All these boxes, you'd think you were on a fruit farm in Stanthorpe!
But what do they all mean?
Well for non tech types like myself they mean... Coloured Boxes.

My interpretation is (and I welcome anyone to write in and correct me if i've missed the point completley)that we've got the Power PC Platform Hardware. On top of the hardware is a software "layer". This layer is the main bit of what makes Rhapsody Rhapsody.

Within the "Rhapsody Layer" are a number of different software components that deal with the Low Level stuff such as talking to the hardware. These components are:

The Microkernel
This is the Unix-like core that runs the show.

The I/O Architecture
The bit that gets all the hardware parts to talk together and to the Microkernel

The File System
How the system deals with files I s'pose

The Core OS
The bit that acts as the relay between the Microkernel and the layers above it.

On top of this "Rhapsody" layer are the two boxes they keep talking about. There is the Blue Box and the Yellow Box.

Firstly the Blue Box.
This contains most of the Mac OS as we know it and is there for OS 7.X compatability.

...then the Yellow Box
This bit contains the Java bits and pieces, as well as the OpenStep bits (the parts pinched from NeXT)

So what have we got so far?
We've got the Mac OS and the OpenStep/Java parts talking together. Then they talk down to the Microkernel, File System, I/O Architecture and the Core OS. These then talk down to the Hardware. Simple, Huh?

But not so fast... The whole lot has one more layer on top. This layer is what makes it look like a Mac. Ahhh! the icing on the cake.