Happy 4th Birthday, Mac OS X!
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
[Thanks to “macnut222” for the reminder – and it’s on our iCal calendars and everything!]
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Happy 3rd birthday, Mac OS X! – March 24, 2004
Happy Birthday
This first post thing is not that difficult, is it?
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I guess it is…
ah the memories! I think back then my OS 9 machine would crash like twice a day.
changed my expectations of what an OS should be forever
Some things improve as they age – as has the Apple Mac OS X. Other things tend to fall apart and break down… as in Windows.
This PC on my desktop (Windows XP) has been up for over six hours now. Last rebooted because of domain authentication problems.
The iMac at home (OS X, 10.3) has been up for a few weeks. Probably last rebooted for some upgrade, not a crash.
My domain server (Debian Linux on Power Mac 7300/180) has been up for eighteen months! Last rebooted because of an extended power outage. And the reboot before that, over two years ago, was for UPS installation.
Given the same kind of usage, OS X’s stability is closer to Debian than to Windows.
NOT SO FAST! OS X Finder window list updating is still so poor as to border on being a lo-tech joke… and they’ve only had 4 years to fix it. I’d almost prefer the odd OS 9 crash than to suffer this constant daily frustration.
Happy B-Day and THANK YOU to all of the current and former Apple/NeXT Employees who made it possible through tons of hard work.
Thanx also go to the developers of the many Open Source and Open Standards projects that Apple has built into or uses in OS X.
Thanx to the Developers, especially the “ground floor” ones, who made the great effort to rewrite their apps on a brand new platform.
Thanx to all of the resellers and my fellow Mac users who supported the Mac and this transition to an all new OS.
It’s a good day and a good time to be a Mac user.
Twenty Benson — I’ve noticed that too . . . and I HATE IT! Why the hell do I have to click on an actual item to get it to update?!?!?!?
DEFINITELY an item that needs to be addressed. But I’ll still take OS X over anything else, anyday.
and a preview version of AppleWorks® 6.1, Apple’s award-winning productivity application
uh … what award did Appleworks win, and was it perhaps self-conferred?
As an aside, is Appleworks officially dead now that iWork is on the scene? I guess the spreadsheet capabilities are still missing.
“…..In addition, Mac OS X includes hundreds of new features, such as:…………..
…….QuickTime 5, shipping for the first time as an integrated feature of Mac OS X……”
uhhh…. I still have a Classic Mac running OS 9.1 (online)…and its running QT 6.0.3….
Are we going backwards in time now ??
Could you please be more specific? I’ve never heard of that problem before…
slooooooow news day, eh?
In that case there HAVE to be real viruses in the wild by now.
“OS X Finder window list updating is still so poor as to border on being a lo-tech joke… and they’ve only had 4 years to fix it. I’d almost prefer the odd OS 9 crash than to suffer this constant daily frustration.”
I’ve only noticed it as a minor inconvenience. As several other things in OS X are minor inconvenicnes. Taken on the whole OS X is not 100% perfect but is much better than anything previous.
You would rather your entire OS crash than have to click on something to update it ????????
My first experience with Mac OS 4 in 1984 was a great time. Every version since then has been so much better. OS X rocks! Just think, on this very day in some far off decade, Micro$hit will release their new OS, Bunghole (or something like that). It will be much improved over the current Windoze, but will still be like running OS 9 beta…
It took guts to re-make the OS, both on Apple’s part and by the intrepid warriors who first partitioned their hard drives and (bought and) fearlessly installed the OS X Beta.
Kudos to you both. It is such a great OS.
For a moment I actually thought, “What the heck is iTools?”
“OS X Finder window list updating is still so poor as to border on being a lo-tech joke… and they’ve only had 4 years to fix it. I’d almost prefer the odd OS 9 crash than to suffer this constant daily frustration.”
Agreed (on the ridiculousness of this). Windows at least has a refresh command (F5) to update window contents, it’s beyond reason why a) this is still a problem, and b) why there isn’t a quick workaround for it.
IIRC, the WWDC build of Tiger had a much more responsive Finder. (Practically) Instantaneous updating. However, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, so if anyone has used a newer version of Tiger (especially build 8A420) can you please post to confirm or deny this?
I’m amazed that the software developers mentioned in the release did not include Adobe.
Can’t imagine life on OSX without Photoshop or PDF.
Not sure I have notice the Finder list updating a problem myself… perhaps I’m slow too.
One wonders if anyone ever celebrates the birth of anything Windows?
window list updating…
if that is the worst problem you can find with OS X you may want to consider if you are a rather uptight person…
not saying you are but how about a little gratitude for the overall success of OS X and its vast superiority over ANY other operating system.
in this day and age, a little less criticism and a little more encouragement goes a long way…
now get outside and get some fresh air…
Slow finder updating. Great freaking gigabit ethernet then! It’s plenty fast with that.
Sheesh. Some people will complain if you hung ’em with a new rope.