Exactly 22 years ago, on April 26, 1996 to be exact, the eagerly awaited but delayed Copland operating system for the Mac was dealt a fatal blow when the senior vice president in charge of the project at the time left the Cupertino company.
Chief Technology Officer at AppDavid C. Nagel initially promised that Mac OS Copland would be available to users by mid-1996 at the latest. However, afteronec left the Californian giant and moved to AT&T Laboratories, and so the operating system was at risk.
Copland, named after American composer Aaron Copland, was a project aimed at restoring a competitive advantage Applu. The company announced the operating system in March 1994, promising to offer a host of new features, such as live toolbar search, more comprehensive multitasking, and the ability to log in to multiple users.
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Apple It also offered different system themes. Users could choose the theme they liked best, such as a futuristic look similar to Dark Mode, a brighter look, or a child-friendly look. Similar to today's dockat, Copland allowed miniMinimize windows by dragging them to the bottom of the screen, where they were like tabs.
For a while, it seemed like the system was on its way. In November 1995, Apple released the first beta version of Copland for a select group of about 50 developers. But after that, things didn't move much. Apple kept pushing back the release of the full system. The project became more and more expensive, and in 1996 Copland had 500 technicians. The annual budget of the project reached up to 250 million dollars.
Once Nagel left on April 26, 1996 Apple, it was clear that Copland would never see the light of day again. After his departure Apple insisted that the operating system provide users with However, after what Apple announced a huge loss of $740 million, Gil Amelio announced on stage at the conference that Copland would be delivered as a series of upgrades, not as a complete system. But afteronec after a few months Apple canceled Copland completely.
The question of whether it was not only good, Copland was oversized*. Apple then bought NEXTStep and so on Applu was given to Jobs again. And some elements of Copland were included in other Mac OS Xs.
* In 2008, PC World named Copland on a list of the biggest project failures in IT history.[1]