Originally posted by mr. K
I have heard that so far that its the equivalent of a mac os x beta built for x86?
That is a small part of what it was. It seems to be the part that makes it most notable to those who have heard about it.
Rhapsody is the given name for the last full version of what started out as the NeXT OS. Originally the NeXT OS was called NEXTSTEP (version 0.8 to 3.3) and later OPENSTEP (versions 4.0 to 4.2) but the last version which was an Apple OS as call Rhapsody (versions 5.0 to 5.6).
Brief history of Rhapsody
When Apple bought NeXT it wanted NeXT's mature operating system as a replacement for the Mac OS and (more importantly) the canceled project call Copland. As soon as Apple had OPENSTEP in hand (and released the final update, 4.2) they started on porting it to Apple's PowerPC hardware (not very hard considering that NeXT had NEXTSTEP running on a prototype of their own PowerPC 601 based hardware that was dropped before anyone could use it with the rest of the NeXT hardware division in 1993). They last started porting Apple's MAE (Macintosh Application Environment) for Unix systems to the new OS.
Rhapsody Developer Release
Apple's first release to developers was Rhapsody 5.0. It was hardly more than OPENSTEP with a Mac theme applied. It still used
Next root directories and on the Intel version some OPENSTEP for Intel software ran without any changes at all. It was mainly a trial run for the PowerPC version and a reminder to developers that Apple was moving forward with this.
Rhapsody Developer Release 2
This was the model for all other versions of Rhapsody to follow. Gone were the
Next root folders and Dock of 5.0, Rhapsody 5.1 had a look that matched Mac OS 8 in most respects. Though missing some of the nice features of later versions (some of which can be found as test versions to add the missing functionality), this was the basis of what Apple planned to release to the public. The PowerPC version included a Blue Box (the port of MAE) running Mac OS 8.1 to run older Mac software. Blue Box was missing from the Intel release.
As Apple was getting ready to release Rhapsody they noticed a strange occurrence in software development. More native apps were being produced for the PowerPC version than the Intel version. By itself, this would have been a small advantage for the PowerPC version, but when the fact the most legacy software could also run on the PowerPC version in Blue Box was taken into account, it started to weigh against Rhapsody for Intel as quite an applications barrier. Plus it could not be over looked that most of the Rhapsody developers were former NeXT developers who had only a year or so earlier been running OPENSTEP on Intel systems and were not putting out more PowerPC software than Intel versions. This weighed in the decision to drop the Intel version which would have been harder to support than the PowerPC version.
Not to be forgotten was that at the same time Apple was having problems with long time Mac developers (like Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, etc.) who didn't want to bare the expense of porting their apps to an operating system with no users. Apple knew that an operating system with no major apps wasn't going to have any users, so Rhapsody was stopped in it tracks.
Rhapsody... the missing release
When talking about Rhapsody, I usually talk refer to the version number. Version 5.0 and 5.1 were the developer releases, version 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 were the public releases. No, I didn't miscount. Apple had a final public version ready for release when Apple pulled the plug on Rhapsody being the future of the Apple platform, that version was 5.2. Rhapsody 5.2 never made it (in and form that I know of) off Apple campus.
Apple releases Mac OS X... sorta
Apple had to come up with a new plan now that Rhapsody wasn't working out. They thought they has something of a head start on an application environment that would run most Mac code natively on a operating system like Rhapsody with the work that they had done on Copland. Steve Jobs told the crowd at when he first announced Mac OS X that they were within 6 to 9 months of releasing the new operating system. But to show that they were on schedule, Apple announced the release
Mac OS X Server 1.0 (aka Rhapsody 5.3).
Mac OS X Server 1.0 was just Rhapsody 5.3 with a suite of server apps applied. During the installation you could turn off or not install many of these and you were left with what would have been the workstation version of Rhapsody (which is what I did for a while on my PowerBook G3 with Rhapsody 5.6... aka Mac OS X Server 1.2).
What can you do with Rhapsody?
I can do quite a lot actually. When Apple bought NeXT I started working in OPENSTEP and Rhapsody. I wanted to find out if you could really make these completely workable environments. I have two (running) PCs, an IBM ThinkPad and DEC Celebris. Both are running Rhapsody, and only Rhapsody (I don't do Windows!). For quite a few years my ThinkPad was my only mobile computer. I did this because I needed to see if I could rely on Rhapsody and nothing else, I could. I also had the software needed to get work done (OmniWeb, PDFview, Create, TIFFany3, etc.) and play games (DOOM and DOOM II, plus a number of other games my wife loved). The average installation of Rhapsody is about 400 MB, I have 2.5 GB left on my 6 GB hard drive in my ThinkPad. I used that system for a ton of different things.
Rhapsody is still a daily system for me. I replace Rhapsody 5.6 with Mac OS X v10.2 on my PowerBook, which now leaves me with two Mac OS X systems and two Rhapsody systems (and one A/UX system, and two Mac OS 8.1, and one Mac OS 8.6, and three SGI... I have a ton of different systems) which are running 24/7.
My experiences aside, Rhapsody represents the bleeding edge of technology. Few people could make this system a workable environment without some blood, sweat and tears, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone who uses Windows or the Mac OS as an alternative. This is not is supported OS, there is no tech support when things go wrong (I help people, but I'm not Apple), you are really out on your own with this one. Even when this was the direction Apple was working in, few people made this their environment of choice. And now I'm the last of the Rhapsody
power users. It is almost always discouraging to see people
try Rhapsody. Very very few use it for more than a couple boots, and even then it is more of a novelty than a real tool for them.
My suggestion is to search this forum for screen shots, there are a ton of them that I have posted, if you want to see what Rhapsody looks like. Finding Rhapsody is very hard and making sure it runs on hardware you already own would be even harder (I bought all my hardware with the requirements in hand to make sure everything worked). Besides, there is a ton more apps for OPENSTEP (almost all free now) and it is easier to use. Even Linux or FreeBSD would be an easier choice for a spare laptop than Rhapsody.
Theres a nostalgia carracho server with some really interesting stuff I was talking to one of the admin's there yesterday. I think they had a copy of Rhapsody, but had taken it off the main server. But Rhapsody would be an interesting thing to mess with, I am going to look further into it.
