Adapted by:
Guille Lomener
EditorI've been passionate about Apple and technology for as long as I can remember. In fact, I've been following the innovation at Apple since 2013. Today, I write at Applesfera, which has been a dream of mine since it was founded.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Apple experienced one of the most chaotic eras in its history. Far from the streamlined tech giant we know today, the company was a mix of bold ideas and internal uncertainty. It was the post–Steve Jobs era—he’d been ousted in 1985 and wouldn’t return until 1997. In the meantime, Apple was desperate to stay relevant while preserving the identity that once set the Macintosh apart.
The Mac’s early success had faded. Microsoft was on the rise, and Windows was eating into Apple’s market share. Inside the company, there was one prevailing fear: becoming “just another Windows.” So Apple went all in—and then did it again—on reinventing its operating system (OS) from scratch.
The result? Two ambitious projects: Pink and Copland. Both promised revolutionary changes. Neither made it out the door.
Pink: The First Great Reinvention (That Failed)
By 1988, the original Mac OS was straining under modern demands. It lacked multitasking, had no memory protection, and was held together by years of patches. A group of engineers, known as the “Gang of Five,” issued an ultimatum: either build a new OS from the ground up, or we’re out. That ultimatum launched Pink.
The name came from the team’s habit of jotting their wildest ideas on pink index cards. Convinced they were onto something big, they moved off campus into a separate warehouse to work in secrecy. The isolation was so intense that the Pink team developed its own graphics system—completely unaware that another Apple team was doing the same thing with QuickDraw GX.
Pink was a technical leap: object-oriented architecture, preemptive multitasking, protected memory, and a futuristic interface with 3D icons and non-rectangular windows. Protected memory alone was a game-changer. If one app crashed, the rest could keep running—a luxury older Macs couldn’t afford.
But progress was slow. The team grew to over 100 people, yet the OS remained unstable. Tensions rose, and key talent began leaving. In 1992, Apple outsourced the project, partnering with IBM to create Taligent, a cross-platform version of Pink. Years later, Apple quietly killed it. The system never shipped.
Journalist Michael S. Malone called Pink “a beautiful idea” that collapsed under its own ambition. Engineers at the time joked, “When’s Pink coming out? In two years.” And then said the same thing the next year. And the year after that.
Copland: Apple’s Answer to Windows 95
After Pink fizzled, Apple needed a comeback—fast. Microsoft was preparing to launch Windows 95, and Apple didn’t have a response. So in 1994, it began work on Copland, a bold rewrite of the Mac OS that would become Mac OS 8.
Named after composer Aaron Copland (and later, its unreleased successor, “Gershwin”), the OS was designed to fix everything. It featured a microkernel architecture (called “NuKernel”), multitasking, memory protection, and a new Platinum interface with themes and tabbed windows. You could copy multiple files at once, search from the toolbar, and use multi-user accounts—features well ahead of their time.
Apple threw everything it had at Copland: 500 engineers, $250 million a year, and internal hype complete with T-shirts and mugs. Beta versions even went out to developers, and those disks are now collector’s items.
But it was chaotic. Teams fought to get their pet features in, deadlines slipped, and the software barely ran. In 1996, after spiraling costs and no stable release, Apple shut Copland down. Some of its innovations made it into Mac OS 8 and 9, but the revolution never arrived.
Former CEO Gil Amelio summed it up in his memoir: “Copland was still just a collection of separate pieces, each being worked on by a different team, with what appeared to be an innocent expectation that it would all somehow miraculously come together. But it wasn’t and it wouldn't, and it didn't take a genius to see that reality.”
Some features were so ahead of their time that Apple later revived them. The OS's advanced search tool, for instance, laid the groundwork for what became Spotlight in Mac OS X.
After Two Failures, a Third Try—From Outside
After Pink and Copland failed, Apple stopped trying to reinvent the OS internally. Instead, it looked outward. In December 1996, the company acquired NeXT—Jobs’ company—for $429 million. With it came NeXTSTEP, a Unix-based OS that would evolve into what we now know as macOS.
It was the beginning of a new chapter. The new OS, first called Rhapsody and later Mac OS X, launched in 2001. It inherited NeXTSTEP’s stability and security, layered in compatibility for classic Mac apps, and delivered the modern foundation Apple had been chasing for over a decade.
Apple finally had an OS that was powerful, secure, and unmistakably not Windows. And with Jobs back at the helm, everything changed. From that point forward, Apple’s software and hardware began shaping not just the tech world—but modern life itself.
Image | Julian Hochgesang (Unsplash)
View 0 comments