Happy 5th 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 $129 (US) beginning March 24, 2001.
Mac OS X requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on the following Apple products: iMac™, iBook, Power Macintosh® G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and any PowerBook introduced after May 1998.
Press release link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/mar/21osxstore.html
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And my 5 year old Powerbook rages on as well.
It’s been a painful 5 years but Mac OS-X rocks and that’s all that matters.
Three cheers for protected memory!
Happy Bithday OS X! 5 years, no viruses. A healthy child with room to grow.
New version of Appleworks!!
I guess Apple finally realized Pages and iWorks wasn’t going to work.
I have been using Appleworks for years, it’s really fast, feature rich and inexpensive.
Plus it opens the occassional Excell or Word file that happens to foul the taste of my M$ FREE Mac.
Other Mac users, well they are sellouts, giving M$ money and getting locked into OfficeMac. I pity them.
Of couse those running XP on their Mactels should be tarred and feathere and ran out of our cult.
No pain here. Full-time Mac OS X user since September 15, 2000 (beta days).
VISTA is for Losers,
WTF are you typing about – this is a press release from 2001 to mark Mac OS X’s official release.
iWork is the future. AppleWorks is dead.
OSX has come so far in 5 years. 10.0 was dog slow and feature empty. Comparing it to Panther or Tiger you realise just how much Apple have really achieved. Macs now run the best OS on the market. Nobody can seriously say otherwise.
Just take a moment to think about OS9. Would you go back? Not bloody likely.
This makes OS X 6 years (or is it 60?) younger than Doze 9598XPSP3.
I was an early adopter for OS X. Loved it since day one. Ok, it crawled in the beginning, but the fact that it NEVER crashed meant I no longer made marks on my walls from throwing pencils out of frustration. It was totally worth it.
Re: AppleWorks:
I love Appleworks; I have been using it since Clarisworks3. And now use Appleworks 6 which is what? four years old?
I use every function, including Draw and Paint. It opens every kind of file and you can save documents in every format you are likely to require.
The only gripe I have is that you cannot stengthen the cell borders in a spreadsheet unless you draw them.
And of course OSX rules ok!
Comming soon: CD-burning!
“It’s been a painful 5 years but Mac OS-X rocks and that’s all that matters.”
Why has it been painful? Have you been using w Wintel box at work for the last 5 years?
I’ve finally reached the point where OSX seems almost normal, and OS9 feels a little odd. Not from lack of trying; I started with a clean computer and a copy of 10.0 five years ago, today. (I still have never used the Command-N for a new window, or the column view, though. And I manually turn off the sidebar in almost every window.) Put the trash back where it belongs, and I guess I can live with it.
OSX DOES crash a bit less than 9, though it’s much harder to diagnose when it does. So I guess when you add in the nearly universal Command-H to hide applications, we’re actually ahead.
The comment by ‘VISTA is for Losers’ is by MacDude, can’t you tell by the style..and the innanity of it.
Hey, AppleWorks is still a great application, even after years of neglect.
It’s a shame that Apple creates applications with great potential and then leaves them to wither on the vine: AppleWorks, MacPaint/MacWrite, Claris Organizer, Claris Emailer, Cyberdog, OpenDoc, iCal… to name a few and the list could go on.
I’ve continued using it since version 2 or 3 and it does what I need it to do without the bloat and without my money spinning down the drain of the Quagmire of Redmond.
Yes, AppleWorks could stand to have it’s graphics engine updated and I WISH that Apple would make it fully compliant with OS X standards.
If they’d do that, AppleWorks could again be a winner.
BTW: Happy B’Day Mac OS X!. Been using you since the Public Beta and still in love!
I remember those days.
OS X really sucked back then, though.
10.3 got it right.
No more system 9 extension conflicts! whew.
And of course, no virus, malware, spyware problems.
Ahhhhhh-hah-hah-hah-hah-hahaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!
You stupid TOOL, ‘MacDude’! Or ‘Vista is for losers’! Or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself these days.
What a moron you truly are!!!!!
The release is indeed from 2001. You stupid, bulbous, assclown.
To all PC users who happen to stop by here: Note that ‘MacDude’ (or ‘Paul’, or ‘Mary’, or ‘Vista’, or ‘Shitstain’, or ‘The Worst Speller in Exisence’) is really this idiot inbred single-for-life virgin bachelor who validates his meager existence by posting here with 7 different personalities.
He should really be called ‘MacSybil’.
Sorry, I tried to put the first bit in quotes, but my html’s gone screwy…
“You stupid TOOL, ‘MacDude’! Or ‘Vista is for losers’! Or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself these days.
What a moron you truly are!!!!!
The release is indeed from 2001. You stupid, bulbous, assclown.”
That’s better.
Yes, skipping through the first couple of paras I thought they were annoncing OSX for PCs…
So….. Your Macdude sign in name got locked out of MDN and now you’re posting from a friends computer?
Hey I didn’t know you could do that. Does this work?
…ish
Bartsimpsonhead — Don’t be an Uber-Tool like MacDude.
You jackass!