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Example research essay topic: Mac Os Operating Systems - 2,423 words

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Evolution of the PC Operating System Outline: 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. Some facts about the history of computer and operating systems: software evolution depending on hardware development: 3. 1 Batch operating systems; 3. 2 time-shared operating systems; 3. 3 Personal computers of the middle 70 s: CP/M (Control Program/Microcomputer).

and DOS operating systems; 3. 4 Developing personal computers with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) makes possible introducing GUI operating systems: 3. 4. 1 Macintosh OS; 3. 4. 2 Microsoft Windows; 3. 5 New generation of operating systems of 1980 s: QDOS and MS/DOS; 3. 6 Multitasking operating systems become possible due to Intel 80286 processor: OS/ 2 - Microsoft and IBM joint product... 3. 6. 1 Windows later versions made by Microsoft 3. 6. 2 OS later versions made by IBM 4. The most widespread current operating systems: 4. 1 Macintosh OS 4. 2 Windows Vista 4. 3 UNIX 4. 4 LINUX and BeOS 5. Advanced OS technologies: games, automobile driving controls systems, mobile phones, PDAs; 6. Research work in software developing; 7. Faster CPU research leading to developing new operating systems. 1. Abstract.

The evolution of computers is a very notable fact, within practically a single human generation it has gone through great changes. The computer evolution depends on hardware and software development. Software evolution, particularly, the evolution of computer operating systems, depends first of all on what hardware potential can be used for developing operating systems to base on. Therefore, the evolution of hardware and software are inseparable from each other. 2. In todays world of computing people take a lot of things for granted. One of those things is the operating system they use for their personal computer.

Now the needs and expectations of users are very different comparing to what they were only half a century ago. It seems incredible how operating systems have evolved since the birth of computers and what enormous changes they have gone through in a relatively short period of time. Operating system can be defined as a control program used to manage user programs, prevent errors, protect resources, and resolve conflicts. It is basically the interface between users and the programs or hardware that they are using. 3. It is self-evident that not only operating systems, but also hardware has evolved over the time. More than that, the evolution of hardware has had a big influence on computing in general.

Generally, software evolution includes the changes that helped applications and games to become more user-friendly, include more features, be more efficient, and have faster run times. This actually is not because the software has changed. The potential of software has always been there. The real limitation has always been hardware. Operating system designers usually are limited to what the hardware designers give them to work with. 3. 1 The first devices resembling modern computers appeared in the middle of the 20 th century. They used batch operating systems, in which the computer ran batches of jobs without stop.

Programs were punched into cards that were usually copied to tape for processing. When the computer finished one job, it immediately started the next one on the tape. Professional operators interacted with the machine. Users dropped jobs off, then returned to pick up the results after their jobs had been finished. This was inconvenient for the users, but the expensive computer was kept busy with a steady stream of jobs. 3. 2 In the 1960 s, time-shared operating systems began replacing batch systems. Users interacted directly with the computer via a printing terminal.

Several users shared the computer at the same time, and it spent a fraction of a second on each ones job before moving on to the next. A fast computer could work on many users jobs at the same time, while creating the illusion that they were receiving its full attention. Printing terminals required that programs had character or command-line user interfaces (CLI), in which the user typed responses to prompts or typed commands. The interaction scrolled down a roll of paper. Printing terminals were later replaced by video terminals that could only display characters of a certain size.

In the early days of computers, computing resources were so rare and weak that operating systems had to be very efficient. That is why only the most essential features were left to present an operating system. Little consideration was given to the convenience of users. Once computers started getting faster and more complicated, new operating systems had to be developed in order to take advantage of the extra power and features. 3. 3 Personal computers became possible in the middle of 1970 s. The first affordable personal computer was the Altair 8800. Beginning in January 1975, the Altair was sold to hobbyists in kit form.

The Altair did not have an operating system at all, since it had only toggle switches and light-emitting diodes for input and output. People soon connected terminals and floppy disk drives to Altair's. In 1976, Digital Research introduced the CP/M operating system for the Altair and similar computers. CP/M and later DOS had Call Level Interface (CLI) similar to those of the time-shared operating systems, but the computer was dedicated to a single user. 3. 4 As hardware prices fell, personal computers with bit-mapped displays that could control individual pixels were developed.

It made personal computer with graphical user interfaces (GUI) possible. The first graphical user interface was developed by Xerox. It used a new input device called a mouse. The GUI of the Apple Macintosh operating system and the Microsoft Windows operating system were both based on the Xerox prototype. 3. 4. 1 The first commercial success was the Apple Macintosh which was introduced in 1984. The first Macintosh had a small, monochrome display. The Macintosh operating system was based on decades of research on graphically-oriented personal computer operating systems and applications. 3. 4. 2 As hardware continued to evolve, larger, color Macs were developed and Microsoft introduced Windows, their GUI operating system. 3. 5 Thus, a new generation of operating systems emerged in the 80 s.

Personal computers were starting to be widespread. Big mainframes had their operating systems but the smaller PCs did not have the same range of functions and therefore had their own problems to deal with. The early personal computers were very weak compared to modern machines. The Intel 8080 8 -bit processor computer ran on an operating system developed by Digital Research Corp. known as CP/M (Control Program/Microcomputer). Once the 8086 was released a new operating system emerged, called QDOS.

An 8086 version of CP/M was also developed approximately in the same period. QDOS was then bought by Microsoft and developed it further, calling it MS/DOS. This is basically what lead to the modern Windows operating system. 3. 6 There was growing the need of dealing with multiple programs running at the same time, as well as having a possibility for many users to use the same machine. Also, with the development of the client server architecture, users had to have their own Central Processing Units (CPUs), but also have access to a central server for data space or common programs. The operating system had to be designed to interact with each other. It was not possible until the Intel 80286 processor was developed that multitasking on PCs became actually available based on hardware.

Microsoft and IBM jointly created Operating System/ 2 (OS/ 2) 1. 00 which was the first operating system that essentially supported multitasking based on hardware support. It was meant to replace the aging MS-DOS. OS/ 2 ran older applications written for MS-DOS and newer, OS/ 2 -specific applications that could run concurrently with each other in a process called multitasking. IBM and Microsoft released the first version of OS/ 2 in 1987. At around the same time, Microsoft was also working hard on the first version of Windows, which by the way used the GUI intended for OS/ 2. IBM also had a text-mode multitasking program for DOS called Top View.

While Windows was being developed, Microsoft continued to work on versions of OS/ 2. However in 1990, Microsoft decided to concentrate more development on the more successful Windows 3. 0 instead. 3. 6. 1 In 1991 Microsoft and IBM ended their collaboration on OS/ 2. IBM released several new versions of the operating system throughout the 1990 s, while Microsoft developed its Windows operating systems. Thus, IBM took over the development of OS/ 2 1. x and OS/ 2 2. 00, while Microsoft continued with Windows and OS/ 2 3. 00. Eventually the work done on OS/ 2 3. 00 turned into Windows NT, and even Windows 95 borrowed heavily from the code.

IBM released OS/ 2 2. 00 in 1992 which was the first 32 -bit OS for PCs. It was compatible with DOS and Windows applications, and in some aspects was better at running them. However, comparing OS/ 2 and Windows, one can notice a very large difference. Things are much easier to do on Windows than on OS/ 2. It is amazing to see the difference even though Microsoft worked on both OSes. Windows basically brought computers into the mainstream.

The popularity of Windows in the mainstream really out weighed any advantages OS/ 2 had over Windows. Windows then went to Server versions of NT 4, NT 5, which ultimately became 2000, Windows 95 and its revisions, Windows 98 and 98 SE, and recently Windows ME. Most of the PCs in the world are running one version or another of Windows, and if they are not, they have some way of running Windows applications. 3. 6. 2 IBM then went along and released OS/ 2 2. 0 in 1992, the first 32 bit version of OS/ 2, and the only operating system of its kind in that time. They also included Windows 3. 1 code to make OS/ 2 able to run Windows software. OS/ 2 2. 0 had problems, which were fixed quickly by IBM in 1993 by releasing version 2. 1. Since everything was going well with OS/ 2 2. 1, they released OS/ 2 Warp 3 as a consumer operating system in 1994, but by some reasons IBM started to drop OS/ 2 support after Windows 95 release.

However, it did not prevent OS/ 2 Warp 4 from being released in 1996, which contained major updates over Warp 3. OS/ 2 Warp Server for e-business released in April 1999 is based on Warp 4 with some new features and many network based utilities. OS/ 2 is a solid, mature operating system. It is still being used in almost all ATMs and in other mission critical systems such as nuclear reactors, airport controllers and pace makers. OS/ 2 is most probably the best multi tasker available for the 80 x 86 computer family. Due to its outstanding multithreading support, OS/ 2 makes multithreaded programs more efficient than on any other platforms.

High Performance File System (HPFS) is one of the most reliable file system known even of it is not a journaling file system. 4. The major goal for designing operating systems nowadays is make them convenient to the user. This is especially true for mainstream operating systems since the average user might not be very familiar with computer. Since the Internet and networking were developed, operating systems need to be Internet ready and network capable. The increase in gaming on the PC also affected OS development. The interest towards computer games influenced much creating Graphics systems like OpenGL and DirectX which were developed not only for providing a better multimedia and gaming experience for users, but also to programmers to work on graphics on their PCs.

Operating systems currently found on personal computers include Macintosh OS, Windows, UNIX and Linux. 4. 1 Macintosh operating system. The main characteristic of Mac OS is its total lack of a command line, it is a completely graphical operating system. Famous for its simplicity of use, it is also criticized for its cooperative multitasking, almost total lack of memory management, and susceptibility to extension conflicts. Extensions are program modules that extend the operating system, providing additional functionality (such as networking) or support for a particular device. Some extensions sometimes do not work properly together or work only when loaded in a particular order. Troubleshooting Mac OS extensions can be a time-consuming process of trial and error.

Mac OS also introduced the Hierarchical File System, an innovative new type of filesystem. Whereas a file on DOS or Unix would simply be a sequence of bytes, requiring an application to know which bytes represented code and which were graphic or other data, Mac files had two different forks. In addition to the data fork, which contained a sequence of bytes, there was a resource fork which contained structured data such as menu definitions, graphics, sounds, or code segments. Despite the many assets of this arrangement, it became quite a challenge to interoperate with other operating systems which did not recognize such a system; for example, copying a file from a Mac to DOS or Unix would strip it of its resource fork. Mac OS X brought Unix-style memory management and pre-emptive multitasking to the Mac platform. Extremely improved memory management allowed more programs to run simultaneously and virtually eliminated the possibility of one program crashing another.

It is also the second Mac OS to include a command line, although it is never seen unless the user runs a terminal program. However, since these new features put higher demands on system resources, Mac OS X is only officially supported on PowerPC G 3 and newer processors. Remarkably, as of 2004, every update to Mac OS X is noticeably faster and more responsive than the version it replaced, the opposite trend of most operating systems. As noted by John Siracusa of Ars Technica, for over three years now, Mac OS X has gotten faster with every release and not just faster in the experience of most end users, but faster on the same hardware. This trend is unheard of among contemporary desktop operating systems. Mac OS X has a compatibility layer for running older Mac applications, the Classic Environment.

This runs a full copy of the older Mac OS 9. X as a Mac OS X process. Most properly-written classic applications function well under this environment, but compatibility is only assured if the software was written to be unaware of the actual hardware, and to interact exclusively with the operating system. Many fans of the classic Mac OS accepted...


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