Star Trek project

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For the science fiction media franchise, see Star Trek.

Star Trek was the code name given to a prototype project at Apple Computer during 1992 and 1993. Star Trek was to be a version of the Macintosh operating system which ran on Intel-compatible x86 personal computers (at that time, the Mac OS ran only on Apple's own computers based on the Motorola 68000 architecture). The project's slogan was "To boldly go where no Mac has gone before."

The developers eventually reached a point where they could boot an Intel 486 PC (with very specific hardware) into System 7, and on-screen it was indistinguishable from a Mac. However, every program needed to be ported to the new x86 architecture in order to run. Supposedly programs could be ported with little effort because Apple developed equivalent headers for x86.

The project was cancelled in mid-1993 because of political infighting, personnel issues, and the questionable marketability of such a project. Fear that the new operating system would hurt Apple's hardware sales presumably played a role.

[edit] Legacies

Although a direct x86 port was never released to the public, one could run the classic Mac OS on non-Mac computers through emulation and the development of these was spurred by the failure of the Star Trek project.[citation needed] Two of the more popular Macintosh emulators are vMac and Basilisk II, both written by third parties.

Ten years after Project Star Trek, it became possible to natively run Darwin, the Unix-based core of Mac OS X, on the x86 platform, by virtue of its open source Apple Public Source License and NeXT base. However, the OS X graphical user interface, named Aqua, is proprietary and is not included with the x86 port of Darwin.

Apple ran a similar project to Star Trek for Mac OS X. This project was rumored to be code-named Marklar. Marklar's task was to keep Mac OS X and all supporting applications (including iLife and Xcode) running on the x86 architecture as well as that of the PowerPC. Marklar was revealed by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs in June 2005, when he announced the Macintosh transition to Intel processors starting in 2006.

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History of the Apple Macintosh Operating Systems
Classic Mac OS (History): System 6 · System 7 · Mac OS 8 · Mac OS 9
Mac OS X (History): Public Beta · v10.0 · v10.1 · v10.2 · v10.3 · v10.4 · v10.5
Mac OS X Server: Rhapsody · Mac OS X Server 1.0 · Mac OS X Server
Other OS projects: A/UX · Taligent · Copland · MkLinux · Darwin
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