| < Previous PageNext Page > |
Many years ago Cocoa was known as NeXTSTEP. NeXT Computer developed and released version 1.0 of NeXTSTEP in September of 1989, and versions 2.0 and 3.0 followed not far behind (in 1990 and 1992, respectively). In this early phase, NEXTSTEP was more than an application environment; the term referred to the entire operating system, including the windowing and imaging system (which was based on Display PostScript), the Mach kernel, device drivers, and so on.
Back then, there was no Foundation framework. Indeed, there were no frameworks; instead, the software libraries (dynamically shared) were known as kits, the most prominent of them being the Application Kit. Much of the role that Foundation now occupies was taken by an assortment of functions, structures, constants, and other types. The Application Kit itself had a much smaller set of classes than it does today. Figure 1-11 shows a class hierarchy chart of NeXTSTEP 0.9 (1988).
In addition to the Application Kit, the early NeXTSTEP included the Sound Kit and the Music Kit, libraries containing a rich set of Objective-C classes that provided high-level access to the Display Postscript layer for audio and music synthesis.
In early 1993 NeXTSTEP 3.1 was ported to (and shipped on) Intel, Sparc, and Hewlett-Packard computers. NeXTSTEP 3.3 also marked a major new direction, for it included a preliminary version of Foundation. Around this time (1993), the OpenStep initiative also took form. OpenStep was a collaboration between Sun and NeXT to port the higher levels of NeXTSTEP (particularly the Application Kit and Display PostScript) to Solaris. The “Open” in the name referred to the open API specification that the companies would publish jointly. The official OpenStep API, published in September of 1994, were the first to split the API between Foundation and Application Kit and the first to use the “NS” prefix.
By June 1996 NeXT had ported and shipped versions of OpenStep 4.0 that could run Intel, Sparc, and Hewlett-Packard computers as well as an OpenStep runtime that could run on Windows systems. Sun also finished their port of OpenStep to Solaris and shipped it as part of their Network Object Computing Environment. OpenStep, however, never became a significant part of Sun’s overall strategy.
When Apple acquired NeXT Software (as it was then called) in 1997, OpenStep became the Yellow Box and was included with Mac OS X Server (also known as Rhapsody) and Windows. Then, with the evolution of the Mac OS X strategy, it was finally renamed to “Cocoa.”
| < Previous PageNext Page > |
© 2006 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (Last updated: 2006-12-20)
|