Apple patents are for object oriented operating system
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Oct 10, 2008 at 6:20am
Two Apple patents (numbers 20080250432 and 20080250433) for an object oriented operating system have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. The invention relates generally to object-oriented computing environments, and more particularly to a system and method for providing an object-oriented interface for a procedural operating system.
An apparatus for enabling an object-oriented application to access in an object-oriented manner a procedural operating system having a native procedural interface is disclosed. The apparatus includes a computer and a memory component in the computer. A code library is stored in the memory component. The code library includes computer program logic implementing an object-oriented class library. The object-oriented class library comprises related object-oriented classes for enabling the application to access in an object-oriented manner services provided by the operating system. The object-oriented classes include methods for accessing the operating system services using procedural function calls compatible with the native procedural interface of the operating system. The computer processes object-oriented statements contained in the application and defined by the class library by executing methods from the class library corresponding to the object-oriented statements.
Apple says that Object-oriented technology (OOT), which generally includes object-oriented analysis (OOA), object-oriented design (OOD), and object-oriented programming (OOP), is earning its place as one of the most important new technologies in software development. OOT has already begun to prove its ability to create significant increases in programmer productivity and in program maintainability. By engendering an environment in which data and the procedures that operate on the data are combined into packages called objects, and by adopting a rule that demands that objects communicate with one another only through well-defined messaging paths, OOT removes much of the complexity of traditional, procedure-oriented programming, according to Apple.
Here’s Apple’s summary of the invention: “The present invention is directed to a system and method of enabling an object-oriented application to access in an object-oriented manner a procedural operating system having a native procedural interface. The system includes a computer and a memory component in the computer. A code library is stored in the memory component. The code library includes computer program logic implementing an object-oriented class library. The object-oriented class library comprises related object-oriented classes for enabling the application to access in an object-oriented manner services provided by the operating system. The object-oriented classes include methods for accessing the operating system services using procedural function calls compatible with the native procedural interface of the operating system. The system also includes means for processing object-oriented statements contained in the application and defined by the class library by executing methods from the class library corresponding to the object-oriented statements.”
The inventors are Debra Lyn Orton, Eugenie Lee Bolton, Daniel F. Chernikoff, David Brook Goldsmith and Christopher P. Moeller. The graphic below illustrates a block diagram of a computer platform in which a wrapper of the present invention operates.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Rick Auricchio Says:
Wow, those names are all from the Taligent days, 1992-1995. I worked there during that time.
Some may recall Apple’s “Pink” OS effort that spun off into Taligent.
Posted on October 10, 2008