Apple has patented an invention related to object-oriented computing environments. More particularly, the technology implies using a 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,” reveals the US Patent & Trademark Office. Patent numbers 20080250432 and 20080250433 both talk of an Object Oriented Operating System. The technology seeks to provide an environment in which data and the procedures that operate on the data are combined into packages called "objects." By adopting a rule that requires that objects communicate with one another only through well-defined messaging paths, OOT removes much of the complexity of traditional programming, says Apple.

For the weak of heart, patents like these seldom materialize, or, if they do, they take painstaking work and years of development to emerge as usable. So rest assured, Apple is just saying “it's doable” for the time being.

“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,” reads Apple's summary of the invention. “The system includes a computer and a memory component in the computer. A code library is stored in the memory component,” the company explains. 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.”

Object-oriented technology includes object-oriented analysis (OOA), object-oriented design (OOD), and object-oriented programming (OOP). According to the Cupertino Mac maker, the methods described in this patent are some of the most important new technologies in software development to date.