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Around 1993/1994 [Apple] decided that they needed a more modern version of [MacOS]. They announced that they were starting work on two new OperatingSystems, Copland which would be released in 1996 as MacOS 8 and [Gershwin] estimated to come out in 1998 as MacOS 9.

The [Macintosh] hardware market at the time was relatively unstable with [Apple] licencing [MacOS] to third parties and [RAM] prices were fluctuating wildy and as such the goals of Copland changed a number of times during development. The main feature of Copland was the [NuKernel]. This was to add PreemptiveMultitasking, MemoryProtection, SymmetricMultiprocessing and substantially improved VirtualMemory support into [MacOS]. Additional features of note were a fully [PowerPCNative] OperatingSystem, robust [Theme] support, [MultiUser] support, [Quickdraw3D], a new filesystem [HFS+], advanced OpenTransport networking, the [V-Twin] search engine and [OpenDoc], a powerful ComponentArchitecture.

In order to support these features, a number of old and obsolete [API]'s were removed from [MacOS], mostly relating to task management and memory management. [Apple] claimed that 70% of the software available at the time would run on the new OperatingSystem with the remaining software requiring source code changes.

In the end (1997) the project got a bit out of hand with the feature list being a constantly moving target and it was all taking too long to develop. Developers wanted some firm direction and [Apple]'s management and marketing department were worried about increasing discontent in the user base. It was this with this train of thought that [Apple] cancelled both Copland and [Gershwin], bought [NeXT] and announced a plan to turn [NeXTStep] into the next version of [MacOS] which they codenamed [Rhapsody].

Copland is generally considered to be a failed project but this is not entirely true. While the project as a whole was cancelled, many of the technologies and ideas were released independantly or as part of other system updates. [Quickdraw3D], OpenTransport and [OpenDoc] were all released as freely available downloads for existing versions of [MacOS] and shipped with MacOS 7.5.2 and 7.5.3. Much of the Internet integration support was released in MacOS 7.6. Limited [Theme] support was released with MacOS 7.6 and was enhanced with MacOS 8 (codenamed [Tempo]) and MacOS 8.5 (codenamed [Allegro]) although even today [MacOS] [Theme]s are not as powerful as what the Copland demos were showing. [HFS+] was released with MacOS 8.1 (Codenamed [BrideOfBuster]). The [V-twin] search engine (now known as [Sherlock]) was released with MacOS 8.5. Parts of the [NuKernel] (this portion referred to as the [NanoKernel]) and a largely [PowerPCNative] [Finder] were released as part of MacOS 8.6 (codenamed [Veronica]). Rudimentary [MultiUser] support was added in MacOS 9 (codenamed [Sonata]). Many smaller pieces were merged into MacOS 9.0.4 (codenamed [Minuet]), MacOS 9.1 (codenamed [Fortissimo]), MacOS 9.2 (codenamed [Moonlight]) and MacOS 9.2.1 (codenamed [Limelight]) and the rumored future update, MacOS 9.3 (codenamed [Starlight]). The new [API] developed for Copland became known as [Carbon] which was released progressively from MacOS 8 onwards. Other portions of the [NuKernel] and a more complete version of the [Carbon] API were merged into [Rhapsody] which was later renamed to MacOSX (codenamed [Cheetah]).

Copland is also the last name of famous American composer Aaron Copland. His music was said to convey the energy of New York and the visual power of skyscrapers much like that of George [Gershwin].
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