The Apotheosis Mac OS

  1. The Apotheosis Of Pennsylvania
  2. The Apotheosis Of Washington Images
  3. Define Apotheosis
  4. Apotheosis In A Sentence

Apple's decision to switch from Intel to ARM chips in the MacBook may have some unexpected effects.

It’s 1981, and the collective heads of the BBC technical department sit, heads in hands, as they contemplate the ruin of their big project; the one personally championed by P.M. Margaret Thatcher, and key to the resuscitation of British industry in the new decade, following years of stagnation and decline.

The team had been tasked with creating a television series. They would educate the British public on the computer revolution, and in so doing, make the country the most computer-literate on earth, heralding untold innovation and profit. To do that, they needed a computer to go with the show. It was high concept. People would type along with the programs that they saw on the telly. Schools would buy the computer, a standard across the country for education. And the BBC had just been told that the computer was not going to happen.

Their partner system, the 'NewBrain' from Newbury Laboratories, would not be ready for the TV series, and it could stop the whole 'Computer Literacy Project' in its tracks.

Apotheosis

The Apotheosis Of Pennsylvania

Into the breach stepped Chris Curry. His tiny Cambridge-based startup, Acorn Computers, had been staffed with graduates from the university, their incredible foresight and technical acumen lending the company a reputation for innovation. They had been chuntering along for a couple of years. They had the bare bones of a new computer. And Chris Curry sold this barely-imagined new computer to the BBC. With a week’s deadline to get it done.

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The rest of the story is history. A week of frenzied engineering led to the creation of the BBC Microcomputer. The Beeb. Sporting a terrific variety of BASIC which blew the common Microsoft product out of the water, incredible extensibility, an inline assembler, and an innovative architecture. It was a triumph, and set the stage for an explosion of British creativity.

All of a sudden, an Operating System rooted in the BBC Computer Literacy Project will become a first-class citizen on the Mac. Programs written in the best flavour of BASIC could run natively on a. It’s not any kind of PC, really, even though it does some of the same things. Apple continues to fan the flames with provocative ad campaigns that say that the iPad is a great.

But Acorn weren’t done – while their later attempts to conquer the US market led to an ignominious takeover by Olivetti, they had another trick up their sleeve. The successor to the BBC Computer was called Archimedes. With engineering and software which began on the Beeb, it would employ its own custom CPU. The Cambridge graduates had been reading research from abroad. It would be a RISC chip. And the chip would be called ARM, for the Acorn RISC Machine.

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Time spins forward, decades go by, and the incredibly low power consumption offered by the ARM chip made it a shoe-in for mobile phones and IoT devices. Apple incorporated the ARM into the iPhone, and Acorn’s RISC chip leapt into devices the world over. That might seem to be the end of the story for Acorn, but perhaps that’s not to be so.

Define Apotheosis

Because when Acorn built the Archimedes, they built an operating system. It was called RISC OS. It runs BBC BASIC, and it’s fantastic for computer education, because that was Acorn’s prime market in the United Kingdom.

RISC OS didn’t die; it has been quietly developing over the decades that divided the Archimedes from the iPhone, a small but dedicated band of enthusiasts keeping the flame alive, adapting it to run on platforms like the ARM-based Raspberry Pi. And this week, Apple decided to put ARM chips into the MacBook.

All of a sudden, an Operating System rooted in the BBC Computer Literacy Project will become a first-class citizen on the Mac. Programs written in the best flavour of BASIC could run natively on a Retina display. A new generation of users may rise to turn RISC OS into a viable alternative to – presumably this is Apple’s intent – iOS.

Want an OS which doesn’t stop you from tangling with the internals of the machine? Which doesn't stop you from installing whatever software you want to? Want one built purposely for RISC computing? Install RISC OS, and be free.

  1. So, in my opinion, the apotheosis of Apple mouse design was the wired Mighty Mouse. I’m using one right now on my Mac Mini, and have another hooked into my Mac Pro production workstation. The scroll ball getting blocked up with dirt once every few weeks is a very minor complaint compared to the overall delight in using this fine mouse, and I.
  2. How to Install Acceleration Monitor for Windows PC or MAC: Acceleration Monitor is an Android Education app that is developed by Apotheosis Development and published on Google play store on NA. It has already got around 1000 so far with an average rating of 3.0 out of 5 in play store.

Apotheosis In A Sentence

Apple, for their part have said that they won't allow other operating systems to directly boot on the new machine, meaning that virtualisation is their preferred route. But how long can they hold that line in the face of strengthening waves of antitrust investigations? And how about a move to ARM in regular laptops from the likes from Dell and HP?

It’s a shame that the British company ARM Holdings was sold off only recently to Softbank. A national sadness, if you like. But Acorn lives on in a way, and may take on a strange new life in the era of RISC laptops.

Addendum

My apologies to both Acorn and the BBC for the artistic license of the first paragraphs. RISC OS can be found here.