WEBVTT - Operating Systems that Time Forgot 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.399 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:15.920 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.239 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:22.680 tech are you? So chances are if you're listening to 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.680 the show, you have a handle on what an operating 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:30.320 system is. Lots of stuff you use as an operating system. 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:33.240 You know, you're a computer, your smartphone, that kind of thing. 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:35.919 An operating system's job is to serve as a sort 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.600 of liaison between a device's hardware, you know, the actual 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.720 chips and circuits that really make it work, and the 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.800 software that runs on top of it and gets those 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.760 hardware things to produce output that you actually want. So 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:56.120 operating systems create a starting point or foundation for programmers. 0:00:56.200 --> 0:01:00.600 If you design an application meant for a specific operating system, 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.000 then that app should work on pretty much any device 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:08.840 that's running that specific operating system sort of. There can 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.319 actually be exceptions due to various hardware configurations, but you 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.960 get the idea. So, the operating system manages all sorts 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.640 of processes like memory management. It also handles data sent 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:25.280 to peripheral devices like displays or printers. Before there were 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:30.000 operating systems. Computers were far more limited and much less efficient. 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.360 If you wanted to run a program on an old 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.200 computer pre operating system days, first you had to wait 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.880 until nothing else was running on that computer. Then you 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.800 would have to directly load your program onto the hardware itself. 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:49.920 So the classical version of this was a program designated by, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.120 say a long strip of paper tape that has holes 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:57.040 punched into it in specific places, or a collection of 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:01.200 punch cards, that you would have a program built onto, 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.080 and you would have to load this on a computer. 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.200 You would also have to preset physical switches on the 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.080 computer itself to make certain that the computer began in 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:15.400 the proper state before you would execute your program. If 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:19.160 it wasn't, then you wouldn't get the result you had intended, 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.600 and you might not know that until much further down 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.840 the line. So very complicated. It was a physical activity, 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.360 like it wasn't just click on an icon or type 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.880 something into a command line, and it didn't always go smoothly. 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.720 Either a mistake in the programming or a bug in 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.320 the computer system itself could cause a crash, and that 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:41.679 might require a lot of backtracking to fix it. You 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.720 would have to identify what went wrong, and then fix 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.799 the problem. This was not always an easy thing to do, 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.840 but over time, computer scientists developed programming languages and operating 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.480 systems in order to enhance the capabilities of computers and 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.720 to make it easier to use them, and eventually there 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:05.880 was an explosion of operating systems. Some were peculiar to 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:10.600 a specific type of computer or a specific line of computers. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.760 While the operating system made things easier for programmers who 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.679 were working on those machines, you would still often need 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.920 to specialize in certain classes of computer systems because of 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.240 differences between them, Like just because you know how to 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.880 program for computer system A, doesn't mean you could program 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.800 for computer system B, because how fundamentally different they were. 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:33.880 So today I thought I would talk a bit about 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:39.600 a few discontinued operating systems. These were once important, but 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:43.640 they are no longer in widespread use today. Some of 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.320 them live on, at least in part. Sometimes they're partly 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:51.280 a legacy element that's still found in modern day operating systems. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.760 Some of them are supported by hobbyists. And I could 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:56.520 go all the way back to the days of like 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.320 mainframes and micro computers, but I figured it would be 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.760 best to kind of limit ourselves to personal computers and 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.400 that sort of thing. Maybe in the future I could 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:08.360 go further back. Also in the future, I might do 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.520 things like smartphones, because there's some smartphone operating systems that 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.279 are largely discontinued this today, and it would be interesting 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.000 to have a conversation about those as well. So it's 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:22.080 just important to remember that, even though I'm just really 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.760 talking about PCs in this episode, there have been a 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.719 lot of other computer systems that had come and gone 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.960 by the time we get up to that. I decided 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.320 to start with PCs because I would argue the PC 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:39.480 era is really kind of a transformational point in our world. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.520 You know, miniaturization and mass production had made it possible 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.440 to create a computer that could fit on a desktop 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.800 and also not cost a bazillion dollars. Although I should 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.840 point out early personal computers were still really expensive, like 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.080 if you were to compare them to computers today, far 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.719 more expensive than what you could get today if you're 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.360 just buying like a basic system, a basic system back 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.159 in like the late seventies early eighties would cost you 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.159 a whole lot more than what you would spend today. 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.800 Comparatively speaking, you have to take inflation into account. So 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:18.160 let's start off with a computer system that launched in 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:21.640 nineteen eighty five. So nineteen eighty five was a year 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:26.560 after Apple had introduced the Macintosh computer. There was this 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:31.360 other company called Commodore International. It had originally started out 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:36.080 as this humble business of typewriter repair and reselling. Like 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.599 it was a business that bought old, busted up typewriters, 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.440 fixed them up, and then sold them again, and eventually 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.320 they became more of a computer company. They made the 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.479 Commodore sixty four, one of the most famous personal computers 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.680 of all time. But in nineteen eighty five they introduced 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.640 a new machine that seemed to have a whole lot 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.880 of promise, and it was called the Amme. Now the 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.160 Amiga didn't actually start off as a Commodore project. A 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:09.280 group of folks who had previously worked for Atari decided 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.840 that they would strike out on their own and make 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.480 their own company. So they created a business that they 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:19.680 called Hi Toro. I don't know why I gave a 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.599 little role in the r there Hi Toro, Hi Dash 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.480 t Ro. It was this group that would receive an 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:32.359 acquisition offer from Commodore, and they took it. So the 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:37.240 Amiga measured up well against competing computers at the time, 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:41.680 computers like the Macintosh and the IBM PC. It boasted 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:46.440 superior graphics and sound. The Amiga was incredible in that regard. 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.640 Games on the Amiga had a tendency to look and 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.920 sound leagues better than similar titles that you could find 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.920 on other platforms. Animators and artists were drawn no pun 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:02.080 intended to the Amiga, and it was seen as a 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.799 really powerful tool for creative types in the computer space, 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.480 very much the way Macintosh computers would be viewed a 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.760 decade later, even though creatives also like Macintosh computers even 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.400 back in those early days. But when I think about 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:20.800 when I first got into media, anyone I knew who 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.640 worked in media and worked with computers, they had a Macintosh. 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:27.040 The mac was seen as the computer for creatives well 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.200 in the mid eighties. The goal for Commodore was to 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:32.680 make the Amiga that type of machine, and for a 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.640 lot of creatives it was. Now the Amiga operating system 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.200 was known as Amiga OS, which makes sense, and it 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.160 had some pretty cool features. For one, it could allow 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.480 for multitasking. Now not all PCs at this time could multitask. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.600 Most would require the user to quit out of one 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:54.640 application entirely before they could launch another, But the Amiga 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:59.480 OS was different. Now, it wasn't perfect multitasking. The operating 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:03.080 syste would have essentially freeze whichever app you were leaving 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.160 in order to dedicate the resources to whichever app you 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.880 were switching to. So if you've got app A and 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.480 app B and you're leaving app A to go to 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.800 app B, app A just goes into kind of hibernation mode. 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:19.239 This method is called preemptive multitasking, and what it means 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.240 is that you couldn't start a process, then swap to 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.080 another window and expect the process in that first window 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.640 to continue while you're doing something else. But still the 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.040 ability to go back and forth between tests was a 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:37.360 big advance over many competitors. Like these days, I think 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:39.880 that would I would find that frustrating because sometimes I 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:43.600 will start a process in one window and it'll say 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.640 it's going to take like forty five seconds. I'm like, 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:47.439 I don't have time for that. I'm going to go 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.680 do something in this other window while that completes, and 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.960 computers today can handle that. The Amiga could not. But 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:58.199 you have to remember computational resources were much more limited then, right, 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.000 We were still in the very early days of personal computers. 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:06.600 The operating system also included a disc operating system or DOS. 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:11.240 We'll be talking more about the famous MS DOS later 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.040 in this episode, but this was called Amiga DOSS naturally, 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.000 and this disc operating system gave the user access to 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.600 things like the computer's file system and directory, so you 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.280 can navigate through that way if you didn't want to 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:28.440 use the graphic User interface or GUI version of the 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:32.760 operating system, and you might normally use Amiga's graphics user 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.600 interface to get around, but this would give you a 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.640 much more direct and text based method of navigating the machine. 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.880 In some ways, it was more efficient and faster if 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.000 you knew what you were doing, but if you didn't, 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.400 you could just use the GUY to get around using 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.480 its various file management systems. Now, one thing a Mega 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:55.480 OS did not have was memory protection. Now, as the 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:59.240 name implies, the purpose of memory protection is to prevent 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:03.640 processing from accessing memory for which they do not have 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.200 the permission to access. You know, if you're running a 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:10.400 process and another process says, oh, yeah, that memory over there, 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:13.439 that you're using, I'll have that and takes it. That's 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.400 not good. You want to have a system in place 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.520 to stop that from happening. Memory protection helps mitigate malicious 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:24.200 processes from causing damage to other processes or even to 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:29.280 the computer system itself. Right, you could program a purposefully 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:33.760 malicious program or application that would be meant to steal 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:38.120 resources from all other applications and essentially shut a computer down. 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.520 You don't want that to happen, so usually you would 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:44.640 have a memory protection method in place with your operating system, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:51.120 but the Amiga OS did not have that. But this 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:56.000 shortcoming was not what led to the discontinuation of Amigo OS. 0:10:56.080 --> 0:11:01.839 It's not like one day some Amiga based malware broke 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.520 out and ruined all the computers. That would have been 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.280 hard to do anyway, because networked computers were pretty darn 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.040 rare during the era of Amiga OS. Now the reason 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:16.560 why the Amiga OS operating system was discontinued and I 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.000 realized I was just repetitive there, But it's because it 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.920 has to do with business. Commodore, the company that made 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:28.360 and sold the computer, hit hard times really really quickly. 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:32.319 So in the early eighties, Commodore was measuring up really 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.720 well against competitors like Apple and IBM. They were selling 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:40.040 computers like hotcakes. Commodore was riding high, but then there 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.800 were dips in the mid eighties, and then there were 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.760 more crests and then dips again. Like it got pretty 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.120 rocky throughout the eighties and into the nineties, and in 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:54.080 nineteen ninety two things were going okay. But in nineteen 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.480 ninety three, sales dropped like a rock and the company 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.680 lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it wasn't in 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.640 a financial position where it could recover from that. So 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:07.880 in nineteen ninety four, Commodore announced it was entering into 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:12.360 bankruptcy and that it would liquidate all its assets. Now 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.800 it's true to say that Amiga OS faded away. It 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.720 lost all official support because the company that supported it 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.520 ceased to be but the operating system itself is not 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:30.480 totally gone. Hyperion Entertainment Overseas essentially a descendant of the 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.600 Amiga OS, and in fact, the most recent update I 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.360 can see dates back to April of twenty twenty three, 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.160 and that's when Hyperion Entertainment released a hot fix for 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:45.920 Amiga OS three point two point two so I guess 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:51.240 you could say it's only mostly dead. There's still hobbyists 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:56.280 who very much are into creating things for the Amiga OS, 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.000 and it is still supported, just not by the company 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.679 that created it, so that's kind of cool. But as 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.880 an official operating system, it's more of a curiosity than 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.680 anything else. And that's why I decided to start off 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:11.880 the episode with that one. Now we're gonna take a 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.280 quick break, and when we come back, I'm gonna talk 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:18.600 about a pair of operating systems that are deeply entwined 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.199 with one another and all the drama that comes with it. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.840 That's what's coming next. But first let's take this quick break. 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:40.720 All right, we're back, So next we have next sort 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:42.679 of all right, Like I said, this is a really 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.600 a two for one entry, and it involves a whole 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.640 lot of drama. And I have talked over this story 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.280 before in other episodes of Tech Stuff, but it's such 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.240 a juicy story we're gonna have to rake the coals 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.319 once more. Now, this story starts back arguably in the 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.320 late seventies, but really the tipping point is in nineteen 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.000 eighty five, that same year that the Amiga came out, 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.480 and this was due to something that was going on 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:12.079 over at Apple, because things were getting rough, all right. 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.120 The reason things were getting rough, or one of them, 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:18.960 is that Steve Jobs had become a bit of a handful. Now. 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:23.080 Jobs had co founded Apple along with Steve Wozniak. Wosniak 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.840 was the actual programmer and engineer of the pair, and 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.680 the two had grown the company very quickly, but they 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:34.640 really weren't the right fit to lead a growing tech 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:39.240 corporation right. Investors were a little leery of backing a 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:44.800 new bayle tech company run by a couple of college dropouts, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.200 and if they wanted to get support from their investors, 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.320 they needed to make sure they had a quote unquote 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.240 real leader. And they got a few real leaders in 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:59.160 those early years. First up was a guy named Michael Scott, 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.360 not the guy from the office, and the next was 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:07.480 an early Apple investor named Mike Markula. Markula would actually 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.119 step up to be the chairman of the board of Directors, 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.040 and a new leader named John Scully the third would 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.280 come in to take over as CEO of Apple or 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:22.160 President of Apple originally now number three here. Scully he 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.760 had previously served as the president of Pepsi COO so 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.200 clearly he was the perfect pick that had a computer 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:31.640 company anyway. The point is Steve Jobs wasn't the one 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.880 calling the shots. He was not the executive ultimately in 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.040 charge of Apple, but occasionally he would act like he was. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.560 In the late nineteen seventies, a computer engineer named Jeff 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.840 Raskin proposed a project that ultimately would become the McIntosh, 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:52.280 and apparently Steve Jobs thought this wasn't really a worthwhile pursuit. 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.600 I should also mention that Raskin's version of the McIntosh 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.960 was a very, very different thing than what would emerge 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:04.320 from Apple in nineteen eighty four. The Raskin's Macintosh was. 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.080 It could not have been more different. Really, It was 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:12.200 a text based, utilitarian workspace as opposed to what the 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.600 Macintosh would become. Anyway. Jobs wanted the company to back 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.200 the project he had been working on, which was the 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:24.920 Lisa personal computer, and he lobbied to have the Macintosh 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:29.480 killed off, but leadership sided with Raskin, and Jobs got angry. 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.120 The Lisa would end up being pretty much a forgotten 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:37.000 failure of Apple. It did not do so well, but 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.160 by that time Jobs was even angrier because in nineteen 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.400 eighty two, the rest of the Lisa team forced Jobs 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.080 off the project. They just felt his demands were kind 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:52.760 of making things go askew. So Jobs got kicked off 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.200 of the project he was running. And that was a 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:01.520 tough look because arguably Lisa took its name from Steve 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:06.040 Jobs's own daughter, or maybe it didn't, because stories vary 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.280 on that one. Some stories say no, no, no, it 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:11.520 was never meant to be named after Steve Jobs's daughter. 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:15.680 That was a coincidence. It was an acronym. But most 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.879 of the stories seem to say, like, yeah, it was 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.000 kind of named after his daughter, and then the acronym 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:24.800 stuff came later. It was acronyms, not acronyms. It's people like, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.359 how can we let's come up with an acronym to 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:30.919 justify the name, and then we can argue that we 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.320 never named it after his daughter in the first place. Anyway, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:38.480 Jobs then honed in on Raskin's team because now he 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:40.840 had an ax to grind. He had a grudge against 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.680 the Lisa team, and so he sort of waded into 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:49.239 the Macintosh project and sort of took it over. And 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.520 like I said, originally that Macintosh project was a text based, 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.639 keyboard centric machine, and Jobs kind of turned it into 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.439 a sort of a Lisa clone. It was another computer 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.320 with a graphic user interface and a mouse, which he 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:06.239 had lifted from Xerox Park. And he was now in 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.720 secret competition with the Lisa team, which meant he was 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.280 furiously working to prove that they were wrong and that 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.600 he was right. And maybe you could argue he also 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.840 lost sight of the fact that they were all actually 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.520 working for the same company and arguably for the same results. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.520 So the Macintosh would actually come out in nineteen eighty 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:28.600 four looking very different from what Raskin's original nineteen seventy 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.600 nine concept was, and this would be the birth of 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:36.879 the classic mac OS operating system. That's important because macOS, 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.120 the classic version of macOS, is one of the two 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.560 operating systems that I'm really focusing on in this section. 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:48.200 But Jobs' behavior was seen as being really disruptive and 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.880 counterproductive to most of the teams that he interacted with, 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.159 and Scully and Jobs clashed numerous times, and Markola, the 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.520 chair of the board and the former head of Apple, 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:04.520 sided with Scully against Jobs. So Jobs left the company 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:08.840 in nineteen eighty five or he was fired. Interpretations on 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.800 this vary as well. It's clear that Scully did his 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.960 best to distance Jobs from any meaningful projects, So I 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.280 guess it all comes down to semantics, Like you could 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.639 argue that, Okay, Jobs wasn't fired, he was just removed 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.640 from operations to the point where he wasn't really doing anything, 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:29.119 so he decided to leave. Fun fact, years later, Marcula 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.639 would actually be instrumental in forcing Scully out of Apple. 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.440 So I guess what goes around comes around. Anyway, Jobs 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.159 went off to found a different company. This would be 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.600 the next company. Now, the focus of the next company 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:50.080 was to create hardware for education. Jobs saw an opportunity 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:54.160 to design computer workstations specifically meant for the education sector, 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:58.000 so like professors and researchers, that kind of thing, not 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.640 like necessarily your average teacher, because, as it would turn out, 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:06.320 the next system would be very expensive and beyond the 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:10.320 reach of a lot of say, you know, smaller schools. 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.720 But people in those fields were already using personal computers. 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.040 The problem was that PCs are general purpose machines, so 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.720 they're supposed to be, you know, pretty good at everything, 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.400 but they're not necessarily really good at any one thing. 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.400 So Jobs's aim was to create a computer that would 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:32.160 be ideally suited for education. Several former Apple employees went 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:34.720 with jobs to create this company and they got to 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:38.720 work designing the next computer. The operating system for this 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.600 computer would be called next Step one word. It would 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:46.040 take several years to bring this computer to market. So, 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.199 like I said, starts in nineteen eighty five, and the 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.119 original hope was to have a machine ready to launch 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.400 in nineteen eighty seven. But in reality, the next computer 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:57.760 wasn't ready until nineteen eighty nine, and even then it 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:02.680 was a small number of test machines that were ready. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:09.240 And that initial batch cost six thousand, five hundred dollars 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.160 per computer. Now, if we adjust that for inflation, because 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.720 remember this is nineteen eighty nine, today, a computer like 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:21.560 that would cost you sixteen thousand, five hundred dollars. Right, 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.320 That's how much this initial batch, the test batch of 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:29.679 next computers cost when they actually were ready to launch 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:33.159 the computers in nineteen ninety For realsi's and make it 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:38.040 a larger batch. It went for an eye wateringly high 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:42.160 nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine dollars. So again, if 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:46.920 we adjust that for inflation, brace yourselves. Those computers cost 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.960 twenty four thousand dollars a pop. So yeah, this was 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.840 not a computer aimed at the consumer market. In fact, 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.800 even universities would look at that sales price and say, who, 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.679 that's steep. It didn't take long for Jobs to reconsider 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:05.239 NeXT's role in the industry. So the funny thing is 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:09.080 when he was first thinking about this, originally his plan 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.880 was to create hardware that was meant for the education 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.000 sector and not to create software, like he was going 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.600 to license the software from someone else, but then ultimately 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:26.080 changed his mind and created a hardware and software combined approach. 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:30.320 But at these computer prices, it was clear the company 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.600 wasn't going to sell that many units. It just couldn't. 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:37.800 These educational institutions just you know, they couldn't afford these 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:43.840 incredibly high prices, and he made the decision to gradually 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:48.720 shift over to become a software focused company, with the 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.000 heart of that focus being the next Step operating system. 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.639 Next Step was built on top of a Unix operating system. 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.800 It also it featured an object oriented application layer. It 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:03.400 had had a graphic user interface or GUY. It could 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:07.920 handle multitasking, and it was interesting. It didn't exactly set 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:10.520 the world on fire at the time, but it did 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:12.879 gain the interest of certain folks in the tech and 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:17.919 research and education spheres, so people realized there was value 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:22.160 in it, even though it wasn't exactly becoming the next 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:24.879 big thing. All right, But now we've got our classic 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.399 Mac operating system or macOS, and we've got our next 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:32.040 step operating system. To continue our story, we actually have 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:37.080 to go back to Apple and back to the nineties 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.239 and see what happened with the company. So Scully had 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:45.720 effectively pushed jobs out of Apple. Under Scully, Apple took 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:49.840 a path that wasn't very Apple like. One of the 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:52.719 things that had set Apple apart from IBM is that 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:56.879 when IBM made their personal computers, they used off the 0:23:56.880 --> 0:24:00.520 shelf parts to do so, and that meant that competitors 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:04.160 could build their own IBM style computers also known as 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:07.840 IBM compatibles or IBM clones, and they would just use 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:10.960 the same or similar parts that IBM used, and they 0:24:11.000 --> 0:24:14.200 would get an operating system that was compatible with IBMS. 0:24:14.240 --> 0:24:19.120 Because IBM had failed to secure an exclusive agreement from 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:22.479 the provider of their operating system, which I'll talk about 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:25.360 later on in this episode. So this ended up being 0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:30.240 really bad news for IBM's personal computer division, because suddenly 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:33.679 the company was facing competition from numerous upstarts, most of 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:37.600 which were offering computers that were comparable to IBMS but 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:40.840 at a much lower price point. Apple, by contrast, had 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:45.080 traditionally developed its own hardware and software in house and 0:24:45.400 --> 0:24:48.720 jealously guarded its proprietary approach, so if you wanted an 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:53.120 Apple computer, you had to go to Apple. But under Scully, 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:57.119 that began to shift and began to change. He pushed 0:24:57.119 --> 0:24:59.639 the company to build a version of its operating system 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.119 to run on the power PC microprocessor architecture. This was 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:07.439 later on seen as a huge mistake. There was also 0:25:07.840 --> 0:25:11.520 then a move to license Apple technology to other companies, 0:25:11.920 --> 0:25:15.160 leading to what were called Mac clones that didn't exactly 0:25:15.200 --> 0:25:19.040