Happy 14th birthday, OS X!
Here’s the official 2001 Apple press release announcing the availability of the world’s most advanced operating system:
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 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.
Source: Apple
MacDailyNews Take: Minimum requirement: 128MB of RAM!
Happy Birthday Mac OSX.
One of Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s finest accomplishments.
128 MB haha, I remember when “five-twelve” was the cool thing. “Yeah, this thing’s running five-twelve.”
Where’d the time go. Seems like yesterday we were f’n with SCSI terminators.
Ahem, some of us are still dealin’ with ’em. little beasties.
My condolences.
Ironically, George Newbern, the reader of the Audible unabridged version of Becoming Steve Jobs, is pronouncing it OS EX instead of TEN.😱👀😣😩😁😔😡
If you the OS X dictation feature you need to say OS X not OS 10. (“typed” by using the OS X dictation feature.)
I’m referring to the Audible book not dictation. 👀
I’d think the OS would know its own name.
I went to a release party at a local Mac Reseller that day. I had a T-shirt with the Blue X on it but I lost it somewhere. I remember the demos, especially the pulsing green sleep light on a Pismo Powerbook, and how it woke immediately from sleep? It was pretty cool.
OS X Public Beta was a blast. It was kinda shaky but even then you could tell this was the real deal.
14 years old but IMAP email died at age 12 due to Cook and Federighi not giving a rats ass about their enterprise clients and sys admins.
AppleWorks 🙂
14 years and still zero viruses in the wild. Awesome!!
The big OS X virus must surely be due any day now ? Those who don’t use OS X have been assuring us that it will be just around the corner for the last 14 years.
Virus free here, but obviously many are dealing with adware on Safari.
And apple only charged you $600 for 128MB RAM! What a deal!
I hear ISIS is still recruiting, and you’d be a perfect fit.
I remember getting my first iMac 15 years ago, and barely used it because I found OS 9 a bit daunting. It wasn’t horrible, I was just had a PC for so long that I wasn’t used to a new operating system. I saw the beta and got my copy and never looked back on the PC. I have been using OS X for 14-15 years and thank Apple for providing me with a great operating system.
iMovie, Pages, Numbers, Keynote…all provided free now. These are amazing professional quality tools that you get with OS X now. I left iDVD off because well who has DVD’s anymore but it was also an awesome program.
Thanks Apple, Happy Birthday to the amazing OS X team!
My first exposure to Mac OS was way back in System 6. I must say that the old Mac OS 9 still holds a special place in my heart. The majority of any problems could always be traced back to extension. There was never anything good old Conflict Catcher couldn’t find. Very fond memories…
Moving along from the Mac OS and its updates from version 6 or so to version 9 it was clear that spontaneous crashes did not augur well for the continued existence of Apple Computer. When Copeland failed to arrive, things looked really bad. The introduction of OS X was nothing less than the key to the survival of the company. Clearly, dedicated OS X users wouldn’t dream of moving to an alternative operating system environment, and as others began to use it they wouldn’t switch either.
Steve said that this was their OS for the next 15 years. Well, that seemed to be a long time. But one year from now, it will be up. Makes me wonder.
Sorry about the facelift dear. Perhaps another GUI surgeon can fix it for you. 🇴🇴🇵🇸🍋🍋🍋
OSX hit its stride with Jaguar, 10.2. Before that, it was shaky.
From a professional’s point of view, where efficiency and stability are more important than annoying half-baked features, OS X has been in steady decline since 10.6.8.
It is time for OS XI and it needs to be fundamentally improved and more intuitive instead of flattened into an atrocious Windows 8 lookalike.
Started with the Public Beta on my iMac G3 (Blue). That was one hell of a computer that got handed down through 4 people and worked daily up until about 3 years ago.
How many remember Apple handing out T-shirts at the Apple Stores on OS X launch events? The standing in line did not start for the iPhone- to started for OS X.
Snow Leopard is still the most stable version of the OS to date. Hopefully Apple will do a Snow Leopard bug killing expedition for the next version of OS X.
It wasn’t just lack of bugs. Snow Leopard had the best feature set, too.
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