Happy 6th Birthday to Apple’s Mac OS X!

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Happy 6th Birthday, Mac OS X! Here’s the official Apple press release:

CUPERTINO, California—March 21, 2001—Apple® today announced that beginning this Saturday, March 24, customers can buy Mac® OS X in retail stores around the world. Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh®.

“Mac OS X is the most important software from Apple since the original Macintosh operating system in 1984 that revolutionized the entire industry,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait for Mac users around the globe to experience its stability, power and elegance.”

Over 350 applications for Mac OS X are shipping today, with hundreds more coming by this summer. More than 10,000 developer organizations around the world are working on over 20,000 Mac OS X applications, including 4D, Aladdin Systems, Alias/Wavefront, Avid, Connectix, Dantz, Digidesign, EarthLink, FileMaker, IBM, Macromedia, Microsoft, MYOB, Palm, Sun, Symantec, and Thursby Software Systems.

Apple will also ship Mac OS X versions of its three most popular applications on March 24, available as free downloads at http://www.apple.com: iMovie™ 2, the world’s most popular and easiest-to-use digital video editing software; iTunes, Apple’s wildly popular “jukebox” software that lets users create and manage their own music library; and a preview version of AppleWorks® 6.1, Apple’s award-winning productivity application.

Mac OS X is built upon an incredibly stable, open source, UNIX-based foundation called Darwin and features true memory protection, preemptive multi-tasking and symmetric multiprocessing when running on the dual processor Power Mac™ G4. Mac OS X includes Apple’s new Quartz™ 2D graphics engine (based on the Internet-standard Portable Document Format) for stunning graphics and broad font support; OpenGL for spectacular 3D graphics and gaming; and QuickTime™ for streaming audio and video. Mac OS X also features an entirely new user interface called Aqua™. Aqua combines superior ease of use with amazing new functionality such as the Dock, a breakthrough for organizing, documents and document windows.

In addition, Mac OS X includes hundreds of new features, such as:
• Dynamic memory management, eliminating “out of memory” messages or need to adjust the memory for applications
• Advanced power management, so that PowerBook® and iBook™ systems wake from sleep instantly
• QuickTime 5, shipping for the first time as an integrated feature of Mac OS X
• Automatic networking, allowing users to get on the Internet using any available network connection, without adjusting settings
• A single interface to easily manage all network and Internet connections, including direct support for DSL systems that require PPPoE connectivity
• Full PDF support and PDF integration into the operating system, so that Mac OS X applications can generate standard PDF documents to be shared with any platform
• Direct support for TrueType, Type 1 and OpenType fonts, and an intuitive and flexible interface for managing fonts and groups of fonts
• More than $1,000 of the best fonts available today, including Baskerville, Herman Zapf’s Zapfino, Futura, and Optima; as well as the highest-quality Japanese fonts available, in the largest character set ever on a personal computer
• iTools integration into Mac OS X, for direct access to iDisk free Internet storage in the Finder and Open/Save dialog boxes, and free IMAP mail for Mac.com email accounts
• Built in support for popular HP, Canon, and Epson printers
• Easy to administer multi-user environment, with access privileges to keep documents secure
• Powerful web development tools and technologies such as WebDAV, XML, Apache and QuickTime
• BSD UNIX services including popular shells, Perl and FTP
• Support for symmetric multi-processing, so that on dual-processor Power Mac G4 systems, both processors are used automatically to deliver up to twice the productivity
• File system and network security including support for Kerberos
• Support for Java 2 Standard Edition built directly into Mac OS X, giving customers access to cross platform applications

Apple’s successful Mac OS X Public Beta, which shipped in September 2000, was instrumental in several key enhancements to the operating system. Apple shipped more than 100,000 copies of Mac OS X Public Beta and received more than 75,000 individual user feedback entries from Mac users and developers worldwide.

To help customers migrate to Mac OS X, Apple iServices will offer several new services, including a comprehensive set of Mac OS X training and certification offerings for Mac OS X system administrators.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X will ship with 7 languages—English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch— included on a single CD. In addition, the Mac OS X box will include a full copy of Mac OS 9.1, for running Classic applications, and the Mac OS X Developer Tools CD.

Mac OS X will be available through The Apple Store® (http://www.apple.com) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) beginning March 24, 2001.

Mac OS X requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on the following Apple products: iMac™, iBook, Power Macintosh® G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and any PowerBook introduced after May 1998.

Press release link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/mar/21osxstore.html

42 Comments

  1. I have “used” all OS X versions since the public beta. The beta was really just a demonstration version, X.0 and X.1 were deficient in peripheral support. The first real enterprise version of OS X, where Apple finally ironed out all the printer issues, IMHO, was 10.2 and most specifically the 10.2.6 & 10.2.8. (I recall some issues with with the release (ie it was pulled and re-released) of 10.2.7 or 10.2.8. Apple quickly went to 10.3 and it has been invisible ever since. Invisible in the sense that the OS does everything it is asked, without a hiccup.

    What is amazing is that I still run 10.4 on two 5+ year old 500mHz iMac G3s, and as slow as they are comparied to modern Macs, they do just fine. One is used as secretarial workstation (256MB memory) (running Office (Word and Excel)/FMP/Quicken/Mail/Safari&Firefox;/iCal/Address Book and two custom applications), the other is a print/fax/email/music server (utilizing only 128MB or memory!) My main machine is an old 667MHz PBG4 Titanium (768MB memory). I have no reason to upgrade hardware yet. Each version of OS X has brought performance increases, some significant. (Heck I even had 10.1 running on a PBG3 wallstreet (unsupported) until I spilled coffee in her and replaced it with my current PB.)

    I didn’t go X full time until 10.2. With both 10.0 and 10.1, I was mainly booted into 8.5 then 9, as we were at that time still using Word Perfect (not supported in X) as our everyday word processor.

    It was just in this last year, that I removed Classic from all but the secretarial workstation, and the backup HDs.

    Reply

  2. I can help. Lets start with Tabby and after that:
    American Bobtail
    Asian Semi-longhair (or Tiffanie)
    Balinese
    Birman
    British Longhair
    Chantilly/Tiffany cat
    Himalayan
    Javanese
    Maine Coon
    Nebelung
    Norwegian Forest Cat
    Oriental Longhair
    Persian
    Ragdoll (and Ragamuffin)
    Siberian
    Turkish Van
    Turkish Angora
    York Chocolate cat

    By the time we are at Ragdoll, Apple should have 90% market share
    and Balmer will be in prison doing 25 to Life for insider trading
    and being an habitual liar. Bill Gates and his wife will have past away from nasty form of African diarriah.

    Steve Jobs will start wearing plaids which he will make cool and
    the world will be right again.

    Just a lazy Saturday thought….

    Reply

  4. Two Dates that I never forget… March 24th, because it’s my birthday and the day that OS X was released. And April 1st because it’s my Anniversary with Apple as the day I started working for them and it’s also Apple’s anniversary as it’s first day as a Corporation. Two amazing coincidences marking destiny!

    Reply

  9. The silky noose tightens ever so gently, the beast is not aware until too late…
    Once aware of the eminent danger, the howling, the gnashing, the spasms, only serve to make the noose ever tighter.

    This Game was won 6 years ago, those that lost are only now becoming aware of the noose.

    iTunes is a freely installed a trojan (Quicktime+Bonjour) that makes AppleTV, ipod, and Airport possible on Windoze, and there is not one thing M$ can do about it. Their fate and the fate of their “Partners” (sycophants if you ask me) is sealed.

    How sweet to be vindicated after all these years! The sound of gnashing teeth is iMusic to my tired ears.

    Reply

  10. I jumped on OS X with Jaguar, too. I noticed right away that it was slower than OS 9. But, I was willing to put up with the system slowness as a trade off for its stability (never had a kernel panic on any version of OS X, ever (fingers crossed) and only 2 system freezes that required a reboot), the improved graphics (brighter and clearer), better audio (MUCH louder), and improved memory management.

    Compare the change in overall system speed in going from OS 10.2 to 10.4.9 vs. Windoze 98 to XP SP2. Marked increases for OS X and marginal for Winblows, at best!

    Reply

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