Re: [Chicken-users] Re: MacOS X is its' own beast

[Raffael Cavallaro]

On May 16, 2007, at 3:55 AM, Thomas Christian Chust wrote:

> But I would consider the Mach interfaces internal API and
> only the BSD, Carbon and Cocoa interfaces public API, because it would
> be pretty tedious to write anything useful using only the Mach
> interfaces and because otherwise I also would have to claim that  
> Carbon
> and Cocoa are not native APIs on MacOS X but rather compatibility  
> layers
> for MacOS <=9 and OpenStep just like the BSD subsystem is a
> compatibility layer for other UNIX flavors.



This is really just a matter of marketing. Apple now considers Mac OS  
X "Unix" and considers BSD and X11 core OS components:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ 
OSX_Technology_Overview/SystemTechnology/chapter_4_section_2.html#// 
apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001067-CH207-TPXREF101>
but those who have been using Mac OS X since the first releases  
remember that the BSD subsystem used to be an *optional* install in  
early versions of Mac OS X. There were many early Mac OS X machines  
which had no BSD subsystem on them at all.

Similarly, Apple lists  Java support in the Core OS section,  
presumably because that document:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ 
OSX_Technology_Overview/SystemTechnology/chapter_4_section_2.html#// 
apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001067-CH207-BCIEHIBD>
was first written when Apple was at pains to give the appearance that  
Mac OS X was a great platform for doing Java development.

But this more recent diagram shows Java (probably more properly) as a  
much higher level Application Framework on their System Architecture  
page, no doubt because Apple no longer cares nearly as much about  
marketing Mac OS as a Java platform:
<http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html>


The reality (as seen in chapter 2 of Amit Singh's Mac OS X Internals)  
is that everything is built more or less in layers:

Hardware
Firmware
Kernel
      Mach
      BSD
Core Services and JVM
Graphics/Multimedia (OpenGL, Quartz, Core Audio, Core MIDI, QuickTime)
Application Environments (Classic, X11, Carbon, Cocoa, WebObject,  
Quicktime, Java AWT, Swing)
GUI (Aqua)

Apple considers all of Core Services/Carbon, Cocoa, and Quicktime  
(but not Java) to be "native" APIs.




Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
address@hidden