Evolution of Mac OS X (Pics)

[stephenc92]

Just a little timeline of how Mac OS X has changed, from Cheetah to Leopard.
http://macslice.com/2007/10/20/the-evolution-of-mac-os-x/

 

[Variant]

That's not 10.3 x.x

 

[Capt Underpants]

Good times...

I think Panther has the best designed box.

 

[Taylor C]

I actually like Leopard's the best, followed closely behind by Tiger.

 

[72930]

The old Finder icon looks quite out of place on the cool Leopard desktop IMO...

 

[twoodcc]

cool stuff

 

[elppa]

10.0 and 10.2 (Jaguar) had the nicest boxes in my opinion.

Pixar rendered the fur on the Jaguar box, they'd done Monsters Inc a year earlier.

I do have a real soft spot for 10.0, it was great to finally get hold of a modern OS with a kick-ass GUI, despite a few performance issues.

Edit: The picture for 10.3 is the same as the picture for 10.0. 10.3 introduced the brushed metal Finder windows and sidebar.

 

[stephenc92]

That's not 10.3 x.x

Sorry about that - got the image from Wikipedia. I've updated it now.

 

[theman]

i like the 10.0 box the best. the 10.4 and 10.5 boxes are terrible.

 

[stephenc92]

i like the 10.0 box the best. the 10.4 and 10.5 boxes are terrible.

I know nobody's seen it in real life yet, but the Leopard box looks a lot smaller than the rest.

 

[Queso]

How funny do 10.1 iTunes and its icon look now?

I'm definitely worried about translucent menus coming back in 10.5. They were horrible back in 2001.

 

[72930]

How funny do 10.1 iTunes and its icon look now?

I'm definitely worried about translucent menus coming back in 10.5. They were horrible back in 2001.

Now its translucent and blurred...double ouch!

 

[elppa]

I know nobody's seen it in real life yet, but the Leopard box looks a lot smaller than the rest.

The Tiger box got changed to make it more CD sized.

Same with iLife/iWork boxes. The reasoning is that it is better for the environment as smaller boxes mean need fewer trains/boats/planes to carry the things (not to mention less waste, although most of the boxes can be recycled).

 

[Scarlet Fever]

I'm definitely worried about translucent menus coming back in 10.5. They were horrible back in 2001.

They're still here in 10.4. They aren't as transparent as they were in 2001, but you can still see whats behind them

 

[powderblue17]

That's cool but it would be even better if you showed screenshots from some of the beta releases because they changed a lot of things about the desktop between those releases. When Steve Jobs first unveiled aqua at MacWorld the dock was more like the NeXTSTEP dock in that it used tiles instead of the transparent dock. Also the menu bar was much different as there was no bold app name but instead it had the app icon in the menu bar to show which app was active and the apple icon was in the middle of the menubar which did nothing. I also remember the first real dock having the elipses to indicate open apps as in NeXTSTEP instead of the triangles. I never used any of those but I still enjoyed reading about them in the great Artechnica previews I found after I became interested in OS X. Sure has evolved since then.

 

[RacerX]

I would think that any evolution of Mac OS X would go back further than 10.0. The real interesting changes took place over the course of the four Mac OS X Developer Previews and Public Beta. Apple replaced Platinum with Aqua and brought back the dock (after retiring it for Rhapsody).

And the window function in the Finder/Workspace Manager also went through a cyclic evolution too. The shelf from the Workspace Manager windows in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP was replace by a set of fixed function buttons (which I usually have hidden) in Rhapsody. This stayed with the windows when the Finder (a Carbon app) replace the Workspace Manager (a Cocoa app) in Developer Preview 2. By 10.0 those buttons had been replaced with a customizable toolbar, and Apple brought back the shelf's functionality in 10.3 with the sidebar.

There are tons of things like that, and those of us that still make use of many of these operating systems (I still use OPENSTEP 4.2, Rhapsody 5.1 and 5.6, Mac OS X 10.2.8 and 10.3.9 regularly) don't have to strain ourselves to notice the differences and similarities in this stuff.

 

[grahamperrin]

Apple Rhapsody – Workspace Manager, Finder and columns in particular

http://macslice.com/2007/10/20/the-evolution-of-mac-os-x/ is in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine but the screenshots are not.

Still, 'Evolution of Mac OS X …' seems a good place to post some information and thoughts spun off from a 2014 topic: Finder: Do you use Column, List, or icon view?

I prefer columns by default, and I did use old systems (6.x onwards), but I couldn't remember much about column views before – or during – the transition from Mac OS to Mac OS X.

I was particularly struck by two articles from fifteen years ago.

A worm in the Apple? - Salon.com (1999-09-30, highlights)

… Apple’s Macintosh operating system, with nearly 20 years of well-researched Human Interface Guidelines, sets the standard for ease of use. It’s this one thing — an intuitive, consistent and friendly interface — that keeps the Mac faithful, well, faithful …

This year, Apple made its first recognizable break with the tenets of its own Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which have for two decades been the guiding light of the company’s operating system. As a result, the intuitive interface — long Apple’s strongest selling point — has been compromised.

It began with the April 20 release of a preview of QuickTime 4.0 …

Response has been overwhelmingly negative from developers and users. …

If this new design philosophy proves to be a cuckoo, spreading and breaking the successful unity of the Mac OS, it could break Apple. …

There’s more, far more — enough to not only place QT4 at the top of the Interface Hall of Shame, but to engender criticism by Bruce Tognazzini, the founder of Apple’s original Human Interface Group … “I suspect you will see a lot more ego-driven design before things get better. I would suggest you do what I did, which was to move to a company that still prizes usability.”

Apple declined to comment …

The Mac’s “easy-to-use” design has long been one of Apple’s strongest selling points. …

… critics can debate whether the RealThings paradigm was simply botched or misguided from the start, it’s clear that QT4 designers paid it more heed than the original Human Interface Guideline’s warning that marketing pressures can compromise usable design.

Does anyone at Apple still care about the Human Interface Guidelines, or the ideas of usability and elegance that underlie them?

The Human Interface Group, which originally drew up the Human Interface Guidelines, still exists, according to an Apple spokesman, though he refused to supply any details on its composition or place in the company. However, sources both inside and outside of Apple say that the HI Group has been cut from over 30 people two years ago to fewer than 10. “There may be a handful of people left,” said a former Apple employee. Of this handful, none are versed in interaction design — the key to the Human Interface Guidelines — and none are involved in specifying any of Apple’s current products, say others familiar with the group.

Some say this state of affairs is a direct reflection on Steve Jobs, who has a “definite antipathy for interface designers,” says Tognazzini …

… there’s no doubt that the Mac’s friendly identity is what gets people onto the Mac platform and keeps them there.

But that ease of use, based on a 20-year-old document that has apparently become as much samizdat as scripture in Jobs’ Apple … (At this summer’s Macworld Expo in New York, Jobs demonstrated a Unix-like “File Browser” he said would replace the Mac’s familiar Finder, which provides the virtual space where you place and organize folders and files. The crowd sat silent.)

The faithful, the true believers, are hard to alienate — but if you mess with the very foundation of their faith, expect some disaffection. New users, too …

Apple deserves great praise for making computers fun and friendly — on both the inside and the outside. Now, if it could only learn from the New Coke story, and the benefits of sticking by its original formula.

Has Apple finally lost the plot? – Independent | News | Digital (1999-10-25, highlights)

Macs have always had a loyal following because they are so user-friendly. Now, however, the faithful are spooked. The new generation hardware looks great – from the iMac to the 'supercomputer' G4 – but is design beginning to take precedent over functionality?

… worried by the inclusion of QT4, with its strange "feel", and the extension of that design to other facets of the Mac interface. This interface has 20 years of hard work behind it, so one would think that Apple had it off pat. In fact it does, in the form of its Human Interface Guidelines (HIGs) …

… Apple is ignoring its own guidelines. …

The unkindest cut of all came from Bruce Tognazzini, who founded the Human Interface Group at Apple. He's not there now, which may be why he felt able to say that "in the hands of an amateur … I suspect you will see a lot more ego-driven design before things get better".

Ego-driven design? Who can he mean? There are rumours that Mr Jobs, the "interim" chief executive at Apple, had plenty of input to the design of the new QT4 interface. …

… naked terror evinced by some early demonstrations of "Mac OSX Client", to give the supposed successor to Mac OS9 its full title. This is the program that will run on newer Macs, and is expected some time next year.

At a conference for Apple software developers in the summer, Mr Jobs said that Mac OSX would have a "brand-new" Finder (the program which gives the Mac its user interface). One person at the conference reported: "The new NeXTStep-based Finder will support viewing contents of local volumes or remote directories by icons above a results window. Frequently accessed folders, whether stored on a local volume or over a network, can be parked on a "shelf" for easy access; Steve Jobs used the analogy of a car radio's tuning buttons."

Car radio buttons? You can see why people are feeling worried. The suggestion is that Mac OSX will look like and run very like Unix, with its hierarchical file structure and three-letter suffixes denoting files' properties and origins.

Mr Jobs's presentation was met with silence. …

More Rhapsody-related items

Apple's Operating System Strategy, 1997 - Part 2 - Road from Mac OS 7.6 to Rhapsody OS – YouTube – 3:07 onwards, who's the presenter?

Apple Rhapsody DR2 on my Pentium 3 – YouTube – despite the shaky recording this is fun to watch.

Poma Ads: Apple Rhapsody DR2 "Workspace Manager" – YouTube – a steady recording, but it's very dry compared to the one above.

GUIdebook > Screenshots > Rhapsody DR2

Rhapsody Developer Release 2 screenshots at toastytech.com

Shaw's Rhapsody Resource Page includes much useful information. Two highlights:

• http://www.rhapsodyos.org/software/openup_packup/openup_1.html with a Services menu that makes clear which app provides each service – much more useful than presentation of services in modern versions of OS X
• http://www.rhapsodyos.org/misc/fiend/fiend_1.html – there's an Appearance pane with four tabs – quite unlike the contentious modern approach which devotes only part of a pane of System Preferences to appearance.

TidBITS: Yellow Box, Blue Box, Rhapsody & WWDC (1997-05-26)

Rhapsody Overview (1997)

Apple Rhapsody Blue Box at Docstoc

Apple shows off Rhapsody OS – CNET News (1997-09-25)

Rhapsody – A User Overview (1998-02-12)

The Millennium Mac | Macworld (1999-08-01, Macworld mock-up of Finder missing)

Macworld: VisionThing: 'Face Off (1999-08, highlights)

Macworld: OS X Gets Closer to Reality (2000-08, highlights)

Technically, It's Still Summer | Macworld (2000-09-01)

Other items of interest

The Mothership!

MacKiDo/Interface/RealInterfaces (1999, updated 2002)

… There was once a "real world" version of the Finder that had a little picture of an office with a desk. You didn't have a drive, you actually clicked on the drawers in the desk or file cabinet to file things, all programs (tools) you wanted to run were arranged on the desk or around the office. It had a few advantages and lots of disadvantages and wasn't very popular and people lost interest quickly. About 8 or 9 years later, Microsoft tried to copy it with "Bob(tm)" -- it too was a flop. …

Applications : FSViewer, un gestor de ficheros para WindowMaker (1999-11-13, 2000-01)





FileMatrix for Windows – "Navigate and manage files using up to 10 columns"

One Thing Well | Ranger (2010-04-30)

ranger - Summary [Savannah]

Attached: my own screenshots of Ranger, taken this afternoon.