> > The basic layer is what is called Darwin. This is an open source > project, I > think that's the right term. It means that anybody can collaborate to > the > core project, and Apple (or some kind of a governing body?) reserves the > right to include the modifications in Darwin. Darwin is the Apple's > variant > of Unix. Darwin runs on PowerPC and on x86. When they say that Unix can > run > on any platform, it means that usually, you start with the C source > code to > the system and you then compile it on the platform you want to deploy. > Usually, Unix is based on ANSI C. There are some variations among all > Unixes > out there, however. Also, depending on the processor, the developer that > wants to compile some Unix tool for a given processor might have to > tweak > the variables defined used by the code, because some processor are > "big-endian" and others are "little-indians" (for more details about > that, > see <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/big_endian.html>). What makes the > Mac > what it is is Foundation and AppKit, a collection of Objective-C classes > that provide everything you see when you boot into OS X. AppKit is > actually > Aqua, but it's also using Foundation. There are also other components, > like > CoreFoundation, but most of what is used to build applications right > now is > probably Objective-C. The majority of applications provided by Apple are > from Foundation/AppKit. That's the part that makes OS X incompatible > with > any other platform. However, there are rumors that Apple is secretly > maintaining an x86 version of OS X, so that whenever changes are made > to the > main code, it recompiles OK on a x86 architecture. That helps find some > bugs > sometimes, because it requires more discipline when writing code to > different architecture and that's apparently the purpose of this secret > x86 > version. > > FYI, OPENSTEP, the OS on which OS X is heavily based, was running on > Intel > processor. Since Objective-C is based on C, it is relatively easy to > recompile any Objective-C framework to a different architecture... > > -Laurent. > Wow! I'll have to re-read this to take it all in, Laurent. (By the way, thanks to everyone who's replied to this thread!) So Foundation/Appkit is the proprietary part of this whole Unix picture? Is Cocoa a BSD version of Unix that is more compatible with Foundation/Appkit? This is getting interesting. :) Donald
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