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Mac OS X Launched 25 Years Ago Today: 'The Future of the Mac'

ImAlwaysRight said:
I miss OS9
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As a developer and publisher it was a normal thing for OS 9 to have random app crashes and have to reboot several times during the day and the amount of lost work done in Photoshop.
When migrating to OS X 10.2 and beyond the first thing I noticed when classic environment crashed it didn’t take the whole computer with it and when apps finally migrated to run natively in OS X you could work all day without one system crash or application crash.
 
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Happy 25, Mac OS X!

My dad got the public beta and all the versions going forward, and I remember trying them out as a kid, but most of my games were Mac OS 9 games for a while, so I didn't really start using Mac OS X a lot myself until 10.3 I think. It's been a wild ride!
 
I need to dig up some old videos of OSX in action. I've been a Windows/Linux user for most of my life, but I did use an Apple 2 in middle school (Scarab of Ra when the teacher wasn't looking).
 
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I ran all of those and the beta. It’s lost a bit of its shine over the last few releases, and I’m starting to contemplate a move to Linux, but I’m still (mostly) happy to have spent that time on Macs.
 
I always wanted a Mac just because of how cool the OS X interface looked but was young and obviously couldn't afford one...until I got my first job in 2007 and literally just spent my whole first pay packet on a iMac! (Crazily I also just walked into an Apple Store and bought it rather than having it delivered so had great fun in dragging it all the way through the shopping centre back to the train station then sat on the train with it before someone picked me up when I got home!)

I'll always remember being blown away by powering it on for the first time and being greeted by THIS though!

 
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I hope the future names of MacOS will be things like...
  • MacOS "Steve" : Everything just works.
  • MacOS "Tim" : We can't wait for you to buy it.
  • MacOS "Woz" : The OS of the year 3000 today in your Mac.
  • MacOS "Jony" : A block of aluminiium you can touch. So simple. So real. We call it the real reality.
 
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boswald said:
… but I did use an Apple 2 in middle school (Scarab of Ra when the teacher wasn't looking).
Click to expand...

It was Transylvania and Aztec for me—games I introduced to my kids 30 years later on an Apple II emulator, and they loved them too!

A little off-topic there, but we’re allowed to be nostalgic with the 50 year anniversary coming up aren’t we. 😊
 
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I worked for my College for Education’s Library back then; they mostly focused on degrees for Elementary teachers, and I got a part time job shelving books while working towards my teaching degree, but they messed up the paperwork and put me in charge of their 6 PC “computer lab” so they could bill a tech grant for my hours. I didn’t know anything about Macs, we had another student who handled them but I inherited about 20 iBooks when he changed majors, so I was learning as I went. I remember being sent by my supervisor to CompUSA to buy a OS X 10.0 CD-ROM for 1 penny so I could test it on our iMacs and iBooks. It sounds glib, but it changed my life. For someone who had no formal computer training at the time, managing the PCs was hard, OS 9 was easier; but running and managing Macs with OS X was insanely easy. I changed majors and have been a professional Mac guy for the last 25 years because of that single penny.
 
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macOS outperforms windows by miles. I remember getting my first Mac, a white iBook running tiger I think from a friend of mine who just got a new Mac when he saw me fighting with the brand new windows vista laptop I bought a few days earlier. I used that white iBook to finish a report that was needed for my work and never looked back. I have played with windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11. Windows 7 was kinda ok, but not nearly as good or stable as macOS, and windows never will be. Just gave my boyfriend my 2019 MacBook Pro after finding this m1 MacBook Air in a pawn shop for a deal that was impossible to pass up since I wanted to at least experience Apple Silicon, and was considering a MacBook Neo until I found this MacBook Air. Granted I only got it yesterday afternoon, and upgraded to macOS 26.3.1a last night, but so far it is unbelievable how powerful the m series chips are and once again so far happy with macOS 26.3.1.... Lets hope that continues as I have read some not so good things about Tahoe, but maybe being unable to install it until xx.3.1 it is improved. I am really impressed with this m1 MacBook Air if ya'll cannot tell, and it is a cool color being rose gold, stands out from the rest.
 
I totally forgot they used to charge for OS X upgrades. Such a good decision to make it free. Made it leaps and bounds easier to recommend over the Windows upgrade process, and ensured everyone was on the same OS for the most part.
 
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been working on apples since apple II days, my favorite os's are 10.2 and 10.6. the only problem with os 1 through 9 were stability issues (not the user interface) but that was common in the early GUI systems in general - partly the system developers not understanding how the users actually worked (that might still be an issue)
 
After 20 years with Windows, I went back to the Mac with an early 2011 MacBook Pro and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It was such a better computing environment overall, and it has only gotten better over the years. I'm now on my fourth MBP (14" M3 Pro with macOS 26 Tahoe). It pains me whenever I have to boot my Windows 11 machine for work.
 
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Saw Jaguar on my friend’s iBook G3 and was blown away… got iBook G4 for gf with Panther but my first Mac was Core 2 Duo 17” from 2006 with Tiger

Gosh I’d pay $$$ to get pinstripes or brushed metal instead of liquid glass
 
I remember installing it on my Snow White iBook… it was sloooooow and very buggy. I played around for a little bit, then went back to OS9 until OS X 10.1 was released six months later.
 
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