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I remember having the beta on an original iMac. Too slow to be enjoyable. I somewhat doubt iTunes was around back then though.
 
In 2001, OS X was by far the most consistent UI, added with a coolness factor. Unfortunately in the current releases Aqua is only a pale shadow of its former self. What gets forgotten is how slow and unstable the first releases were.
 
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Bought my first Mac (TiPBG4) a month before this release at CompUSA. I remember some regulars at Apple Insider getting their panties twisted because I got mine while they were still in preorder hell.

OS X turned out to be perfect for school for me. I had Office for the “well rounded education” classes, and a *NIX-based OS for my CS classes.
Also had enough battery life to catch The Matrix on DVD.

Edited my brother’s wedding in iMovie in 2002 when I had never done anything with video prior. I had a rough cut ready for viewing the next day. That still blows me away This was only possible due to that weird FireWire port that I’d never heard of before. My Sony camera plugged right into it.
 
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Good old days. Still remember installing it on my PowerMac G4 and starting it for the first time. I was so excited. Especially since MacOS 9 was unstable and had a lot of limitations due to its age of the code base. Back in the days people were bragging in here about how many weeks they could go without a reboot while making fun about Windows! 😂
 
Nostalgia is wonderful, but ....... as a purchaser of the original OS X and using it for graphics and web design within a business it was very very slow and crashed frequently.. however, unlike OS 9 the crash never brought down the entire system (which required crossing your fingers to force quit.)... now I am nostalgic for the force quit dice roll ....
 
It was that dock that blew my mind as my first experience of OS X coming from Windows - the way as you moved your mouse over it the icons scaled up and back down so smoothly, it just made Windows look so clunky and primitive - this was like something from the future.
That is one of the first things I enable (Dock icon magnification) when I do a full install on any of my Macs. I just love how that looks.
 
And I was the idiot who installed Mac ox 10.0 on my school powermac and it nearly destroyed everything cus it was like an alpha program full of memory leaks 😖 wasn’t even usable til 10.1
 
Yes - the good old days when Apple actually used some darn color in their UI. I just HATE the current bland two shades of gray theme everywhere. Apple would have to try hard to make things any harder to read or distinguish... I’m also sick of trying to move windows around while having to try hard to not click on some actionable icon or field.
 
Aqua was way better than the current crap.
I'm sorry, but macOS of today just seems like an incoherent bunch of "ideas" crammed together into an OS.
Old Mac OS X was more like linux with a very slick UI on top of a solid Unix. Now, it's getting to the point of "Windows-style" binary files and strange databases running stuff. Things you're never supposed to touch, and some that are downright out of reach.
Use Windows then, you'll see how "inconsistent" macOS is. As a user who recently switched from Windows to macOS, I've found magic in Big Sur that was actually missing in Catalina. I agree, Catalina is flat and boring. But Big Sur feels like a return to a whimsical design and it's fresh and ready for the next 20 years.

For me, Big Sur is not only the best looking operating system on the market but the most consistent and beautiful on first party and third party software.

At the very least, be thankful that macOS isn't the pile of legacy crap that Windows is at this point.
 
Use Windows then, you'll see how "inconsistent" macOS is. As a user who recently switched from Windows to macOS, I've found magic in Big Sur that was actually missing in Catalina. I agree, Catalina is flat and boring. But Big Sur feels like a return to a whimsical design and it's fresh and ready for the next 20 years.

For me, Big Sur is not only the best looking operating system on the market but the most consistent and beautiful on first party and third party software.

At the very least, be thankful that macOS isn't the pile of legacy crap that Windows is at this point.
Sorry but both OS's right now are a pile of legacy crap. Big Sur is Cupertino putting iOS lipstick on the Catalina pig.
 
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I remember buying Mac OS X at CompUSA. Tried it out of my dual 450MHZ G4 and didn't care for it. Held out until Panther came out.
 
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First Mac: 24h January 1984.
First Mac OS X: 9th January 2001 (17 years later)

Today (24th March 2021) is 20 years later. Apple should release a new Mac OS with emphasis on artificial intelligence. For instance, when you do repetitive tasks, the Mac should identify that and prompt to do it for you. It would be a new revolution.
That would be super annoying when you dont actually want to do that task and it keeps asking you if you want to.
 
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