So when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X, it’s important to realize what we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating a software release that was the culmination of Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. We’re celebrating the operating system we still use, two decades later. But we’re also celebrating the foundation of iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
In that way, this isn’t just the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X 10.0. It’s the 20th anniversary of modern Apple, and the end of the dark days when Apple couldn’t fix its own operating system.
Category: Apple History
Twenty Years Ago Today, Apple Shipped Mac OS X
It’s hard to believe that Mac OS X macOS is two decades old, but it’s true. On March 24, 2001, Apple released the first non-beta version of Mac OS X 10.0:
The release followed years of development that took NeXT’s technology and molded it into an operating system for the Mac. That process took longer than Apple had predicted, and included a false start known as Rhapsody. That’s really a story for a different time, but in short, that operating system strategy left classic Mac OS developers without a way forward for their applications that didn’t require rewriting them, and the community soundly rejected the entire thing.
The Sad Story of the Centris
When you think about desktop Macs from the 90s, names like LC, Performa, Quadra and Power Macintosh come to mind.
That’s pretty understandable. Apple shipped a bunch of those models. Nine Macs bore the name LC, while there were 11 Quadras, 24 Power Macs and a whopping 44 Performas.1
Then there’s the Centris line of Macs. Here’s the list of models that wore that name:
- Centris 610
- Centris 650
- Centris 660AV
Yep, just three Macs, all for sale for less than a year in 1993. In fact, the 660AV was for sale for a mere three months in the fall of that year, making my example a real treasure.
Mars Perseverance Rover Powered by PowerPC 750⇢
Joanna Nelius at Gizmodo, writing about the CPU at the heart of NASA’s newest rover:
The PowerPC 750 was a single-core, 233MHz processor, and compared to the multi-core, 5.0GHz-plus frequencies modern consumer chips can achieve, 233MHz is incredibly slow. But the 750 was the first to incorporate dynamic branch prediction, which is still used in modern processors today. Basically, the CPU architecture is making an educated guess on what instructions the CPU is going to process as a way to improve efficiency. The more information that’s processed, the better the chip gets at predicting what it needs to do next.
Looking Back at Mac OS X Snow Leopard⇢
I wanted to be certain that my fond memories of Snow Leopard weren’t just nostalgia. While I am confident when I say that Snow Leopard is the most stable version of Mac OS, I wanted to make sure its user interface was really the good user interface and experience I was remembering. So, after a few frustrating attempts at creating a virtual machine on my current iMac with Mac OS High Sierra, I decided to install Snow Leopard on a USB flash drive, and boot my 2009 MacBook Pro (yes, it’s still alive & kicking) in Snow Leopard from that flash drive.
2001 Revisited: Macworld Expo Tokyo
In my series 2001 Revisited, I’m covering Apple’s major announcements from 20 years ago.
On February 22 of that year, Steve Jobs put on a suit and tie and hosted Macworld Expo Tokyo. Video of the event can be seen here, and a lot of it is a rehashing of the San Francisco event that took place just six weeks earlier.1
Recapping Previous News
Jobs recapped the value of Mac OS X, including the new features, the Classic, Carbon and Cocoa environments and more. He then gave a demo of the Aqua user interface and some region-specific features including support for the world’s first high-quality Japanese fonts shipping for free on a personal computer.
Newton Press⇢
25 years ago, Apple introduced software named Newton Press:
Using an easy drag-and-drop method, Newton Press users can create electronic reference documents or Newton books from files on a Mac OS-based personal computer. These books are created by simply dropping files onto the Newton Press icon on the Macintosh, which automatically formats the document so it can be viewed on a Newton Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) such as the MessagePad. Newton Press supports a variety of word processing, text, or graphics documents supported by the Claris XTND technology for the Mac OS.
Taking a Seat at the MacTable⇢
I’ve come across images of this thing in the past, but Quinn went on a deep dive on one of the most unusual Macintosh accessories ever made:
Don’t worry, I’ve already called dibs on that Portrait Display.
Apple Beige⇢
Apple’s second computer — its first to have a case — launched in 1977, and that boxy beige Apple II was soon everywhere: in classrooms, living rooms and offices. At the vanguard of a generation of personal computers to come, it featured a particular and carefully-chosen beige. But what did that look like? Those first machines — the ones that have escaped landfills anyway — have shifted in color over 40 years. The documented public record is sketchy and confused. But I stumbled upon a way to investigate what Apple Beige was like.
2001 Revisited: Macworld San Francisco
In my series 2001 Revisited, I’m covering Apple’s major announcements from 20 years ago. This month, we’re looking at Macworld San Francisco.
To kick off what would be a very busy year, Steve Jobs took to the Macworld stage in San Francisco, boasting that in addition to the 5,000 people in attendance, tens of thousands of people were watching via livestream around the world via QuickTime.
Mac OS X
Jobs started by talking about Mac OS X, recapping the new operating system’s architecture, from the kernel on up all the way to the new UI, dubbed Aqua.
2001 Revisited: A New Series
2001 was a huge year in terms of Apple history. Just check out this list of some of the announcements and news from 20 years ago:
Software
- Mac OS 9.1
- Mac OS 9.2
- Mac OS X 10.0
- Mac OS X 10.1
- iTunes
Hardware
- Titanium PowerBook G4
- First SuperDrive
- White iBook G3
- Power Mac G4 QuickSilver
- Original iPod
- Two iMac G3 revisions
Throughout 2021, I’ll be writing about some of these topics in a new series. I’m looking forward to reliving a wild year in Apple’s history.
Upgrading a Titanium PowerBook with an SSD⇢
I spent my morning cracking open my all-time favorite Apple notebook to make it a lot faster by installing an SSD. The video is up on Twitch now, and proved to be quite the adventure.