Rhapsody was the code name for an operating system based on OpenStep, that eventually evolved into Mac OS X.
Rhapsody was released in Developer Previews, and was designed around the concept of "boxes" -- a "blue" box to emulate the classic Mac OS, and a portable "yellow" box based on OpenStep (with an embedded Java Virtual Machine), runnable on PowerPC and Intel hardware, under Rhapsody, Windows NT and Linux, and a "red' box to emulate Windows which was never actively developed.
The "yellow" box eventually became forked into the Aqua environment we know in OS X and iOS and GNUStep for Linux and Windows. The two environments only have superficial compatibility today.
External links
- Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody by Daniel Eran Dilger at Roughly Drafted
- Red Box, Blue Box, Yellow Box by Daniel Knight at Low End Mac (archived 1997-09-17)
- Rhapsody at Michigan State University Multimedia Interest Group (archived 1999-10-07)
- Rhapsody Developer Release 1 and 2 at BetaWiki
- Rhapsody Developer Release 2 at Nathan's Toasty Technology page
- Rhapsody (operating system) at Wikipedia
