International Response Fund








Introduction
This set of pages is dedicated to Rhapsody. Not only that, it will be produced using tools native to Rhapsody. I wanted a record of all the things that I learned over the years to make Rhapsody a very comfortable operating system to use. It seemed to me that the best way of doing that was to build a site using Rhapsody and Rhapsody native software*.

The hardware being used isn't top of the line by anyone's imagination. The bulk of the work is now being done on an Apple Power Macintosh 8600, which has a PowerPC 604ev at 300 MHz (with 1 MB of cache), with 416 MB of RAM and a 9 GB hard drive. This system is currently running Rhapsody 5.6. Additionally, a lot of work will be done using an IBM ThinkPad 760 ED which is running on a Pentium at 133 MHz and has 80 MB of RAM and a 6 GB hard drive. I've been using this system, unchanged, since the summer of 2000 (yes, it is still running on it's original installation of Rhapsody 5.1).

As I've been using Rhapsody for years, I have a pretty good idea what software I'll be using for this endeavor. The main app is going to be Stone Design's Create. I'll be using version 5.1 in Rhapsody 5.1 and both 5.2 and 10.0 in Rhapsody 5.6. I'll also be making use of Apple's HTMLEdit in Rhapsody 5.6 for some page formating/generation, and OmniWeb 3.0/3.1 for previewing pages and editing code (I use OmniWeb 5.1 in Mac OS X to do these tasks for most of the sites I work on these days). For image editing I'll be using Caffeine Software's TIFFany3 and PixelNhance, with additional help from CuttingRoom and ToyViewer. Word Processing is going to be done using Apple's TextEdit. In fact this is the one place I may slip from time to time when it comes to using only Rhapsody. Some of the text used is going to be typed in Mac OS X on my PowerBook, but it'll still be using TextEdit (my primary word processor). For uploading I'll be using the native version of RBrowser (I use the current version of this FTP client in Mac OS X for all my web work).

It should also be noted that I've started a similar site for NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP (which can be found here). In the beginning I had thought about building that entire site using only OPENSTEP and OPENSTEP native apps, but as my only OPENSTEP system is set up mainly as a school system, I decided that I wasn't going to follow the same plan that I've used here. What was surprising was that even with the ability to use both Mac OS X and Rhapsody for the other site, most of the other site was still created (like this one) in Rhapsody. It just turns out that producing these types of pages is very easy in Rhapsody for me.

What is Rhapsody?
Rhapsody is the name given to the fifth major version of the Mach based operating system first made by NeXT computer back in the late 1980s. Originally called NEXTSTEP (until version 3.3) and then OPENSTEP (for versions 4.0-4.2), it was renamed again for version 5 after NeXT was acquired by Apple. The following table is all the versions of this operating system.

 OS Version OS Name OS Product Name OS Code Name
0.8 NeXTstep NeXTstep 0.8 Photon
0.9 NeXTstep NeXTstep 0.94 Kodak
1.0 NeXTstep NeXTstep 1.0  
2.0 NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP 2.0  
2.1 NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP 2.1  
2.2 NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP 2.2  
3.0 NEXTSTEP NEXTSTEP 3.0  
3.1 NEXTSTEP NEXTSTEP 3.1  
3.2 NEXTSTEP NEXTSTEP 3.2  
3.3 NEXTSTEP NEXTSTEP 3.3  
4.0 OPENSTEP OPENSTEP for Mach 4.0  
4.1 OPENSTEP OPENSTEP for Mach 4.1  
4.2 OPENSTEP OPENSTEP for Mach 4.2  
5.0 Rhapsody Rhapsody Developer Release Grail1Z4
5.1 Rhapsody Rhapsody Developer Release 2 Titan1U
5.2 Rhapsody Rhapsody 1.0  
5.3 Rhapsody Mac OS X Server 1.0 Hera1O9
5.4 Rhapsody Mac OS X Server 1.0.1 Loki1A2
(mislabeled
as Hera1O9)
5.5 Rhapsody Mac OS X Server 1.0.2 Loki2G1
(labeled as
Hera1O9+Loki2G1)
5.6 Rhapsody Mac OS X Server 1.2 Pele1Q10
5.6 Rhapsody Mac OS X Server 1.2v3 Medusa1E3


I assume that there have been seven versions of Rhapsody, version 5.0 through 5.6 (eight if you count both versions of Rhapsody 5.6), but I have never seen Rhapsody 5.2. This was to be the first public release, but was pulled by Apple at the last minute when they turned their energies towards the Mac OS X project.

Rhapsody 5.3 was given the product name Mac OS X Server. This was cosmetic as the system itself doesn't refer to itself as Mac OS X Server anywhere. In fact, as Apple realized they were going to have multiple versions of Mac OS X Server (given the product version numbers 1.0, 1.0-1, 1.0-2 and 1.2/1.2v3) they never changed anything about the GUI to show what version you had installed. The only way to find out which version of Mac OS X Server you had was to ask the system what version of Rhapsody it was (Rhapsody 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 would be shown when "uname -sr" was entered into the terminal).



Even though much of the technology of Rhapsody is still in Mac OS X today, they are not the same operating systems. Rhapsody is actually more like OPENSTEP in it's foundations than Mac OS X. This is mainly do to Apple's desire to remove any legacy elements which would have cumbersome licensing (like Adobe's Display Postscript) and replacing them with either Apple generated solutions or open source elements. The result was an operating system with many of the advantages of Rhapsody at a price that was only a fraction of what Rhapsody or OPENSTEP was going for when they were being sold.


Google
WWW RhapsodyOS.org






Updates:
This site is in a constant state of construction (very much like my other site). I'll list additions here (from newest to oldest) as I finish them.

07-25-2009: Posted an updated page on TextEdit (here) and started fixing broken links on a number of pages
06-17-2007: Posted a page on Red Box (here)
10-12-2006: Posted a page on compatible Rhapsody laptops (here)
10-09-2006: Posted a page on modifying Rhapsody's Login window (here)
10-02-2006: Posted a page on running Rhapsody on a PowerBook G3 Kanga (here)
09-24-2006: Posted a page on software piracy (here)
08-24-2006: Posted a page on running Rhapsody on a PowerBook G3 Lombard (here)
08-07-2006: Posted a page on ToyViewer (here)
07-20-2006: Posted a page on Rhapsody compatible video cards for PowerPC systems (here)
04-23-2006: Posted the RhapsodyAnswers page (here) which is an archive of technical articles on Rhapsody, I also linked (in the System section) to a page of Fonts (here) on my NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP Resource Page
03-09-2006: Posted a page on Rhapsody's timeline (here)
02-20-2006: Posted pages on Mac OS X Server and Rhapsody documentation and FAQs (here)
02-10-2006: Posted a page on running Rhapsody on a PowerBook 3400c (here) and on some of my other hardware experience with Rhapsody (here)
02-04-2006: Posted a page on benchmarking Blue Box (here) using Mathematica 2.2
08-21-2005: Posted a page on Applications Barrier to Entry (here) which includes Tevanian's testimony on Rhapsody
08-07-2005: Added a link on the Miscellaneous page to an article on porting OPENSTEP apps to Rhapsody (here)
07-23-2005: Posted a page on Id games for Rhapsody (here)
06-20-2005: Posted a page on Display Settings (here), which includes how to setup multiple monitors
01-05-2005: Posted Stone Design's Create 5: Online Manual (here)
12-16-2004: Posted a page on "What is Rhapsody?" (here)
11-15-2004: Posted a page on making web pages in Rhapsody (here)
10-30-2004: Posted a page on Installing a 3Com EtherLinnk III card for Rhapsody (here)
07-08-2004: Posted a page on MailViewer for Rhapsody (here)
06-26-2004: Posted a page on PDF solutions for Rhapsody (here)
06-22-2004: Posted a page on getting started with Rhapsody 5.1 for Intel (here)
06-19-2004: Posted Create (10.0) portability test page (here), again this is not the full write up I am planning
06-10-2004: Posted a page on Rhapsody Applications (here), the first of a series of them
05-31-2004: Posted a page on OpenUp and PackUp&Go (here)
05-22-2004: Posted a page on Rhapsody Media (here) which covers identifying versions
05-12-2004: Posted pages on adding users and groups to Rhapsody (5.0, 5.1 and 5.3-5.6)
05-02-2004: Posted page on Rhapsody for NeXT users (here) which mainly looks at Fiend
04-16-2004: Posted page on Printing in Rhapsody (here)
04-15-2004: Posted a page on enlarging Blue Box (here), also added links to some Stepwise articles in the Hardware and Miscellaneous sections
04-13-2004: Posted an Apple Menu page (here), this is for both the Yellow Box and Blue Box version of the Apple Menu
04-10-2004: Posted Create (5.1) portability test page (here), this is not the full write up I am planning, which is why I put it in the Misc. section
04-10-2004: Posted Create (5.1) portability test page (here), this is not the full write up I am planning, which is why I put it in the Misc. section
04-08-2004: Posted page on installing Fonts (here) and on Caffeine Software's PixelNhnace (here)
04-07-2004: Posted page on Rhapsody's TextEdit (here)
04-02-2004: Posted page on Rhapsody's Universal Colors Palette (here)
03-29-2004: Posted page on installing Rhapsody (here) and on Rhapsody system requirements (here)
03-22-2004: Posted main section pages, page on installing software (here) and on OmniWeb (here)




* NOTE: Originally due to the sizes of images, I had ran most the images on early pages through ImageReady so I didn't run out of room. Since those early pages I've done most of the site using Create 10.0 which makes images that don't need to be optimized further. The images and illustrations were all made in Rhapsody or where left overs from previous writings on the subject. All HTML code was done using Rhapsody and Rhapsody native apps.