Taligent was the name of an object-oriented operating system and the company dedicated to producing it. Initially started as a project within Apple Computer to produce a replacement for the Mac OS, it was later spun-off into a joint venture with IBM in order to build a competing platform to Microsoft Cairo and NeXTSTEP. Taligent disappeared in the late 1990s. Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects to design applications and computer programs. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Apple Inc. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ... Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft. ... NEXTSTEP is the original object-oriented, multitasking operating system that NeXT Computer, Inc. ...

Pink and Blue

What would eventually become Taligent started in a roundabout way in 1988. After Apple Computer's latest effort to develop a new Macintosh had culminated in the Macintosh II, a new version of the Mac OS had been developed to support it, System 5.0. At this point, the OS developers had a meeting in which they decided what they should be doing in the future, and started writing down their ideas on index cards. Ideas that were simple and could be included in a new version of the existing software were written on blue colored cards, those that were more "far out" were written on pink cards. 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Apple Inc. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

And so was born Pink, which would slowly develop into a quest for a new operating system that would be the best in the world. The idea was to produce an object-oriented OS on top of a new microkernel, which was likely inspired by what Steve Jobs was doing at NeXT. Unlike NeXT, however, the Apple team would use the C++ programming language, which was rapidly becoming the "next big language" while NeXT's Objective-C was becoming a niche player. Additionally the system would run existing Mac OS programs as well, much like the eventual architecture of NeXT-based Mac OS X. Graphical overview of a microkernel A microkernel is a minimal computer operating system kernel providing only basic operating system services (system calls), while other services (commonly provided by kernels) are provided by user-space programs called servers. ... Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder and CEO of Apple and was the CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney. ... Look up Next in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose, high-level programming language with low-level facilities. ... Objective-C, often referred to as ObjC or more seldomly as Objective C or Obj-C, is an object oriented programming language implemented as an extension to C. It is used primarily on Mac OS X and GNUstep, two environments based on the OpenStep standard, and is the primary language... Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ...

By this time, however, the team writing the system based on the blue cards (now known as the "Blue Meanies") were well advanced on what would be released in 1991 as System 7. The problem was that System 7 was so large it would barely fit into any existing Macintosh, meaning that if Pink were going to run Mac OS programs by emulating System 7, it would basically have no room left over for itself. The Blue Meanies of Apple Computer was an engineering group primarily responsible for the architecture of System 7 during the early 1990s. ... System 7 (codenamed Big Bang) was a version of Mac OS, the operating system of the Apple Macintosh computer. ...

Meanwhile, corporate immune response within Apple essentially doomed Pink. To those working on Blue, Pink was seen as a project that might steal mind share from their own work. As the turf war grew, engineers started to abandon Pink to work on Blue, and whole projects were brought into one group or another in a huge flurry of empire-building. One of the main objectives of Advertising and promotion is to establish what is called mind share (or share of mind). ... Turf war is a term that describes a common problem in larger companies when two divisions fight for access to resources or capital. ... Empire building is a business term that refers to a common problem in larger organizations, in which mid-level managers attempt to gather more control and funding in order to make themselves more powerful within the organization. ...

Magazines throughout the early 1990s showed various mock-ups of what Pink would be like. One true innovation of the system was the People, Places and Things metaphor that attempted to provide the user with tools to easily move documents around between people and things (like fax machines) as easily as they could print them using current technologies. The system also added a component-based document model that was similar to Apple's OpenDoc. This concept was missing from OpenStep, which modeled a document as merely "a file on the disk." This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The OPENSTEP desktop. ...

Apple continued to talk about Pink as if it were to be the future Mac OS, but by 1993 or so it was clear they were no longer serious.

Taligent

As development dragged on, Apple eventually entered the AIM alliance with IBM and Motorola. IBM had extensive experience in object-oriented programming, notably their well-respected VisualAge Smalltalk programming system. They also had experience in microkernel design as a side-effect of their Mach based Workplace OS efforts. AIM was an alliance formed in 1991 between Apple Computer, IBM and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is an American multinational communications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. ... VisualAge was the name of a family of computer integrated development environments from IBM, which included support for a few popular (and not so popular) computer Programming_languages. ... For other uses, see Small Talk (disambiguation). ... Mach is an operating system kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computation. ... Workplace OS was to be a new computer operating system from IBM, planned as its attempt to move several of its operating system products to a common microkernel to improve portability and reduce maintenance costs. ...

Pink was then spun off from Apple as a joint project known as Taligent. The original Apple team was expanded with the addition of a very small number of IBM engineers, as well as a new CEO from IBM, Joe Guglielmi (apparently to the distaste of many of the Apple people).

During its first year, Taligent was persuaded by IBM to replace its internally developed object-oriented microkernel, called Opus, with the microkernel that IBM was using as the base for IBM's Workplace OS. The change in underlying technology had both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, Pink would become a personality on top of the IBM Workplace OS. This would create easy migration paths between OS/2, AIX, Mac OS, and Pink by allowing any combination of operating system personalities to run simultaneously on a single computer. On the negative side, this created issues over how to integrate Taligent's object-oriented device-driver model with Workplace OS's procedural device-driver model. Look up Opus in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Workplace OS was to be a new computer operating system from IBM, planned as its attempt to move several of its operating system products to a common microkernel to improve portability and reduce maintenance costs. ...

Taligent spent much of its first two years developing their operating system (sometimes referred to as TalOS) and simultaneously trying to find a market for it. They started a large project surveying potential customers, only to find little interest in a new OS. It is a point of controversy whether the lack of interest was real or the survey fell prey to question-framing problems and political issues with investors. If asked the question "Do you want a new OS?", there were few who would say yes. The survey did, however, show there was sufficient support for the benefits TalOS would bring.

Influenced by the results of the survey effort, Taligent changed its focus from creating an object-oriented operating system, to creating an object-oriented programming environment that would run on any modern operating system. It was thought this approach would preserve much of the benefit of the higher levels of the system while freeing Taligent from the OS wars. Because of the portability and modularity provided by the C++/object-oriented approach, this change in direction, while not trivial, was relatively easy to implement. The result was TalAE (Taligent Application Environment), later known as CommonPoint. TalAE consisted of more than a hundred object-oriented frameworks and nearly two thousand classes and was heavily pattern-oriented. It ran on top of AIX, HP-UX, OS/2, Windows NT, and a new Apple OS kernel called NuKernel. This made TalAE appear comparable to OpenStep. AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a proprietary operating system developed by IBM based on UNIX System V. Before the product was ever marketed, the acronym AIX originally stood for Advanced IBM UNIX. AIX has pioneered numerous network operating system enhancements, introducing new innovations later adopted by Unix-like operating systems... HP-UX (Hewlett Packard UniX) is Hewlett-Packards proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on System V (initially System III). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. ... NuKernel was a microkernel developed at Apple Computer during the early 1990s. ... The OPENSTEP desktop. ...

At this time (in 1994), Taligent marketing types also began mentioning the possibility of TalDE (Taligent Development Environment) intended to be just as multiplatform as TalAE. Also at this time, IBM marketing types floated the idea of putting a TalOS "personality module" into IBM WPOS (Workplace OS) - a Mach kernel-based OS for the PowerPC intended as a successor to OS/2.

The combination of C++ and IBM and Apple's names on the project suggested that it might prove to be more successful than OpenStep. Early in 1994, Hewlett-Packard became a Taligent partner as well, which was odd considering that HP decided in the same year to produce OpenStep on their platforms. Several existing OpenStep customers stated they would move to Taligent as soon as it was ready. The first versions of CommonPoint shipped for AIX and OS/2 in mid-1995, but were met with a lukewarm response in terms of sales. The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ...

By 1995, Apple still didn't have an OS capable of running CommonPoint, and while work continued on the fabled Copland (which was designed to run CommonPoint), it was fairly clear to all involved that Apple had lost all interest in Taligent. Financial concerns at HP also caused their interest to wane. In early 1995 Guglielmi left Taligent for Motorola, and founding board member Dick Guarino became the new CEO. Guarino, though also from IBM, started Taligent on a new course as an object technology supplier in an effort to remain an independent company. Copland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. ...

Death of the project

In the fall of 1995 Guarino died of a heart attack one Sunday afternoon while jogging, and that loss spelled the end of Taligent as a joint venture. There was a reduction in force at the end of 1995 when it was decided that Taligent would become a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, focusing on developing technology and leaving the marketing to IBM. Acute myocardial infarction (AMI or MI), commonly known as a heart attack, is a disease state that occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is interrupted. ... Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. ...

IBM used parts of CommonPoint to create the Open Class class libraries for VisualAge for C++. IBM spawned an open source project called International Components for Unicode from part of this effort. Taligent also created a set of Java- and JavaBeans-based development tools called WebRunner, a groupware product based on Lotus Notes called Places for Project Teams, and licensed various technologies to Sun which are today part of Java, as well as to Oracle Corporation and Netscape. After two years as a wholly owned subsidiary, Taligent was dissolved in January 1998 and the engineering teams became IBM employees. International Components for Unicode (ICU) is an open source project of mature C/C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization and software globalization. ... Java is an object-oriented applications programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... JavaBeans are software components written in the Java programming language. ... Lotus Notes is a client-server collaborative software and e-mail system owned by Lotus Software, of the IBM Software Group. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... Java is an object-oriented applications programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is one of the major companies developing database management systems (DBMS), tools for database development, middle-tier software (Fusion Middleware), enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain planning (SCM) software. ... Netscape Communications Corporation was the publisher of the Netscape Navigator web browser as well as many other internet and intranet client and server software products. ...

External links

• Taligent developer documentation
• Inside Taligent Technology (sample of book)
• Taligent patents at USPTO (be patient, comes up slowly)