Category: Apple History

On March 24, 2001, Apple launched Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah, the first non-beta release of the company’s new operating system.

To celebrate its 15th birthday, I’ve rounded up some links worth checking out:

• Video of the Mac OS X introduction at Macworld San Francisco 2000
• John Siracusa’s review of Cheetah, part of nearly a decade and a half of OS X reviews.
• ‘Looking back at OS X’s origins’ by Benj Edwards for Macworld
• ‘On the past, present and future of Apple’s Aqua interface’ with bonus Cheetah screenshots

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On today’s Upgrade, Jason Snell suggested that I should post annotations based on Apple’s “40 Years in 40 Seconds” video. So here we go:

• April 1, 1976: Apple Computer, Inc. is founded.
• Apple I: Selling for $666.66, this is the garage-built computer that started it all. It lacked the switches and lights of computers that came before it.
• “Bicycle for the mind:” A reference to an amazing Steve Jobs clip.
• Apple II: Apple’s first commercial success led to a whole series of computers sold from 1977 to 1993.
• Lisa: A personal computer designed and sold by Apple leading up the Macintosh that introduced a lot of elements the Mac would popularize. Was done in by its price and lack of software.
• Macintosh: The 128k machine with a GUI and a mouse that changed the world.
• 1984: The Super Bowl ad that introduced the Macintosh to the world.
• One click: The Mouse is easier than you’d think. Take a Macintosh out for a test drive.
• Three steps: There is no step 3! THERE’S NO STEP 3!
• The Happy Mac used to greet you as your machine booted up. It got replaced way back in 2002.
• MacPaint and MacWrite showed what the original Macintosh was capable of, even with its limited resources and lack of multitasking.
• Think different: Here’s to the crazy ones.
• iMac: The computer that saved Apple.
• Tangerine, Lime, Strawberry, Blueberry, Grape, Yum!
• Kill the floppy: Where we’re going, we don’t need floppies.
• QuickTime: powering multimedia on the Mac and beyond since 1991.
• Chic, not Geek
• Don’t get John Siracusa started on the Finder.
• The PowerMac and PowerBook let Mac users get their work done with grace and in style for years.
• MacBook: One of these computers. Seriously, Apple.
• The cost of a song? Just 99 cents.
• 1,000 songs in your pocket
• Apple Store: Serving customers since 2001.
• App Store: Serving customers since 2008.
• Genius: That kid that who fixed your iPhone last year.
• OS X: The desktop operating of choice for nerds who care since March 2001.
• iOS: The mobile operating of choice for the masses since 2007.
• While Apple tried deleting the Newton, it lives on in the hearts of enthusiasts.
• Macs come with the Trash, as opposed to the Recycling Bin found on Windows, which is ironic.
• The F-sharp chime is what you hear when you power on your Mac or when Wall-E reaches full charge.
• MagSafe: The best way to charge a laptop, ever.
• RIP, iPod classic.
• The iPod mini made music fashionable and the iPod nano made it colorful.
• iPod shuffle: Life should be random. (Also, uh, don’t eat it.)
• The iPod touch: it’s like an iPhone, but for kids!
• iPhone: “So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone … are you getting it?
• iPad: What Steve Jobs called a “magical and revolutionary device.”
• Basically, iSight is another name Apple has used over and over.
• iLife and iWork: Create and work on your Mac.
• iPhoto: One part of the Digital Hub strategy.
• Photo Booth: Say cheese!
• MacBook Air: OS X, in a thin and light package.
• iTunes: I’d say something clever, but my Mac is locked up at the moment.
• iMovie: Making home videos more fun since 1999!
• I’m a PC. I’m a Mac.
• FaceTime: Video conferencing in the palm of your hand.
• AirPort: Wireless networking with the best tech demo ever.
• Spinning Beachball: [See iTunes.]
• Time Machine & Time Capsule: Backups for everyone.
• GarageBand turns your Mac or iOS device into a music or podcast studio.
• Keynote: Kicking PowerPoint’s ass for over a decade.
• Hey Siri: Did your iPhone just go off? Mine just went off.
• There’s an App for that, and it’s probably free with in-app purchase.
• Two finger scrolling made PowerBook owners feel like gods.
• Multi-Touch: If you see a stylus, they blew it!
• Magic Mouse & Magic TrackPad: Giving gestures to all Mac users.
• Apple’s input methods have evolved over time: Point-and-click, Swipe-and-tap, Drag-and-drop & Pinch-to-zoom.
• Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah: Unix — and Aqua — on the Mac.
• Mac OS X 10.1 Puma: A free update bringing speed and stability to OS X.
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar: Rendezvous, more robust QuickTime playback and SMB support.
• Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Brushed Metal, Fast User Switching, Safari and iChat AV.
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Spotlight, QuickTime 7 and Dashboard widgets.
• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: A unified appearance, Time Machine, Quick Look and Spaces.
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: “No new features,” but 64-bit support, Grand Central Dispatch and more were under the hood.
• OS X Lion: AirDrop, iOS-like UI changes and Auto-Save.
• OS X Mountain Lion: Notification Center, Game Center and Messages.
• OS X Mavericks: Banishing of leather and linen, and some other stuff that’s way less exciting to talk about like timer coalescing and compressed memory.
• OS X Yosemite: Aqua gets a makeover.
• OS X El Capitan: Subtle refinements.
• Earbuds: Everyone can party in the style of the dancing iPod people.
• Dock: Still better than Windows’ taskbar.
• Xcode: Where all the apps are born.
• Safari: Like Chrome, but kinda worse.
• When you can’t see the pixels, you can call it Retina.
• Smart Cover: Brighten up your iPad, unless you have a 12.9-inch Pro.
• iMessage: Your texts, mostly synced across devices.
• iChat: How you used AIM after you rage-quit Adium for the last time.
• iBooks: Something some people apparently use.
• Touch ID: Unlock your device with just your fingerprint.
• Find my iPhone: For finding stolen phones and those lost in the cushions.
• AirPlay and AirDrop: slinging video or files between devices, if you’re lucky.
• Apple Watch: Apple’s most personal device yet.
• Apple Music: Stream and connect with artists you love.
• Apple TV: The future is apps.
• April 1, 2016: Apple, Inc will turn 40.

This is a fun way to take a trip down memory lane. I find it notable that the only mid-90s, Jobs-less Apple items that made the list besides the PowerMacs and PowerBooks were the QuickTime and Newton. Rough day for you Performa fans.

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Jason Snell and … well … yours truly:

Located at 4 Infinite Loop on Apple’s main campus, the Town Hall conference center was probably designed more for in-company meetings than for major events covered by worldwide media. And yet on numerous occasions over the years, it’s been exactly that.

Monday’s event in Town Hall could very well be the last hurrah for the old 300-seat venue, given that Apple is constructing a 1,000-seat auditorium in its new campus, due to open next year. Before it goes, here’s a look back at key public events in Town Hall, starting in late 2001.

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Kirk McElhearn has put together a pretty comprehensive timeline of major user-facing features Apple has added to OS X over its lifetime.

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This month on iMore, I looked at one of my all-time favorite Macs: the iMac G4:

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On September 20, 1989, Jean-Louis Gassée introduced the Macintosh Portable in what has to be one of the more unique keynotes Apple ever held:

In the video, you can see Gassée explain the company’s goals for the system, then he assembles a unit on stage. It’s great, albeit pretty weird.

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Since 1994 with its first consumer offering, Apple has been a company that loves cameras.

Apple has been into cameras for a long time with its iOS devices, computers and even iPods.

Of course, today, we use FaceTime video without a second thought, but a decade ago, video chatting seemed like magic. In 2003, Apple brought it to the masses with iChat AV and the iSight camera.

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Dan Vanderkam, writing in 1998, about the very first version of the Mac’s operating system:

OK, the last first glimpse difference is probably the biggest shocker. In the disk, you can see the icon of a system folder. You can also see that there’s only 196K in the disk! This means that the system folder on it must be positively tiny! Well, as you can see from the list view at the right, that’s darned true. Yes, that’s the COMPLETE system folder! For some comparison, look at it this way: In system 7, the scrapbook file alone is usually twice as large as this system folder! Ahh, if only apple still made things this small. Nowadays, a full system folder easily tops 100 megs, and can easily have over a thousand items in it. A thousand! That’s a far cry from the six that made up the original system folder.

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The 20th Anniversary Mac is one of the most unique and unusual computers Apple has ever released.

When it went for sale in 1997 with a $7,500 price tag, it didn’t do amazingly well in the market. While only 11,600 were sold, each one was built to be special. The TAM doesn’t share the same startup chime or paint color as other Macs of its age, and the one-off ADB keyboard featured a leather palm rest and removable trackpad. The mouse was too common for users of this machine. Apple could even send someone to set up the entire system for you. Rumor has it that they would do so in a tuxedo.

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The 20th Anniversary Mac is a unique computer, and the newest in my collection. It came with a bunch of discs, including an interactive Welcome Tour that is … weird.

Really weird.

Even for 1997.

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Nick Heer, following up on my article about the Harry Potter iPod:

Coincidentally, I remembered just recently that this particular special edition iPod existed. It carries model number MA215LL/A and only occasionally seems to crop up on eBay. I could find very few photos of it, one of which is on a fantastic Polish “iPod museum” site, and another in a MacRumors thread.

In trying to find photos of that, I came across some more collector edition iPods which are arguably even harder to find, each engraved with the signatures of Beck, Madonna, or Tony Hawk. There was even one more engraved with the No Doubt logo.

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This month in my column at iMore, I wrote all about iTools, iCloud’s great-grandfather:

In the beginning — 1994, to be exact — there was eWorld. It was weird, expensive, and poorly marketed. To no one’s surprise, it went away.

Six years later, there was iTools. iTools begat .Mac; .Mac begat MobileMe — and a lot of yelling; MobileMe begat iCloud.

Maybe the best article intro I’ve ever written.

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