In 2002, Steve Jobs stood on a stage in front
of thousands of developers right next to a stained
glass window and a literal physical coffin. A
real coffin. A real coffin. Right. And he then
proceeded to deliver of solemn eulogy for his
own software. Right. So today we are exploring
exactly why Apple had to publicly execute their
own operating system just to survive. We are
bringing you along on a deep dive into this this
fascinating stack of historical Wookie data and
engineering notes. all about the classic Mac
OS, spanning from its genesis all the way to
2001. And really, the overarching mission of
our deep dive today is to examine the actual
cost of hiding the machine from the user. Because,
you know, we take it for granted today that computers
are just these seamless pieces of glass that
do magic. Right. Exactly. But Apple's early obsession
with creating that seamless user experience,
it resulted in some incredibly unique, almost
bizarre architectural quirks, quirks that were
absolute genius when computers were in their
infancy. But. Well, they eventually became a
massive technological trap. Yeah. We're talking
about the operating system that popularized the
graphical user interface for the masses. It relied
on brilliant assembly code hacks. It survived
a near -death corporate experience through a
completely ruthless legal loophole and, like
you said, ultimately had to be destroyed by its
creator. OK, let's unpack this. So to understand
the trap they built, we really have to look at
the genesis of the project right around between
1978 and 1984. The very beginning. Exactly. The
original vision actually started with an engineer
named Jeff Raskin. And his entire philosophy
was to build a low cost, easy to use computer
for the average consumer. And to do that, he
deliberately thought to minimize the user's awareness
of the operating system itself. Which, I mean,
that was a massive fundamental departure from
the norm back then. completely. At the time,
if you were using a standard MS -DOS machine,
you were just staring at a black screen with
a blinking green or white cursor. You had to
type in these terse abbreviated text commands
just to see what was on your disk. You had to
learn the computer's language. But Raskin...
And later, Steve Jobs, when he took over the
project in 1981, they wanted the computer to
speak your language. Right. They wanted to use
visuals. And this brings up a piece of tech history
that frequently gets misunderstood, which is
the connection to Xerox PR. Oh, right. The famous
heist. Exactly. The enduring myth is that Apple
just walked into Xerox, saw their graphical interface,
and just copied their homework. Right. But the
reality in the historical notes is much more
nuanced than that. I mean, Jobs did famously
trade a chunk of Apple stock options just to
get his engineering team in the door to see the
Xerox Alto computer and their small talk development
tools. So they essentially bought a peek behind
the curtain to see what the future looked like?
Yeah, they saw the potential of overlapping windows
and a mouse. But Apple's engineers actually had
to invent many of the core elements of the graphical
user interface that you still use every single
day. Like what? Well, Xerox didn't have a menu
bar, for one. Apple created the drop -down menu
bar across the top of the screen, and Apple engineers
invented the very concepts of drag -and -drop,
and the direct graphical manipulation of files.
It makes me think of an analogy. The early macOS
was essentially designed to be a graceful swan.
To you, the user, it's just gliding smoothly
on top of the water, and that's the graphical
user interface with the drop -down menus and
the mouse pointer. I like that. But underneath
the surface, where you can't see, there's just
frantic, invisible patterns. happening to keep
the whole thing afloat. And what's fascinating
here is how they achieve that frantic paddling
on such limited hardware. Yeah, how did they
do it? Well, they had to squeeze the core operating
system and the Macintosh Toolbox, which is the
software that drew all those windows and menus
into a tiny 64 kilobyte ROM chip physically soldered
onto the motherboard. Oh, wow. 64K. Yeah. For
context, 64 kilobytes is smaller than a single
low -resolution image on a modern website. An
engineer named Andy Hertzfeld wrote that core
code in assembly language, which is, you know,
just one step above raw machine code. And he
used incredibly clever programming hacks to optimize
every single byte of space. And putting the core
system software directly into physical hardware,
like into that ROM chip. That fundamentally changed
how the machine booted up compared to those MS
-DOS computers, didn't it? Oh, absolutely. It
meant the computer could communicate graphically
from the absolute second it was powered on. It
completely bypassed the need for a text -only
command line. Right. If there was a hardware
error when you booted up, say, it couldn't find
a startup disk, it didn't spit out lines of hexadecimal
error codes. It communicated graphically. It
threw up an icon of a floppy disk with a blinking
question mark or used the distinctive Chicago
bit... map font, or even played a specific sound.
Like the chime of death. Exactly, the infamous
chime of death series of beeps to signal a hardware
failure. So it was graphical down to its bones.
And we really can't talk about those early graphics
without mentioning Susan Kerr. Oh, definitely.
She was the artist who designed the original
icons representing folders, documents, and the
trash can. Oh. She gave the machine its personality.
And her work is so culturally significant that
in 2025, her classic Mac icons were actually
featured in a museum of modern art exhibition
in New York called Pirouette, turning points
in design. Which is amazing. Her icons literally
hang in a museum because they changed how humans
interact with machines. They made the abstract
concepts of digital storage feel physical and
familiar. Yeah. But, and this is the trap, maintaining
that beautiful, familiar graphical illusion required
a completely unorthodox way of saving files.
You couldn't just use standard industry file
systems to pull this off. Which leads us into
the unique file architecture of the Mac OS. Originally,
they used the Macintosh File System, or MFS.
And the funny thing about MFS is that it was
a flat file system. It presented you with folders
on the screen, but those folders were essentially
fake. Totally fake. Under the hood. All the files
were just dumped into one massive directory,
and the operating system was just using visual
tricks to make it look like they were organized
into folders. Yeah, and they quickly hit the
limits of that illusion. So they replaced it
in 1985 with the Hierarchical File System, HFS,
which had true nested directory trees. But the
truly radical departure was how they structured
the individual files themselves. The classic
macOS used a dual fork file system. Yeah, dual
fork system. If you look at files in DOS or Windows
or Unix, they generally have only one fork, like
a single continuous stream of data. But the macOS
split files into two distinct compartments, the
data fork and the resource fork. Great. So if
I'm understanding the mechanism here, they basically
physically split a file in two. The data fork
held the raw unstructured information. So if
you were writing an essay, the actual alphanumeric
characters you typed lived in the data fork.
Exactly. And the resource fork held the structured
data. This is really where the magic of the graphical
interface lived. The resource fork contained
the menu definitions, the graphics, the sounds,
the window sizes, the font styling, and even
the executable programming code segments for
applications. So a word processor file would
keep your raw essay text in the data fork, but
all your bolding, your italics, and your specific
font choices, those were kept in a completely
separate bucket, the resource fork. And an actual
software application might have a completely
empty data fork because its entire existence,
all its code and interface lived in the resource
fork. Right, and the brilliance of this design
was that if an older application didn't understand
the complex styling stored in the resource fork,
It could simply ignore it and still cleanly read
the raw text from the data fork without crashing.
Oh, that's clever. It allowed for incredible
flexibility within the Apple ecosystem. But there
is a massive catch to building a beautifully
isolated ecosystem. I'm going to refine my analogy
here. Go for it. It's like buying a beautiful
designer jacket, but the buttons and the fabric
are shipped in two separate boxes. Mac OS is
the tailor, so it knows exactly how to sew them
together instantly the moment you open your closet.
So it looks like one perfect jacket. But if you
mail that jacket to a friend using a Windows
or DOS machine, their operating system only accepts
the fabric box and throws the button box straight
in the trash. The jacket becomes completely unwearable.
Exactly. It was an absolute interoperability
nightmare. Non -Mac systems had no concept of
a resource fork at all. So if you transfer a
Mac file to a PC, the PC would simply strip the
resource fork away entirely. And since Mac programs
kept all their actual execution code in the resource
fork, transferring a program to a non -Mac server
and back would render the program dead on arrival.
All the con was just gone. So how did anyone
ever share files across different networks? Well,
they had to create complex software utilities
like Binhex or MacBinary. These utilities would
take both forks, the fabric and the buttons,
and translate all that complex binary data into
a single continuous stream of plain text characters.
That sounds exhausting. It was. But it allowed
the file to survive transit through standard
email servers or non -Mac networks without getting
mangled. And then a utility on the receiving
Mac would decode it back into the two separate
forks. It was a clever workaround, but as the
world became increasingly networked and the internet
really took off, this closed -off architecture
foreshadowed severe growing pains. Yeah, that
isolation became a straight jacket, especially
when users started wanting their computers to
do more than one thing at a time. Which brings
us to the multitasking treadmill. Yes. Early
versions of the macOS could literally only run
one single application at a time. If you were
typing a document and needed to use the calculator,
you had to completely close your document, open
the calculator, do your math, close the calculator,
then reopen your document. Which sounds painful
now, but as memory and hardware improved, Apple
developed an extension called the Switcher that
loaded multiple programs into the computer's
RAM, but you could still only view and interact
with one at a time. Then, in System 5, they introduced
MultiFinder, which finally allowed for overlapping
windows from different applications on the screen
at the same time. But the way it handled that
multitasking was inherently flawed, right? It
used something called cooperative multitasking.
Yeah, cooperative multitasking. Which means the
operating system itself is not acting as the
boss. It simply sets up a queue, and time on
the computer's processor is only given to background
applications if the application currently in
the foreground politely decides to yield control.
It's like running a meeting where there's no
moderator. Everyone just has to trust that the
person holding the microphone will eventually
put it down. Exactly. And if you have a poorly
coded app that just hogs the microphone or the
processor, the entire machine freezes. Right.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
Apple did try to modernize. In 1991, they released
System 7, which was a massive foundational leap.
They built multitasking right into the core system
rather than making it an optional extension.
They introduced virtual memory, which basically
let the computer use a chunk of the hard drive
as fake RAM when it ran out of actual memory.
Right, it slowed the machine down but kept it
from immediately crashing. Exactly. They added
32 -bit clean memory addressing, which finally
allowed the Mac to utilize massive amounts of
RAM beyond the old hardware limits. They introduced
aliases, which were just shortcuts to files.
And they finally made it so the trash can didn't
automatically empty all your deleted files the
second you shut down the computer. So System
7 is a huge leap forward. But despite all these
updates, if the Mac was supposed to be the absolute
pinnacle of the user experience, how did they
end up so far behind Linux Windows NT and OS
2 in basic memory management throughout the 1990s.
It really came down to a fundamental architectural
trap built around legacy support. Those contemporary
operating systems, they were being built with
preemptive multitasking. Right, unlike the cooperative
multitasking. Exactly. In a preemptive system,
the operating system is a strict manager. It
forcibly interrupts applications and dictates
exactly how many processor cycles each app gets.
No one can hog the microphone. Furthermore, they
used protected memory, meaning they sandboxed
every application into its own isolated memory
space. Oh, I see. So if one app crashed, it couldn't
overwrite the memory of another app or take down
the whole system. But Apple couldn't do that
because they had a massive commitment to making
sure everyone's old software still ran. They
were haunted by the ghost of that original 64K
ROM hack. Yeah, the underlying foundation just
wasn't built for a strict manager. The Macintosh
relied heavily on system extensions, which were
little pieces of code you'd manually drop into
the system folder to add functionality, like
connecting to a network or using a new CD -ROM
drive. These extensions loaded directly into
the system memory space. Because there was no
protected memory, these extensions would constantly
bump into each other in conflict. Just chaos.
Total chaos. A bad memory pointer in a random
extension would crash the entire operating system,
leading to the infamous bomb error screen. Oh,
with a little drawing of a fuse bomb. Yes, the
little bomb forcing you to completely restart
the machine. And this systemic instability, combined
with falling behind on modern OS features, fueled
a full -blown business crisis. Apple's market
share severely declined in the mid -1990s, dropping
us into a wild chaotic era of clones, legal loopholes,
and pirates. Apple became desperate. To increase
their market footprint from 1995 to 1997, they
did the unthinkable and officially licensed their
precious mac roms and operating system to third
party manufacturers like Power Computing and
Motorola. Wow. This created the Macintosh clone
era. And I found a detail from the sources amazing
regarding this era. Apple introduced the Mac
OS name and that smiling two -faced Picasso -style
logo in systems 7 .5 .1 and 7 .6. Right. And
they did it specifically to visually disassociate
the operating system from Apple's own hardware.
Right. They're preparing consumers for a world
where you'd run Mac OS on a beige Motorola box
instead of an Apple Macintosh. But the strategy
completely backfired. In 1997, Steve Jobs returns
to the company he founded. He immediately looks
at the financials and recognizes that the clone
program isn't expanding the market. It is actively
cannibalizing Apple's own high margin hardware
sales. People were buying cheaper clones instead
of Macs. Exactly. He knows he needs to kill the
clone market to save Apple, but the company had
signed legally binding contracts with these manufacturers,
allowing them to use and distribute System 7.
So Jobs executes this incredibly ruthless legal
maneuver. Apple software engineers were already
deep into developing the next major update, which
was internally slated to be released as Mac OS
7 .7. Right. But Jobs looks at the vendor contracts
and realizes a massive loophole. The third -party
licenses exclusively cover updates within the
System 7 generation. So he simply orders the
engineering team to renumber the upcoming release
to Mac OS 8. Yeah, by changing a single digit
on the box, he completely bypassed the licensing
agreements, terminated the ability of third -party
manufacturers to ship current software, and effectively
shut down the Macintosh clone market overnight.
That is wild. It was a brutal existential business
move. And Mac OS 8 itself brought some heavily
needed features to the table. It introduced the
platinum grayscale theme, giving everything a
more modern 3D beveled look. Which looked great
at the time. It really did. It featured a multi
-threaded finder, which meant you could finally
start copying a massive folder of files in the
background and still use your computer for other
tasks without the interface locking up. And in
version 8 .1, they introduced HFS Plus Say, also
known as Mac OS Extended, which restructured
the file system to handle much larger hard drives
and smaller file blocks efficiently. But if we
connect this to the bigger picture, the real
legacy of Mac OS 8 wasn't the code. It was the
culture and the timing. How so? Well, Apple was
practically bankrupt, yet there was this massive
organic grassroots movement among Mac users to
go to physical stores and buy the new operating
system just to inject cash into the company.
Apple sold 1 .2 million copies in the first two
weeks and an astonishing 3 million copies within
six months. And here is the detail that blew
my mind. Software pirates, people whose entire
identity in the tech world revolves around stripping
copy protection and illegally distributing software
for free, they actually bought retail copies
of Mac OS 8. Even major pirate release groups
publicly refused to distribute the cracked OS
because they knew Apple desperately needed the
revenue to survive. That is an incredible level
of loyalty for a software product. It really
is. Mac OS 8 was a crucial financial and cultural
life raft. Under the hood, it was still heavily
reliant on that same fragile foundational architecture
from the 1980s, but it brought in the cash and
bought Apple the time they needed to completely
reinvent themselves. Which brings us to the final
chapter, the mock funeral and the ghost in the
machine. Because Mac OS 8 and subsequently Mac
OS 9 in 1999, which added features like the Sherlock
search engine and early multi -user login support,
these were really just temporary bridges. Yeah,
just bridges. The underlying architecture, with
its cooperative multitasking and lack of memory
protection, had reached its absolute logical
limit. To survive the modern internet era, Apple
had to destroy its own creation. They needed
a rock -solid modern foundation. So they purchased
Steve Jobs's other company, NeXTee, and integrated
their advanced technology. This integration ultimately
became Mac OS X in 2001. Right. On the surface,
it retained familiar user interface elements
like the menu bar and the trash can, but underneath
it was a completely different beast. It was built
on a Unix foundation, specifically utilizing
the XNU kernel. The kernel being the literal
core traffic cop of the operating system that
handles the fundamental translation between the
hard Exactly. The ex -NU kernel and the next
-step architecture finally brought the industrial
-grade protected memory and preemptive multitasking
that users and developers had been begging for.
The swan was no longer frantically paddling,
it had an engine. But Mac users are famously
stubborn. Because older hardware drivers and
classic applications weren't immediately compatible
with this brand new Unix foundation, a lot of
people just refused to upgrade. Right, they cloned
to Mac OS 9. Yeah, they cloned to it. And Jobs
realized he had to push them. heart. Which leads
us back to our opening hook. At the Worldwide
Developers Conference in 2002, he literally staged
a fake funeral. He brought a coffin on stage,
played dramatic music, and gave a eulogy for
Mac OS 9, telling developers that development
for the classic system was officially dead and
they had to move on. It was a highly publicized
execution, but you can't just flip a switch and
strand millions of users. They had to create
a software afterlife. Apple built the classic
environment directly into the early versions
of Mac OS X. Originally codenamed the Blue Box,
it essentially ran a nearly complete hidden instance
of Mac OS 9 as an application layer inside OS
X. Your old software launched and ran just as
it always had, completely unaware it was operating
inside a virtual container. And beyond Apple's
own efforts, the community refused to let it
die. Third -party developers built complex emulators
to keep the classic OS alive on entirely different
computer architectures. Today, open source emulators
like QEMU can run classic macOS at full speed.
In the 90s, there was even a commercial product
called Executor that was 100 % reverse engineered
to run Mac apps without using a single line of
Apple's proprietary code. It speaks to how beloved
the interface was. It's like moving into a futuristic,
state -of -the -art smart mansion. but insisting
on building a perfect functioning replica of
your 1980s childhood bedroom in the basement,
just so your old mechanical toys will still work.
That's a great way to put it. So what does this
all mean? When we look back at the wiki data,
what is the ultimate legacy of the classic Mac
OS? The legacy is that it was an incredible 17
-year -long high -wire balancing act. It accomplished
its primary mission. It popularized the graphical
user interface, successfully hid the complexity
of the command line, and fundamentally changed
how everyday people view computers. But its eventual
death proves a universal rule of technology.
Even the most beloved, intuitive user interfaces
must eventually be torn down and rebuilt from
the bedrock up when the underlying architecture,
the invisible part, doing the heavy lifting becomes
a trap. You can only hack a 64 kilobyte ROM and
rely on cooperative systems for so long before
the technical debt comes due. And that brings
it right back to you listening to this deep dive.
Yeah. Every time you casually drag and drop a
file on your laptop, every time you pull down
a menu on your tablet or appreciate a perfectly
designed icon on your smartphone screen, you
are interacting with direct DNA. of the classic
Mac OS. You're feeling the echoes of Andy Hertzfeld's
assembly code hacks and Susan Kerr's digital
artistry. The swan is still gliding. And this
raises an important question, something for you
to ponder long after we sign off. Today, our
modern operating systems are increasingly cloud
-based. They rely on vast remote server forms
to process our data, hiding the true messy physical
nature of the machine even further from us than
Jeff Raskin ever could have dreamed back in 1978.
Decades from now, will future historians look
back at our current seamless multi -device ecosystems
and wonder what fragile, invisible hacks were
secretly holding our entire digital world together?
Are we just building another beautiful jacket,
trusting the cloud to quietly sew the the fabric
and the buttons together every time we tap the
glass. It's something to think about the next
time your seemingly perfect seamless device suddenly
refuses to sink. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. We'll catch you next time.