Ten Years of Mac OS X

8/7/2019 Ten Years of Mac OS X

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www.macworld.co.uk . ., 10yea rso iMacOSX

enWe get a little misty eyed looking back over a decade of Apple'sgroundbreaking desktop operating system. By Michael Burns


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www.macworld.co.uk

On 5 January, 2000, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Steve Jobsunveiled Mac OS X 10.0. "Apple's innova tion is leading the way in personalcomputer operating systems once again," he told a world dominated byWindows 98. However, Mac users would have to wait more than a yearfor t he full product to hi t the shelves.

Some of the technology behind it had first appeared in Mac OSX Server 1.0 in March 1999. A hybrid of a Unix kernel, Unix-basedapplication programmi ng interfaces {A Pis) and the existing Mac OS8.5.1, the server software featured t he Classic interface, the 'Cocoa'

Mac OSX21st century boy The Mac OS

environment for running native! Mac OS X Server programs andt he 'Blue Box' environment.w h ich wou ld launch and run t heClass ic Mac OS in a window. InSeptember 2000. Apple re leasedt he Publ ic Beta of Mac OS X10.0, os tensibly for the use ofdevelopers and ea rly adopters.

Following this t ria l period,and responding to the feedbackof 75,000 users, the ful l retailversion shipped on 24 March,2001. Code named Cheetah, itcost 99 (74 fo r owners of t hePub lic Beta). It ran on PowerMacs w ith G3 and G4 PowerPC

redefined for the 21st century as a processors, and required 128MBUnix-based operating system of RAM, which was a sizeable

leap in memory demands.With a core comprised of the open-source Uni x-based Darwin kernel,Cheetah revolut ion ised the Finder with a new visual appearance thatoffered luminous and semi-transparent elements, such as buttons, scrollbars and w indows. The Dock provided access to appl ications, completewith fluid animation, whi le under the bonnet Mac OS X offered protectedmemory, fu l ly in ternet-standard TCP/IP networking and ful l pre-emptivemultitasking fo r smoother operation among multiple application s.

Apple's new operating system offered 3D graphics and gaming viaOpenGL, wh ile the Quartz 2D engine powered tex t and graph ics. Cheetahalso introduced a stable version of Carbon, an API that allowed backwardcompatibilit y wi th applicat ions written for Mac OS 8 and 9, and providedthe Class ic Environment to r un older programs in a similar fashion to t heBlue Box of t he server. Around 350 Mac OS X appl ications we re ava ilableon t he day of its launch. Two months later Apple opened its fi rst retailstores. in Virginia and California.

user mterface and anli -ahasing o f graph1cs

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25 September, 2001Almost fou r months aftershipping Mac OS X 10.0,Apple previewed version 10.1,codenamed Pum a. "This newve rsion of Mac OS X is rea llyfast, and incorporates manysuggest ions from our users , suchas t he moveable Dock that canbe placed on t he left, bottomor right edge of t he screen,"explained Steve Jobs at hisMacworld Expo Keynote on 18July. "We 've fi xed a lot of bugs,and added a lo t of great newfeatures. like burning CDs rightfrom t he Finder and the abil ity

Puma

MacOSXInto the blue Aqua-inspired, theshm y g lass o f Lhe big X remained as

t o seamlessly network w ith a simp le yet evocative designWindows clients and servers."

Costing 99, or free for existing Mac OS X users, Puma had enhancedsystem performance, especially for application launch t ime and w indowres izing. New system status icons on the menu ba r provided easieraccess to common ly used functions. convenient monitori ng of wire lessnetworks and battery charging. Sending, receiving, opening and readingfiles became eas ier w ith t he new automated file extension managementcapability; and t he re was a DVD player w it h t he ability to burn DVD-Rdata discs directly in t he Finder. Puma also introduc ed ColorSync 4.0 w ithsupport for ICC colour management and easier printing, wh ile there wereen hancements to AppleScript, OpenGL and audio capabilit ies, as well asan improved iDi sk based on WebDAV.

Major Mac OS X applications available at launch included Int uitQuicken Deluxe 2002, Alias/Wavefront 's Maya, Internet Exp lorer 5.1,Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0, Macro media FreeHand 10, Aspyr's Tony Hawk'sPro Skater 2, Aladdin's Stuff i t Deluxe, Pro Create Painter 7, FileMakerPro, and a host of products from Symantec. QuarkXPress and AdobePhotoshop were still notable by their absence from t he roster, though agreat ly anticipated application was Microsoft's Of fice v.X for Mac.

A month after the launch, Apple in troduced "the iPod - abreakthrough MP3 music player that stores up to 1,000 CO -qu alitysongs on it s super-th in 5GB hard drive."

Support system As well as App le programs , Puma wassupported by over 1,000 third-par ty native applications


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24 August, 2002Previewed in May 2002 bySteve Jobs at App le's worldw idedevelopers conference (WWDC)in San Jose, California, Mac OSX 10.2 Jaguar, introduced a hostof new features. These i ncluded:Quartz Extreme, a hardwareaccelerated version of the Quartzgraphics and compos it ingen gine; an enhanced Finder,wi t h spring-loaded fo lders andinstant searching; and version 6of Quicklime, making it the firstcomplete solution for industrystandard MPEG-4 video andAAC audio streaming.

Jaguar was the fi rst Appleoperat ing system to come wi th

Jaguar

Jag-wire Pixar rendered the X in 3DJaguar fur and Jobs' pronunciationbecame a catchphrase

Rendezvous (since renamed Bonjour), a t ech nology that locates otherdevices on an IP network, such as computers,and lets other users accesstheir se rvices. There was also increased Windows network interoperabilitywi th SMB browsing and sharing, as well as bu il t-in PPTP VPN security.Apple's AIM-compatible instant messaging software, iCha t , was bui ltinto Mac OS X and integrated wi th the new Mail an d Address Bookapp lica t ions. Jaguar also sh ipped wi th Unix tools for deve lopers, w hil e the18-year-old Ha ppy Mac start up icon was replaced by th e Apple logo.

Adverts extolling t he benefits for Windows users, w ho could 'switch'to the Mac had been run ning all year, but Apple had no t yet addressedthe fact that only around 10 per cent of the 20 million existing Appleusers had switched to Mac OS X as t hei r primary operating system.Meanwhi le, Windows XP, which sh ipped just after Mac OS X 10.1, hadso ld more t han so million licences in under a year.

Jaguar's launch was marked by la te night kick-off events at the35 Apple reta il stores in the US. Around 100,000 copies of th e 99software were sold worldwide in the first weekend. "Jaguar is our fastestout-of-the-gate OS re lease eve r, and it's looking li ke a home run ," SteveJobs said abou t the sales figures. "The reviews are off the charts, andcustomers are raving about Jaguar's stabil ity, speed, new features andWindows compatib ility."

At Septembe r's Apple Expo Paris, App le announced that fro m January2003, all new Mac models would only boot into Mac OS X, tho ugh t heywou ld be able to run Mac OS 9 applications through t he Classic software .

Search and spring-loaded folders Jaguar's Finder. enhancedby OuartL Extreme. now feature d spring-loaded folders

~ , 10 yea 1s of Mac OS X

PantherThe year began w ith App le launching a raft of products, among t hemSafari, ilife, Keynote, Final Cut Express, Xl l, the groundbreaking 12inand 17in PowerBook G4 models, and the Xserve RAID storage systemwas introduced. AI Go re jo ined Apple's board of di rectors. The iTunesMusic Store appeared in Apri l and sold over a million songs in its firstweek. Th ere we re seven million Mac OS X users by t he middle of t heyear, which also saw t he introduction of the Power Mac GS, featur ingthe world's first 64-bit desktopprocessorand the industry's fi rstlGHz fron t -s ide bus .

However, the announcementof a new version of t he operatingsystem was delayed unti l th eWWDC in June, with Mac OSX 10.3 Pan ther finally shippingon 24 Octobe r. "Pa nt her set sthe new gold standard foroperat ing sys t ems," explainedSteve Jobs . "With more than 150new fea tures, we're deliveringinnovations today th at will no tbe seen in any other operatingsystem fo r years to come."

One of these was Exp os e, arevolutionary way to instant lyv iew all open w indows byreducing th eir size so th at they

Brushed up well App le's intimidatingbranding for Panther a brushedmetal X on a black background

all fi t on a Mac's screen. Powered by the Quartz graphics engine, Exposeproved to be a breakthrough in wo rki ng with mu ltiple files, applicationsand projects. The new Finder provided one-click access by putting a user'sfavourite fol ders, storage, servers and iDisk in one convenient location,w hile offering dynamic browsing of the network fo r Mac, Windows andUnix fi le se rvers. Fast User Switching allow ed several people to use thesame Mac wi t hout having to qui t appl icat ions or log out .

Panther also int roduced Fil eVault , a 128 -bit encryp tion technologydesigned to ensure tha t data in the home directory is kept secure, andFont Book to provide system -level fon t management . Enh ancementswere made to Preview, Address Book, iDisk and Ma il, whi le W indowscompatibil ity increased, so fi les, printers and network services could besh ared wi th Windo ws users.

The price of t he operat ing system re mained at 99 and its speedincreases were widely welcomed.

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Red letter day Font Book offered letter-perfect typema nagement and one-click preview and installation or fonts

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Leopard26 October, 2007Previewed at WWDC in August 2006, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard offeredaround 300 new features. Chief among these was nm e Machine, a utilitythat automatically backed up your files in case they need to be restoredlater; Spaces, a ne w way to switch between groups of applicationsrequired for various tasks; and Boot Camp, which made it possible to runWindows natively on Intel-based Macs. Core Animation, a new graphicstechnology made it easy to create visual effects and animations, andjo ined major en hancementsin Universal Access and ne wfeatures in Mail and iChat. Theredesigned 30 Dock with Stacksoffered a new way to organi sefi les for quick and easy accesswith just one click, while QuickLook offered instant full -screen,h igh-resolution views of VIrtuallyanything , even media files. fromany view in the Finder.

"Breakthrough features li keTime Machine and Spaces aregood examples of how Mac OSX leads the industry in operatingsystem innovatron", said SteveJobs. "While Microsoft tr ies tocopy the version of OS X we

Cosmic thing The box shrinks butTime Machrne-rnspired graphrcs delrvergalactrc bac kdrop to 'Brg X'

shipped a few years ago, we' re leaping ahead again with leopard"."In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of

new features that make Mac s even easier to use." wrote Walt Mossbergin The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile Claudine Beaumont, writing inThe Daily Telegraph, said ofT ime Machine: " It's simp le and intuitive, andthe clever graphical user interface makes restoring files much easierthan ri fling through root directories or comp licated menus. This featureis worth the money on its own, especially if your usual 'housekeeping'routines leave somethin g to be desired."

Whi le maintaining fu ll performance and compatibility for ex isting32-bit Mac OS X app lications and drivers.Leopard also allowedapp lications to take complete advantage of native 64-bit processing.This was in keeping with both Windows Vista and Linux, which werealready taking advantage of this technology. leopard ran on bothPowerPC and Intel Macs, but support for the G3 processor was dropped.

At the other end of the scale, Jobs unveiled the iPhone to an


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I ISnow Leopard28 August, 2009"We have delivered more thana thousand new featuresto OS X in just seven yearsand Snow Leopard lays thefoundation for thousandsmore", said Bertrand Serlet,Apple's senior vice presidentof software engineeringat thenow traditional OS preview at2009's WWDC. "In our continuedeffort to deliver the best userexperience, we hi t the pausebutton on new features to focus

Mac OS XSnow Leopard

on perfecting the world's most Pu rr-faction The missing X-logoadvanced operating system". suggests that Snow Leopard s a

Launched just over a year refmement rather than a rebootafter Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6Snow Leopard offered 64 -bit versions of applications including Mail, iCal,iChat and Finder (completely rewritten in Apple's native Cocoa AP I). Inorder to take advantage of multi"core processors. Grand Central Dispatch{GCD) was integrated throughout the operat ing system, from newsystem-wide APis to high-level frameworks and programming languageextensions. It could take advantage of the powerof graphic processingunits (GPUs) usmg OpenCL. a C-based open standard. Snow Leopardincluded Quicklime X, which featured a redesigned full-screen player thatallowed users to easily view, record, trim and share video, as we ll as a64-bi t version ofSafari 4 that was up to 50 per cent faster and resistantto crashes caused by plug-ins. It also featured built-in support fo rMicrosoft Exchange Server 2007, the only desktop operating systemto do so. However, it wou ld on ly run on Intel-based Macs wit h at leas t1GB of RAM.

Snow leopard was released as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard usersfo r 25, was ha lf t he size of t he previous ve rsion and freed up to 7GBofdrive space once installed. "The combination of the re fin ement s, theperformance enhancements and the new features means that paying theasking price is a no brainer,"reported The Gvardian.

In the meantime, Apple sold its one millionth iPhone 3G just threedays after i ts launch on 11 July, 2008. This feat was repeated by the3GS, which also racked up sales of over one million within three days ofits launch on 18 June, 2009. Meanwhile, the App Store swelled to over100,000 apps, with over two billion downloads by Q3 2009.

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LionExpected Summer 2011On 20 October, 2010. Apple gave a sneak peek of Mac OS X 10.7 lion.Scheduled to ship ths summer, the operating system is inspi red by manyof the iPad's software mnovat ions.

Presented by Steve Jobs, the Back to the Mac session introduced someelements of Lion such as the Mac OS App Store, which follows a similarmodel to the online resource for iPhone/iPad users and will provideone-st ep installation of Apps and automat ic upda tes. The ful l -screendisplay of apps, as seen on t he iPad, will become a standard feature oflion, al lowing users to bring an app to ful l-screen wi th one click, swit chto another fu ll-screen app w ith a swipe ofthe t rackpad and swipe backto th e deskt op to access mu lti-window apps. Wheneve r you downloada program from the App Store. it will be displayed on l aunch Pad .

Lau nch Pad will be a new way to access and launch all applicationson the Mac. One swipe with a gesture-capable device will displaymultiple pages of apps, and you can arrange them any way you likeby dragging an application's icon to a new location or by groupingt hem in folders.

Big cat diary Could 'Back to the Mac' hint at

Utilit ies in Snowleopard such asExpose, Dashboardand Spaces arebrought together inlion's Mission Control,which offers aninnovative new viewof everything runningon your Mac, allowingyou to instantlynavigate anywhere.

"lion brings manyof the bes t ideas fromiPad back to t he Mac,

a 1eturn to Apple brandmg geniu s? plus some fresh newones like Mission

Control that Mac users will really like," said Jobs at the event . "lion has aton of new features, and we hope the few we had time to preview todaywill give users a good idea ofwhere we are headed."

Apple previewed some further features of lion in Feb ruary, wh enit released a developer preview. These included a new version of Mail,plus AirDrop, a way of syncing Macs wirelessly. An updated version ofFileVault will encrypt the whole system. Read more on lion'sfeatures inthe News section.

New launch Lion's new Launch Pad gives you instant accessto your apps - Pad style

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Ten Years of Mac OS X