Mac OS X is a series of operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. It is a uniquely powerful development platform, supporting multiple development technologies including UNIX, Java, the proprietary Cocoa and Carbon runtime environments, and a host of open source, web, scripting, database, and development technologies. Built around the integrated stack of graphics and media technologies including Core Image, Core Video, Core Audio and QuickTime, Mac OS X provides a solid foundation for developers to create great applications.
Mac OS X introduced a number of new capabilities to provide a more stable and reliable platform than its predecessor, Mac OS 9. For example, pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection improved the system's ability to run multiple applications simultaneously without them interrupting or corrupting each other.
Mac OS X includes its own software development tools, most prominently an integrated development environment called Xcode. Xcode provides interfaces to compilers that support several programming languages including C, C++, Objective-C, and Java.
Mac OS X provides many other tools to make the development process easier:
- Interface Builder - lets you design your application’s user interface graphically and save those designs as resource files that you can load into your program at runtime.
- Instruments - is a powerful performance analysis and debugging tool that lets you peer into your code as it’s running and gather important metrics about what it is doing.
- Shark - is an advanced statistical analysis tool that turns your code inside out to help you find any performance bottlenecks.
- PackageMaker - helps you build distributable packages for delivering your software to customers.
- Mac OS X includes several OpenGL tools to help you analyze the execution patterns and performance of your OpenGL rendering calls.
- Mac OS X supports various scripting languages, including Perl, Python, Ruby, and others.
- Mac OS X includes tools for creating and working with Java programs.
Mac OS X is Apple's operating system for its line of Macintosh computers. Its interface, known as Aqua, is built on a Unix foundation. Although it has much of the look and feel of the former Mac OS, features such as preemptive multitasking, symmetric multiprocessing, multithreading, and protected memory give Mac OS X improved stability and performance.
