Apple / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Apple has a lot of fancy new tricks up its sleeve for the next iteration of MacOS. There's the new UI (glassy and classy), the extra AI bits, performance improvements, and more. But there's one new feature that may or may not interest the average user.
That feature is all about containers.
Think of containers like this: an isolated, lightweight package that contains the application code, dependencies, and libraries necessary to run in an isolated environment so as not to negatively impact the host computer. That's a lot.
OK, maybe this: a container is an application that you can create (or just run) that is isolated from all other applications on your system but able to function as expected.
So, for the most part, containers are a developer thing.
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Developers build containers that serve specific purposes and can be shared with other developers, companies, and even users. I've used containers quite a bit and have always found them useful. I've used containers to deploy services on my LAN, created them for clients, and written extensively about them. But why is Apple adding containers to what is considered an end-user operating system?
Well, you see a lot of developers use MacOS, which means adding containers could go a long way to help them do what they do.
With MacOS Tahoe, developers (and users) will have the ability to work with Linux containers... natively. That's right, out of the Tahoe box, you'll be able to run a Linux environment (no GUI) and use it for whatever purpose. You could spin up a Linux OS for development or even to install server-based tools (such as WordPress, InvoicePlane, and more) and run them directly from your Mac.
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