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Today Marks 20 Years Since Mac OS X First Launched
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Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
My youngest son just turned 20 last month. Man, how time flies.
OS X was and is truly great. I agree with many that Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of it.
However, OS X as we knew it got demoted when the iPhone was introduced and the "Back to the Mac" initiative was implemented.
From that moment forward, iOS became the priority at Apple.
Then Steve and Jony sank the knife in with Mavericks, twisted it with Yosemite, and that was that.
Y'all better learn to love iOS, as I've had to FORCE myself to, because that is (and has been) the Sun in Apple's universe.
At this point, I'm OK with it all probably because I'm not using Apple products in a professional capacity, so I cannot speak to that.
For home computing of my most precious memories, documents, music, and general iLife, the current hardware and software offerings are more than satisfying and pleasant to use.
Apple's nucleus is where I'll probably remain for the foreseeable future: the triumvirate of iPad, iPhone, and (to a lesser degree for me) Watch.
OS X was and is truly great. I agree with many that Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of it.
However, OS X as we knew it got demoted when the iPhone was introduced and the "Back to the Mac" initiative was implemented.
From that moment forward, iOS became the priority at Apple.
Then Steve and Jony sank the knife in with Mavericks, twisted it with Yosemite, and that was that.
Y'all better learn to love iOS, as I've had to FORCE myself to, because that is (and has been) the Sun in Apple's universe.
At this point, I'm OK with it all probably because I'm not using Apple products in a professional capacity, so I cannot speak to that.
For home computing of my most precious memories, documents, music, and general iLife, the current hardware and software offerings are more than satisfying and pleasant to use.
Apple's nucleus is where I'll probably remain for the foreseeable future: the triumvirate of iPad, iPhone, and (to a lesser degree for me) Watch.
This was a very nostalgic post! Loved reading all the memory recounts. I was so excited when X arrived, it seemed like a much better fit visually for my PowerBook G4 but kept dual boot with 9 until 10.1 arrived. Good times.
Visually it does seem they are moving us closer to iPadOS and macOS becoming one. It's a shame because as some have noted, older versions were very visually appealing.
Visually it does seem they are moving us closer to iPadOS and macOS becoming one. It's a shame because as some have noted, older versions were very visually appealing.
That’s absolutely possible. At the time they were also looking at potentially buying Be OS which would have been a cool system as well.
Apple actually had a project like this back in 1992!
It was using “agents” tailored to observe and learn certain kinds of tasks. I remember a demo where the presenter copied some data from an Excel sheet to an HyperCard stack: he would copy one cell and paste its content in a field of a card, then a second cell on the same line and paste it in another field, then repeat this on the second line and a second card, and when he finished the second time, a dialog would pop up and ask “I think I understand what you are doing. Do you want me to continue?” Upon accepting, the agent would repeat each step, asking confirmation for each; when the cycle was over, it would ask “Do you want me to continue?” and then proceed to copy all the cells from the Excel sheet to new cards of the HyperCard stack.
It was really impressive. And funny: because the presentation included demos of several advanced projects not very stable, the presenter used to reboot between each demo. The agent learnt this part too and rebooted automatically! 😊
It was 29 years ago…
It also provided a first glimpse at the Mac OS X UI on Mac OS 9 (for anyone who wasn't running Mac OS X already) since it used Aqua scrollbars etc.. That was a lot of fun to use at the time, especially once the iPod was released.
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Okay, I’ll bite: I’ll too was once in love with the 3D aesthetic, but along came a different design that helped us move past the 90s mindset of 2D-things-made-to-look-3D-are-”futuristic”.
The move toward a flatter, minimalist design looks much cleaner, IMO, and happy to not go back to aqua.
Everyone has their opinion, and mine is: keep up the good work with this design language, Apple! 👏🏼
The move toward a flatter, minimalist design looks much cleaner, IMO, and happy to not go back to aqua.
Everyone has their opinion, and mine is: keep up the good work with this design language, Apple! 👏🏼
Big Sur is outright hostile to mouse users. I had to move my dock to the left so I could even use a horizontal scroll wheel. I'd use 10.5 if I could.
Oh, good old days. While I wasn't able to afford a Mac by then (while in college), I compensated with an aqua theme (which I used for a long time) on the PC I was able to afford. I am still mesmerized by the iMac that I was able to use at the computer lab of my college.
I agree with all the people here who love a "beautiful" OS with depth. I feel like the attack on "skeuomorphism" was more like a mob mentality than a true consensus. There's nothing about having a beautiful GUI that makes it more difficult to get work done - in fact, the contrary is true. For example, when Ives made all the shortcuts on the Finder monochrome so they'd "fade into the background", all of a sudden it was really hard to spot which icon I wanted!
To me, having a beautiful OS was what made the Mac seem like a "luxury platform" and made Windows users at the time super envious. I kinda feel that the MacOS beauty peaked at Tiger, but Snow Leopard was still pretty gorgeous. Now Apple is saying, "it's 2021 and we have a few teraflops of GPU power on these things - let's see if we can design our interfaces as if we were using 1970s computers with monochrome vector graphics."
What? I don't mean the blur behind the dock but the few pixels between the dock and the edge of the screen. Obviously.
Ahh yes …. the days when I could grab a window, move my mouse, and the window would move 6-8 hours later.
I brought Mac OS X 10.0 on day one and it was completely unusable until 10.1, maybe 10.3.
"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today" that macOS X arrived. What innovations have we seen in text since then? TL
R not a whole lot. This is what we are working at on the Future of Text. Feel free to join us: https://future-of-text.circle.so/c/welcome
R not a whole lot. This is what we are working at on the Future of Text. Feel free to join us: https://future-of-text.circle.so/c/welcome
Hilarious. You have these inconsistencies and wonkiness staring at you right in the face with actual screenshots and you still call it a personal issue? What more proof do you want that Big Sur's UI and UX is sloppy af?
So much of what is taken for granted today relies on the mass release of OS-X, which has it's origins in NEXT.
I doubt thigs like the iPhone, iPad (and all the copy cat devices that came along) would exist in their present form without it's introduction. These devices and concepts have had an impact on everything we touch every day, from surgery and medicine to ordering lunch at the local diner. It impacted everything.
It's a key moment in the evolution of information technology. Not the single most important moment, but certainly a key player.
I doubt thigs like the iPhone, iPad (and all the copy cat devices that came along) would exist in their present form without it's introduction. These devices and concepts have had an impact on everything we touch every day, from surgery and medicine to ordering lunch at the local diner. It impacted everything.
It's a key moment in the evolution of information technology. Not the single most important moment, but certainly a key player.
Look at that! Actual visibility, clarity, easily distinguished features! It's shocking how far the mighty have fallen.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
Locally, we refer to that place as The Reservation.on my local estate its been drinking age for about 10 years
Curious about this one. I'm pretty sure when "Open folders in tabs instead of new windows" is unchecked in preferences, it works as it always has.
I remember using Tiger for the very first time on a G5 iMac, and I couldn't believe it. I was just so stunned at how well it ran, and how easy it was to use tools like Final Cut and iDVD. It wasn't even my machine.
I went out and bought an iMac at the Intel transition, and when Leopard came out, I was even more blown away. I haven't loved every version of OSX, but I'm so grateful for the OS and how it allowed me to provide for my family and help others.
I went out and bought an iMac at the Intel transition, and when Leopard came out, I was even more blown away. I haven't loved every version of OSX, but I'm so grateful for the OS and how it allowed me to provide for my family and help others.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
Anyway, this all makes me feel old. Coming from a CS background, in the 90s, things like Taligent and Copeland really looked like the future, with OS/2 sort of leading the way (it's defeat inevitable; nevertheless technically superb for the day). I doubt many thought an an OS dating back to 1970 was just waiting for the hardware to catch up....
I'm on the fence with Big Sur (and the abomination called zsh) but definitely have fond memories of Snow Leopard.
I'm on the fence with Big Sur (and the abomination called zsh) but definitely have fond memories of Snow Leopard.
I was using either Window 2000 or the really janky Solaris workstations in the computer lab back then and bought a 15" PowerBook G4 when I graduated. It was unreal, so much better than anything I'd ever seen.
A lot of people here are saying Snow Leopard was the best, but I missed that one. PowerPC capped out at 10.5. I should try a 10.6 hackintosh for a weekend project some time.
Or they'd have finally gotten Copland out the door then Gershwin. If they got a good CEO to get the departments and feature creep under control. Which was the huge problem with the project. The tug of war between departments and the constant addition of new features. Rather than finishing the project and adding new features in new versions.