Apple Johnathon & Apple Macintosh II: Seperated at birth?

From: healyzh_at_aracnet.com <(healyzh_at_aracnet.com)>
Date: Thu Jul 6 21:01:11 2000

What you describe below is written up in a issue of Byte somewhere between
'93-95 timeframe I believe. I've got the magazine still, but it's in
storage. IBM actually had a working version of this, but never released it.
I saw it running on a early Thinkpad with OS/2 and AIX running at the same
time. It was VERY COOL!!! You can also find mention of it in some really
old NetBSD doc's (at least I think that was the BSD varient) as they'd
commited to getting their varient of BSD running on top of the Microkernel.

As for the PPC Version of OS/2, I've got to wonder what happened to all
those systems they built to run it. They had to have lost big bucks on
that. They apparently had an entire Warehouse of them ready to go around
'95. ISTR reading in a Mac Magazine about a 3rd party in Europe that got
MacOS running on them, but Apple wouldn't allow it.

                        Zane



> The way you describe it, it sounds like the joint project
> that Apple had with IBM for the PowerPC. The idea was to
> develope a "microkernel" operating system, which provided
> the first layer of services, and "personality" modules that
> would go on top. Presumably, the Apple would have used a
> Mac personality, while IBM would have used an OS/2
> personality.
>
> Of course, the project never went anywhere. The PowerPC
> became the standard Mac with the MacOS, and IBM introduced
> its own flop version of the PowerPC, which had a version of
> OS/2 that was shelved just as it was supposed to be
> released, and was replaced with a version of Windows NT.
>
> Another case of vaporware that went nowhere.
>
> Louis
Received on Thu Jul 06 2000 - 21:01:11 BST