Symmetric multiprocessing is integral to the kernel, which means that Rhapsody applications will be able to take advantage of multiple processors. Remember that the Mach kernel is underneath everything. It will allow different levels of OS compatibility, allowing use of the Mac OS and Windows on a Rhapsody core. It’s based on the Mach Unix kernel, either version 2.5 or 3.0. (Microsoft, take a hint.) Rhapsody will run on at least two hardware platforms: PowerPC and Intel. Remarkably, Apple is running ahead of schedule developing Rhapsody and has already shipped its first developer release and blue box release. Why not just call them the Rhapsody, Macintosh, and Windows shells? I’m the first to admit that, although I believe Rhapsody will be the next insanely great operating system and propel Apple beyond 10% market share, I find all these colored boxes confusing. Red Box, the planned PC Environment for Rhapsody on Intel hardware, never saw the light of day, although today’s Intel-based Macs have virtualization solutions from other vendors which allow them to run Windows or Linux alongside Mac OS X. Yellow Box became the OS X interface, and Blue Box became the Classic Environment, which allowed OS X users to continue to use Classic Mac OS software on their PowerPC Macs through Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Rhapsody was Apple’s code name for what eventually became Mac OS X.
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