Reading through the first few pages, I’m impressed with their bluntness about the shortcomings of the original MacOS. While Pink itself failed, they actually managed to achieve a lot of the stuff they discuss in that document, even before the switch to OS X. I remember when they started moving low-memory globals into system calls. And, obviously, they did eventually get it working with other processors. This makes me think 2 things: 1) You can achieve something if you have a plan, and 2) What you plan won’t be what happens, but you may still achieve the same goals a different way.
I mean, the problems were known in 1985-1986; a real indictment of Apple’s executive management during this era that once they finally had a solution underway, they threw it away only to start over again with Copland years later.
I mean, it wasn’t until 2003 before Apple was able to shipp an OS remotely embodying anything here for most end users. (Pre-Jaguar Mac OS X was not ready to install on grandma’s iMac.)
> it wasn’t until 2003 before Apple was able to shipp an OS remotely embodying anything here for most end users
Perhaps I wasn't most end users, but I was able to leverage a Mac 8500 from 1997 with an upgraded dual G4 450MHz daughter card to run Connectix Virtual PC and Windows XP on 10.0 Cheetah in 2002 (daughter card would not support newer OS versions) in order to attend remote online A/V Blackboard courses for a semester at my alma mater. The virtualization was a lame dog, but somehow it worked well enough for me to complete the courses, and I can only assume the base Cheetah operating system performed far better on contemporary Mac hardware (which would have been the 2002 Quicksilver, G4 800MHz up to dual G4 1GHz).
