library. ==Reception==