Talk:Copland (operating system)

message: These code names are incorrect. Apple had both external and internal code names. In part, the ideas was that an overheard conversation would be harder to connect to the actual project if people inside the company used an entirely name. For example, Copland was known as "Maxwell," Gershwin was known as "Edison," and System 7.5 was "Capone," because "Capone shot up Chicago." "Mozart" was a code name quickly pulled from a list in Developer Support shortly prior to the first seed release of System 7.5. "Mozart" had been used for dozens of projects over the years and the lack of a specifically planned external code name was indicative of how little attention the Capone project received internally because of the immense focus on Maxwell. Clearly code names are interesting to readers or the mention of Mozart wouldn't be relevant, but is this level of detail really interesting? Alexr wiki 18:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Code Names 

message: Eventually they released a number of such upgrades as Mac OS 8, in order to deliver on their promise of having something called Mac OS 8 running on all existing machines and thereby avoiding a lawsuit.
This says that Tempo was only called version 8 for legal reasons, which seems rather odd; is it suggesting that they should have frozen the version number at 7.x forever just because they couldn't deliver the 8.0 they had planned? David Arthur 22:30, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
:Both really. At some point during this period of time, perhaps as early as 94 and certainly as late as 96, Apple put stickers on all their machines that said "ready for OS 8" or something like that. The basic gist was "don't worry, buying this machine is fine". When Apple cancelled the project there was an abortive class action lawsuit saying that Apple had been involved in false advertizing, because the next major OS (Rhapsody) would NOT run on (m)any(?) of these machines. They "solved" this neatly by calling the next version of 7.x "8.0", and I suppose the lawyers were realistic enough to know that since Apple's stickers never said what OS 8 actually meant, there was no longer a lawsuit to be had. Maury 12:52, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I'm not the author of the original quote, but I'm pretty sure it is the case -- I seem to remember many comments about this at the time. Well I think it's safe to say it's more true than not, at least. Maury 03:39, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wasn't there some "clone wars" going on at the time?   I think the clones had licenses to make System 7 machines but maybe not System 8? Copland's Robbas 02:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: There was an unreleased "System 7.7" which became Mac OS 8, and included the Copland Appearance extension. Copland was to be System 8. The story is they changed it from "system" to "OS" for legal reasons. I know this is true because I had a pre-release (and unfinished) copy of System 7.7.  DavidRavenMoon (talk) 14:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I know they released a System 7-based OS as "Mac OS 8." The point is that Copland was going to be called "Mac OS 8" on release. The Tony Francis book testifies to that. MFNickster (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The released Mac OS 8 

message: Well, I made a mistake in my edit - Mac OS 7.6 had not been released when Copland was canceled. Nevertheless, the publication of this book in late 1996, just as Copland was being canceled, clearly shows that Apple intended to release Copland as "Mac OS 8" and not "System 8," I hope this can be considered a definitive source. MFNickster 01:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There was an unreleased "System 7.7" which became Mac OS 8, and included the Copland Appearance extension. Copland was to be System 8. The story is they changed it from "system" to "OS" for legal reasons. I know this is true because I had a pre-release (and unfinished) copy of System 7.7.  DavidRavenMoon (talk) 14:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I know they released a System 7-based OS as "Mac OS 8." The point is that Copland was going to be called "Mac OS 8" on release. The Tony Francis book testifies to that. MFNickster (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  System 8 vs. Mac OS 8 

message: Spindler was still in charge at that point. I was there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.101.133.172 (talk • contribs) 12:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely correct, I had "back-dated" the WWDC's by a year. Fixed. Maury 16:17, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amelio wasn't there for WWDC 1995 

message: As i recall, one of the highly touted and most axiously awaited features of Copland was it's support for the opendoc compound document architecture.  Shouldn't there a be a word or two about this in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericfluger (talk • contribs) 00:35, 25 March 2006
:Maybe, but OpenDoc wasn't going to be integrated into the OS in any way. It was going to be included in Copland in exactly the same way as in System 7.5, as a set of shared libraries - even SOM was going to be a shared library rather than an OS-level service. Still, it might be worth including a wikilink to OpenDoc. MFNickster 19:07, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was under the impression that SOM was going to be included in the OS itself. I do remember them talking a whole lot about it at WWDC'96 anyway. Maury 20:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could be... I've never been to a WWDC, so I am relying on Tony Francis's book Mac OS 8 Revealed for my information. It says that "SOMobjects for Mac OS is based on the Code Fragment Manager so that SOM classes are implemented as shared libraries." MFNickster 05:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  SOMObjects was indeed provided; It had shipped prior to Copland as well. Alexr wiki 18:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Howzabout a mention of compound documents? 

message: this article is very nice.  i am doing research on apple computer and this is precisely the sort of information i am looking for -- insider details on what happened in the mid 90s at apple (why did the company do so poorly from 93-97?).   at least, i am guessing these are insider details because they don't seem to be cited.
if you are interested in sharing whatever you know drop me a line at my talk page, or send me an email.   thanks.
Copland's Robbas 02:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  research help 

message: As I said on Talk:Apple Rhapsody (operating system), I'm not crazy about this renaming scheme, but can we at least get rid of "(operating system)" now? MFNickster 22:09, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article moved 

message: I reverted the recent change which was justified with the claim that there weren't any 1GB+ hard drives when System 7 was current. I bought my Power Mac 7500 with a 1GB drive and System 7.5.2 in late 1995, as Copland was in development. HFS+ didn't arrive until Mac OS 8, and good old HFS was kind of creaking with the larger drives.
That said, a lot of this section should probably be revised or removed, because it reads more like commentary/argument than encyclopedic text. MFNickster (talk) 18:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  System 7 and GB hard drives 

message: FTA:Later that summer the situation was no better, and Amelio realized something serious had to be done.
♠♥  Trickrick1985  ♦♣+2¢ :: log 18:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  narrative mode? 

message: The Gershwin operating system wiki page is woefully sparse; as it's probably not referenced from anywhere but this article, IMHO it would be best to simply put Gershwin as a small section here.--C xong (talk) 04:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree The Gershwin operating system link should then redirect here. MFNickster (talk) 10:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Agree. Gershwin was never more than a vague idea of ‘what will happen after Copland’, and isn’t independently notable. For that matter, the existing article seems to suggest (erroneously) that Gershwin was a project pursued after the failure of Copland. David Arthur (talk) 21:51, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Merged. Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with Gershwin 

message: The article now states Copland was cancelled in August 1996, using Macworld as its source. It seems that the news was not made public at the time. Sometime around Christmas 1996 TIME magazine says MacOS 8 had been thrown into the "binhex of destiny". The situation is still unclear to Dr. Dobb's Journal in January 1997:
* 
Can we find contemporary sources for these events? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 01:27, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like it was mid-August 1996 when Apple announced on their dev site (http://devworld.apple.com/devnews/devnews0808.html ) that Copland DR1 would not ship, and system releases would become incremental. Then, on August 29, the Wall Street Journal spilled the beans that Apple was talking to Be, Inc.. MFNickster (talk) 01:44, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither of the two sources referenced says Mac OS8 has been canceled, only that it would be "released incrementally". If Apple had made the final decision in August I guess they wanted to avoid the "Elop Effect". -- Petri Krohn (talk) 21:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: True, but I'm not sure even Apple knew what they were going to do at that point. They were obviously committed to shipping parts of Copland, but the idea of "Mac OS 8" as a monolithic release went out the window when DR1 was canceled. Add to that the overtures toward Be and NeXT, and Apple saying they would announce their "new OS strategy" in January 1997, it was pretty clear that the old strategy (Copland) was dead. They had nothing to offer developers who had been ramping up for it. If you're looking for a source from Apple that says "we have canceled development on Copland," I doubt you'll find one. MFNickster (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of cancellation? 

message: The article states this meeting took place in March 1987, and that Singh erroneously says 1988. I checked Jim Carlton's book Apple: The Inside Story... and he also says March 1988. Do we have any other sources on this? MFNickster (talk) 18:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: On p. 99 of Carlton's book, he writes, "By October 1988, Pink had been underway for about six months." MFNickster (talk) 16:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone care to address this? Is there any reason to pick Linzmayer's date as "correct" rather than Singh's & Carlton's? MFNickster (talk) 06:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, since nobody else has looked into this, I can report that some sources say 1987 (Linzmayer, Tom Hormby) and others 1988 (Singh, Potel, Roy Allan, Apple Museum). Carlton's book says both, in different places. Given that the Pink team moved into the Bubb Road offices when the Newton team was already there, having moved in late 1987, I'm going to change this to 1988. MFNickster (talk) 00:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pink, Blue and Red meeting 

message: The reason Copland was so Fd up was that the Mac was supposed to be dead by 1994, replaced by large-scale Newton devices. Newton devices being touch screen Lisp Machines.
:I am unaware of any documentary evidence to back up this claim, and as someone who was on the alpha/beta cycle, I certainly don't recall any plans to this effect. Newtons are completely unlike LMs, they have much more in common with JavaScript, via SELF. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:09, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs to talk about Newton

message: Can anyone definitely confirm the existence of red cards separate from pink? I see many histories containing mention of blue and pink, but only one saying red. I am concerned that someone at the original meeting was interviewed years later and talked about red cards, but was in fact talking about the pink set. I'm doubly concerned because one can go to a dollar store today and see white, off-yellow, light blue and pink index cards. No red. And this has been true since I was a kid. I wouldn't be surprised to find, yes, there really are red index cards available for purchase, but at first glance, it would seem someone was talking about the same ones everyone else called pink. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:16, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, Maury. Checking the sources I have, Hormby, Carlton and Singh all refer to pink, blue and red cards. Linzmeyer and Potel only mention pink and blue. BUT Carlton gives a quote from Erich Ringewald who initiated the Pink project saying they chose red for the really advanced features because it was "pinker than Pink." I don't think there's any reason to redact the description we currently have, unless we find an alternate source quoting someone who was there, indicating that there were in fact no red cards. MFNickster (talk) 20:37, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, none of the sources I have mention this. The quote is nice and should go in the article IMHO. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It's in the Taligent article if you want to steal it from there! MFNickster (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was there a red? Or just pink?