Chromebook deployment...

[Colin Holgate]

Although some pages mention a system 5, there wasn’t one. Here’s a list of system releases and dates that seems correct:

http://www.computerhope.com/history/macos.htm <http://www.computerhope.com/history/macos.htm>

Before System 6 came out the System and Finder had different version numbers, with Finder being a higher number. System 4.2 kinda had multifinder, but it didn’t last long before 4.3 came out. There was a significant change in System 6.0, previously developers had to code both a WaitNextEvent and GetNextEvent, to cope with whether the Mac was running multifinder or not. In 6.0 WaitNextEvent was made compatible with non-multifinder, and so developers could remove the case statements. Microsoft was one such developer that did that, and so their version of Word to support System 6.0 would not work on earlier versions. 6.0 had issues, and was quickly replaced with 6.0.1, but that was US only, it took some time until it was localized (localised), and eventually there was a 6.0.2 release. People in Europe, or at least the UK (where I was working for Apple at the time) were up in arms about the delay in getting a release that could run the new version of Word.

One small claim to fame I have is that I was the first person anywhere to be running System 7 full time. I stayed with it from alpha 9, the System 7 team themselves didn’t start using it full time until alpha 11. When System 7 was released (I had been using it for about 18 months by then) I was doing a presentation at an education conference, and someone asked: “will System 7 have the issues that System 6 had when it was first released?”. I answered: “it will be just as compatible!”. It wasn’t either helpful or accurate, but the audience were amused!

On the general topic of Apple following Microsoft and vice versa, when System 8 came out the Apple reps were raving about it, but I was able to make a list of 11 of the new great features that already existed in Windows.


> On Oct 31, 2015, at 11:20 AM, Dr. Hawkins <dochawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> The win95 interfaces was basically the multifinder (system 5, 1987) with a
> pair of $30 shareware extensions (be hierarchic and I forget the other one)
> with the apple menu dropped to the booth of the screen and renamed start.