NeXT acquisition, Rhapsody After the collapse of several other attempts to build a modernized replacement for the aging
classic Mac OS (including the ill-fated
Copland project), Apple Computer CEO
Gil Amelio elected to pursue acquiring another operating system vendor to leverage their existing technology instead. The search was narrowed down to two companies both founded by Apple alumni:
Jean-Louis Gassée's
Be Inc., and
Steve Jobs'
NeXT. On December 20, 1996, Apple announced that it would acquire NeXT for $400 million; as part of the acquisition, Apple planned to use the
NeXTSTEP operating system and its
Mach kernel as the basis for a future release of Mac OS, and announced that Steve Jobs would return to the company in a consulting role. At its
Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in May 1997, Apple first demonstrated the
Rhapsody project—which combined the NeXTSTEP architecture with adaptations of key Mac OS technologies such as
AppleScript,
Apple events, and
QuickTime, and an user interface incorporating elements of Mac OS (including
Mac OS 8's new "Platinum" theme); the company promoted that the new platform would be more stable and reliable than the existing Mac OS, while Jobs stated that the
object-oriented OpenStep APIs (which would be referred to as the "Yellow Box") would make it faster and easier for developers to write software, and provide opportunities for
cross-platform applications that could be
ported to Windows (as well as the possibility of the OS also being available for
Intel compatible systems). Apple planned to support the classic Mac OS for a period of time in parallel with Rhapsody, while also providing a compatibility environment known as the "Blue Box" to run most existing software via an emulated Mac OS. Rhapsody was met with hesitation from third-party developers such as
Adobe, who did not want to rewrite their existing Macintosh applications for the Yellow Box platform, showed a lack of confidence in Apple due to the mismanagement of the Copland project, and feared a
second-system effect due to Rhapsody co-existing with the classic Mac OS.
Retool as Mac OS X At WWDC 1998, it was announced that this new platform would be known as "Mac OS X" (pronounced "Mac OS 10"), and would be released in late-1999, following Rhapsody and
Mac OS 8.5 in 1998. Jobs revealed that OS X would feature a new API—later named "
Carbon"—which would adapt the existing Mac OS APIs to run atop the new NeXTSTEP-based platform. Carbon would allow existing Mac OS software to be ported natively to OS X with only "minor adjustments" to their code. It was also announced that Adobe,
Macromedia, and
Microsoft had committed to supporting their software on OS X.
Mac OS X Server 1.0 would be released in 1999 as a stopgap product based on Rhapsody. Apple had projected OS X to be released in 2000. During the keynote, Jobs announced that Mac OS X would be "on sale as a software product starting this summer". Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 (DP3) was released in February 2000, as the first build released to developers that included the Aqua interface. This was followed by DP4 in May 2000 during WWDC. During the conference, the promised summer release was revealed to actually be a public beta build, rather than the final release as was originally implied; the Mac OS X Public Beta was released on September 13, 2000, and sold for US$29.95. Launch events were hosted over the weekend by Apple's retail outlets and local
Macintosh User Groups (MUGs), including midnight releases, live demonstrations of the operating system, and promotional giveaways. One launch event held by Elite Computers & Software—an
Apple reseller located across the street from its
headquarters in
Cupertino, California—was promoted as "California's largest Mac OS X launch party", and was attended by Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak. A separate server release known as
Mac OS X Server 10.0 was released the following May. == New and updated features ==