
System 6 added MultiFinder, an add-on replacement for the Finder which could run several programs at once. System Software 5.1 ( System 4.3, Finder 6.0, MultiFinder 1.0).System Software 5.0 ( System 4.2, Finder 6.0, MultiFinder 1.0).System 5 was also the first Macintosh operating system to be given a unified "Macintosh System Software" version number, as opposed to the numbers used for the System and Finder files.

This significantly altered the extent and design of the underlying graphics architecture (and its APIs), but it is a credit to Apple that most users, and perhaps more importantly existing code, were largely unaware of this. The others significant change that System Software 5 brought to the Mac was Color QuickDraw, which debuted with the Macintosh II. Time was given to the background applications only when the foreground (or "running") applications gave it up ( cooperative multitasking), but in fact most of them did via a clever change on the OS's event handling. System Software 5.0 added MultiFinder, an add-on replacement for the Finder which could run several programs at once. "System 5" refers to the system software bundle version, not the System software version. The other significant change that System 4.x brought to the Mac was Colour QuickDraw, which debuted with the Macintosh II in 1986. System 3.0 introduced HFS (Hierarchical File System) which had real directories - previously the Finder created the illusion of folders on the flat file system.

Early Macintosh system software Macintosh System Software 1Īll of these versions could only run one application at a time, though special application shells such as Switcher (discussed under MultiFinder) could get around this to some extent.
