Apple SOS

Apple SOS ( Sophisticated Operating System; German advanced operating system) was the successor of Apple DOS and was introduced with the Apple III in 1980 by Apple Computer. There was an operating system that was designed for professional users.

The original name, at the same time the project code name was " Sara's Operating System", named after the daughter of the chief developer Wendell Sander. It was later, probably reinterpreted because of a lack of professionalism, in the current form.

Construction

SOS was served with the Apple III System Utilities, which consisted of the Device Handling Commands Section, the File Handling Commands section and the System Configuration Program (SCP ). A new feature of SOS were device drivers with which it was possible from now on, to drive, disk drives, and RAM disks in addition to the conventional 5 ¼ -inch floppy and use.

A program disk consisted of a kernel SOS.kernel, an interpreter SOS.Interp what could be an interpreter ( BASIC, Pascal or COBOL) or the application itself, as well as a set of drivers SOS.Driver.

Importance

SOS was extremely advanced for its time: it offered as a very flexible configuration and hierarchical file system and this also influenced later products from Apple. So the HFS of the later Macintosh was born from the SOS file system. The design of the operating system itself, of course, had an impact on his successor Apple ProDOS.

Despite all the advantages SOS was with, or perhaps because of the Apple III, no success: Virtually all former programs were running under Apple DOS 3.2 or 3.3, for which there was no native support under SOS ( ie Apple -DOS programs could only be carried out when the Apple III was booted with Apple DOS). Many users also came with the high flexibility and the many capabilities of the system simply can not cope. Still came Lastly add the bad reputation and the high price of the Apple III, and SOS had failed.

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