Blast from the Past: Happy 6th Birthday OS X

It's hard to believe, but today marks the 6th birthday for Mac OS X, at least as measured from when OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) first went on sale at retail outlets on March 24, 2001. Apple's original press release is still online, and is the source of some mild amusement. It heralds "amazing new functionality such as the Dock, a breakthrough for organizing, documents and document windows." And Apple's trumpeting of there being over 350 native applications for OS X is a far cry from the 5000+ Universal apps available today. Nonetheless, as far as Apple has come it's clear that much was already in place 6 years ago. And with the Leopard launch coming soon, OS X is now really reaching its stride. You can't help but wonder where we'll be 6 years from now (OS XI?). In any case, happy birthday to our favorite OS!

[Via Digg]

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/mar/21osxstore.html

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OS Blast From the Past

It's hard to believe, but today marks the 6th birthday for Mac OS X, at least as measured from when OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) first went on sale...

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I can imagine that Apple's probably just going to rename it eventually. I think Jobs said that OS X is set to be the basis for Apple's operating systems for decades. I don't know when the cat naming theme will fall apart, but getting to version 10.9 would probably take eight or more years, Leopard will be over two years from Tiger, and maybe the time between major updates will get closer to three years.

If they do that, I do hope that they'll begin updating stuff like Safari on a faster cycle, the rest of the OS doesn't matter as much to me, but the Internet and its users change too quickly to rely on old web software.

March 25 2007 at 2:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

south

Thank god for OSX. I've used Apples forever but I remember i was on the verge of ditching the Mac for Windows (shameful as it is to admit now) around the time of OS 9 and those awful original iBooks. OSX threw a big lasso around me and pulled me out of the mire just in time.

March 24 2007 at 8:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sheridan

You know, there is no rule that Apple has to go thru 10.5 -10.9 to reach 11.
They skiped a lot back before os X. There was never a 9.3-9.9 for instance.

March 24 2007 at 4:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply