On the death of Unix, Apple's new Rhapsody OS is based on the Mach 3
Micro-kernel like Linux, and the rumours are that Apple's 'Mac OS' is going
to quickly mutate into a consumer orientated version of Rhapsody, easy of
use being put before Power user functionality, Rhapsody being aimed as an
OS for servers, developers and power users.
I've been reading a book on developing for Rhapsody and it looks like a
very exciting development platform, especially for hobby programmers with
its quick development time. Its multi threading kernel, use of built in
dynamic binding, you have to programme in either Java or Objective-C (which
is dynamic binding unlike C++), though C++ can be used when not overriding
the built in openstep class library, now called yellow box, and use of a
graphic interface to set the message sending links between you runtime
objects, it seems to have a lot of potential for 'experimental music'
software.
Other cool features:
-the mach kernel splits processes into tasks and threads with a single
task, owning one or more threads
-distributed objects which allows different objects belonging to the same
application to run on different computers within a network
-services which allows an applications to offer transparent access to its
objects to other  applications, an example in the book is an application
called CHaRTSMITH which allows other application to use CHaRTSMITH's
charting abilities within themself, like Apples Open Doc, but much easier
to implement.

Nathan Day
nathand@senet.com.au