March 24 is a special day in Mac history

[weup togo]

Mac OS X 10.0 shipped 16 years ago today. It apparently doesn't deserve any mention from the Apple press today, but Apple changed the world with that release in ways most people will never grasp.

Combining the common UNIX underpinnings with an easy to use GUI created the first truly successful mass market OS with this heritage. Moving to a common toolchain like GCC made porting first from PPC to Intel and then to ARM easy enough to be viable. Security, IT, and low level experts from other fields for the first time began to take the Mac seriously.

Without Mac OS X, there never would have been the iOS we have today. It's all the same stuff under the hood. The same guts run on AppleTV and the Watch and will underpin whatever future platforms Apple ships for the foreseeable future.

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/01/09Apples-Mac-OS-X-to-Ship-on-March-24.html

 

[MacAlien]

I'm sorry but you want to celebrate OS X's anniversary every year from the sounds of it. 15th maybe, 20th sure but random 16th...Doesn't need to have a blurb or mention of its age every single year it's been out.

 

[weup togo]

I guess you had to be there.

 

[maflynn]

I guess you had to be there.

I was there and all I can remember is how buggy, and slow OS X 10.0 was. Yeah Apple swung for the fences with OS X but it took a few iterations to get things nailed down

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Indeed. 10.2 was the first really day to day useable version IMHO. And some even say 10.3.

 

[weup togo]

All true. But after the Copland fiasco and years of uncertanty, actually shipping an entirely new OS was absolutely monumental. And by 10.0.4, new Macs booted to it by default. The amount of risk involved was far more than Apple would ever undertake today, because it is no longer desperate. There are still chunks of that code running on the very latest OSes today.