RIP Copland...30 Years Ago
August 1996 was the month that changed the Mac forever. The much delayed Copland (check out the graphic with the timeline) was supposed to have an important developer release in the summer of 1996. Originally planed for the WWDC developer conference in April, Apple delayed the developer release to August. When August came, Apple cancelled the developer release and instead, showed a barely functional version to select developers at the MacWorld Boston trade show. It was a disaster, and despite the NDAs developers had to sign, the state of Copland quickly became the talk of the show. (It really was. I was there as just a nobody and heard about it)
Shortly afterwards, Copland was cancelled and Apple began a frantic search for a new Mac operating system. For quite a while the smart money was on Apple buying Be. But as we all know, they eventually ended up with NeXT and NeXTStep became the basis for Mac OS X.
Copland was not a complete loss however. Many of the technologies that were slated for Copland eventually made it into Mac OS 8 and 9, but the writing was on the wall. Classic Mac OS was on borrowed time, and the future was somewhere else.
You can follow this story in all its gory detail on Internet Archive's collection of MacWEEK magazine. I've been scanning issues from 1996 and uploading them exactly 30 years after their publication date. We've just gotten to the demise of Copland and will be getting to the negotiations to buy Be in the next two months. Going through 1996 week by week is very educational, and I recommend at least looking at the headlines. But it's a very bumpy ride, and kind of shocking that Apple survived at all.