Taligent
Encyclopedia
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
, as part of the AIM alliance
. Taligent was dissolved in the late 1990s.
'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 4.1. During the initial planning for the operating system to follow System 4.1, new ideas were written down 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 advanced or took longer to implement were written on pink cards.
A new operating system, code-named Pink, was planned based on the ideas written on the pink index cards. Pink was to be a completely new object-oriented OS implemented in C++
on top of a new microkernel
, running a new GUI
that nevertheless looked and felt like the existing Mac. In addition to running programs written for Pink, the system was to be capable of running existing Mac OS programs.
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 in memory terms that it would barely fit onto existing Macintosh models, meaning that if Pink were going to run Mac OS programs by emulating System 7, it would have no room left over for itself.
Meanwhile, corporate infighting at Apple 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 flurry of empire-building
.
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."
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.
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, IBM persuaded Taligent 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.
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
.
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 surprising given that HP decided in the same year to produce OpenStep on their platforms. Several existing OpenStep "end 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.
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.
while jogging
, and that loss spelled the end of Taligent as a joint venture. It was decided that Taligent would become a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, focusing on developing technology and leaving the marketing to IBM.
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. HP released the Taligent C++ compiler technology (known within Taligent as "CompTech") as its "ANSI C++" compiler, aCC. HP also released some graphics
libraries that had been developed at Taligent.
In 1996, Taligent promulgated the popular Model View Presenter
(MVP) design pattern (an updated version of Model-View-Controller
(MVC)).
In 1997, when Bill Gates was asked what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise, his reply was:
In January 1998, after two years as a wholly owned subsidiary, Taligent was dissolved and the remaining engineering team members became IBM employees.
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
and the company dedicated to producing it. Initially started as a project within Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
to produce a replacement for the Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, it was later spun off into a joint venture with IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
in order to build a competing platform to Microsoft Cairo and NeXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
, as part of the AIM alliance
AIM alliance
The AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
. Taligent was dissolved in the late 1990s.
Pink and Blue
What would eventually become Taligent started in a roundabout way in 1988. After Apple ComputerApple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's latest effort to develop a new Macintosh had culminated in the Macintosh II
Macintosh II
The Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line and the first Macintosh to support a color display.- History :...
, a new version of the Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
had been developed to support it, System 4.1. During the initial planning for the operating system to follow System 4.1, new ideas were written down 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 advanced or took longer to implement were written on pink cards.
A new operating system, code-named Pink, was planned based on the ideas written on the pink index cards. Pink was to be a completely new object-oriented OS implemented in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
on top of a new microkernel
Microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
, running a new GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
that nevertheless looked and felt like the existing Mac. In addition to running programs written for Pink, the system was to be capable of running existing Mac OS programs.
Development begins
Efforts to develop Pink started around 1989, although at the time the effort was primarily a research effort.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
System 7 (Macintosh)
System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
. The problem was that System 7 was so large in memory terms that it would barely fit onto existing Macintosh models, meaning that if Pink were going to run Mac OS programs by emulating System 7, it would have no room left over for itself.
Meanwhile, corporate infighting at Apple doomed Pink. To those working on Blue, Pink was seen as a project that might steal mind share
Mind share
Mind share, or the development of consumer awareness or popularity, is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of brand names. For example, a prospective buyer of a college education...
from their own work. As the turf war
Turf war
According to Wordnet the definition of a turf war is "a bitter struggle for territory or power or control or rights". For example: a turf war erupted between street gangs; the president's resignation was the result of a turf war with the board of directors. In larger companies Turf wars could...
grew, engineers started to abandon Pink to work on Blue, and whole projects were brought into one group or another in a flurry of empire-building
Empire-building
In political science, empire-building refers to the tendency of countries and nations to acquire resources, land, and economic influence outside of their borders in order to expand their size, power, and wealth....
.
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
OpenDoc
OpenDoc was a multi-platform software componentry framework standard for compound documents, intended as an alternative to Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding ....
. This concept was missing from OpenStep
OpenStep
OpenStep was an object-oriented application programming interface specification for an object-oriented operating system that used a non-NeXTSTEP operating system as its core, principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems. OPENSTEP was a specific implementation of the OpenStep API developed...
, which modeled a document as merely "a file on the disk."
Taligent
As development dragged on, Apple eventually entered the AIM allianceAIM alliance
The AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
with IBM and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
. IBM had extensive experience in object-oriented programming, notably their well-respected VisualAge
VisualAge
VisualAge was the name of a family of computer integrated development environments from IBM, which included support for multiple programming languages. VisualAge was first released in the 1980s and is still available in 2011...
Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
programming system. They also had experience in microkernel design as a side-effect of their Mach based Workplace OS
Workplace OS
Workplace OS was born in 1991 as an ambitious plan by IBM to create a new computer operating system. The goal of Workplace OS was to improve software portability and reduce maintenance costs of IBM's software by using a common microkernel base for all of IBM's operating systems.At the base of...
efforts.
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).
- "In 1992, the earth shook: IBM and Apple clasped hands and pronounced themselves allies. From this union sprang Taligent, a small Cupertino, California, company that's now developing nothing less than a universal operating system."
- -MacWorld, 1994
During its first year, IBM persuaded Taligent 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
Workplace OS
Workplace OS was born in 1991 as an ambitious plan by IBM to create a new computer operating system. The goal of Workplace OS was to improve software portability and reduce maintenance costs of IBM's software by using a common microkernel base for all of IBM's operating systems.At the base of...
. 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
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
, 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.
Development
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
AIX operating system
AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...
, HP-UX
HP-UX
HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...
, OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
, Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
, and a new Apple OS kernel called NuKernel
Nukernel
NuKernel was a microkernel developed at Apple Computer during the early 1990s. Designed using concepts from Mach 3.0 with extensive additions for soft real-time scheduling to improve multimedia performance, it was intended to be used as the basis for the Copland operating system. Only one version...
. This made TalAE appear comparable to OpenStep
OpenStep
OpenStep was an object-oriented application programming interface specification for an object-oriented operating system that used a non-NeXTSTEP operating system as its core, principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems. OPENSTEP was a specific implementation of the OpenStep API developed...
.
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
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
became a Taligent partner as well, which was surprising given that HP decided in the same year to produce OpenStep on their platforms. Several existing OpenStep "end 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.
By 1995, Apple still didn't have an OS capable of running CommonPoint, and while work continued on the fabled Copland
Copland (operating system)
Copland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
(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.
End of Taligent
In the fall of 1995, Guarino died of a heart attackMyocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
while jogging
Jogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running.-Definition:...
, and that loss spelled the end of Taligent as a joint venture. It was decided that Taligent would become a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, focusing on developing technology and leaving the marketing to IBM.
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
International Components for Unicode
International Components for Unicode is an open source project of mature C/C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization and software globalization. ICU is widely portable to many operating systems and environments. It gives applications the same results on all...
from part of this effort. Taligent also created a set of Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
- and JavaBeans
JavaBeans
JavaBeans are reusable software components for Java. Practically, they are classes written in the Java programming language conforming to a particular convention. They are used to encapsulate many objects into a single object , so that they can be passed around as a single bean object instead of as...
-based development tools called WebRunner
WebRunner
WebRunner or Webrunner may refer to:* a historical name for HotJava web browser* Netrunner, a game* Mozilla Prism, a discontinued XULRunner site-specific browser, now being maintained under its former name of WebRunner...
, a groupware product based on Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...
called Places for Project Teams, and licensed various technologies to Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
which are today part of Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, as well as to Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
and Netscape. HP released the Taligent C++ compiler technology (known within Taligent as "CompTech") as its "ANSI C++" compiler, aCC. HP also released some graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
libraries that had been developed at Taligent.
In 1996, Taligent promulgated the popular Model View Presenter
Model View Presenter
Model–view–presenter is a derivative of the model–view–controller software pattern, also used mostly for building user interfaces....
(MVP) design pattern (an updated version of Model-View-Controller
Model-view-controller
Model–view–controller is a software architecture, currently considered an architectural pattern used in software engineering. The pattern isolates "domain logic" from the user interface , permitting independent development, testing and maintenance of each .Model View Controller...
(MVC)).
In 1997, when Bill Gates was asked what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise, his reply was:
"KaleidaKaleida LabsKaleida Labs was one of several joint ventures between Apple Computer and IBM in a period of alliance between the two companies during the early 1990s. The two computer giants sought to counter the influence of Microsoft and the growing dominance of its Windows operating system...
and Taligent had less impact than we expected."
In January 1998, after two years as a wholly owned subsidiary, Taligent was dissolved and the remaining engineering team members became IBM employees.