I remember beta testing OS X. That first demo that Steve Jobs did on stage was amazing, but it took a few versions to reach its full potential.
Mac OS X turns 15
I remember beta testing OS X. That first demo that Steve Jobs did on stage was amazing, but it took a few versions to reach its full potential.
I still have the boxed beta of OS X 10.0 on my shelves at home…
In my experience:
10.0 was ‘Oh wow, look at the shiny new stuff! Now let me get back to OS 9 to work.”
10.1 was “Hey I can do some things! Oops, I need to print! Back to OS 9”
10.2 was “I am an OS X user now.” That was when it became my primary OS and I never looked back, to the point now that the original Mac OS is like a foreign thing to me now.
Of course, as a long-time Unix user my first reaction was like the old Reese’s tagline “You got Unix in my Mac OS!” followed by an ecstatic happy dance.
Ah yes. I installed the Kodiak beta on my Tangerine iBook. It was weird, wonderful, and didn’t do a whole lot.
In hindsight, 2000 and 2001 were crucial years for Apple. iTunes was released as “Rip. Mix. Burn.” but evolved into the iTunes Store, App Store, etc. iTunes also paved the way for iPod, which eventually enabled Apple to corner the flash RAM market, which helps maintain profit margins on iPhone and iPad.
And, of course, OS X has evolved into iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. And all of that is just the beginning, really.
I worked for a VAR in the 90s and one of my last tasks before moving back to web development was evangelizing the Beta and this first release to publishing companies in the midwest.
IIRC, Jaguar 10.2 was the first usable version.
Anyone else remember testing the OS X Server beta that came out before the public beta?
Previous commenters are correct in that OS X didn’t really come into its own until 10.2. That’s when customers/clients were willing to make the leap.
I remember we did not upgrade en mass until 10.3.x (probably started on 10.3.4) and we had some odd issues with the ATI/AMD 9600 cards which were much better in performance, though I think Apple fixed it in their next patch… It was nice to see the Macs – OS X/DP G5s transfer data over the 1Gbps at nearly drive speed.
OS 9 was good for the day, but OS X (full/stable) was a bit over due.
and 10.3x was very, very nice!
or 10.3 – but Quark missed the boat and got a little surly … and now look at Quark and Quark Xpress 😮
I remember a few were pushing for Adobe – InDesign – pretty hard and with the licensing model Adobe had at the time, ID was almost “free” or included.
I remember doing as much reading about the new OS’s progress. Hearing about so many unresolved problems made me very happy to have waited until 10.2.
I returned to the Mac when OS X came out, after leaving in the mid-90s for BeOS and then Linux. In retrospect, the first version was pretty crappy. Brutal performance and missing a lot of important features. But it got better quickly. The early OS X releases were magic – each made your existing machine much faster and brought a whole lot of important new stuff: Quartz Extreme, Time Machine, Safari, FileVault. A great GUI + UNIX… awesome. And after the switch to Intel, VMWare allowed you to run Windows apps (because sometimes you still needed to back then).
For me, OS X is the most important product Apple makes. I love the iPhone, but Android would be good enough. The iPad is great, but for what I use it for the Kindle Fire wouldn’t be that big a step down. The Apple TV is mostly well done, but its a complementary product. And while the MacBook is the best notebook hardware out there, the real differentiating factor is OS X. But without OS X, I’d be forced to run what… Linux? Or heaven forbid, Windows?
What I remember is Steve Jobs saying during the keynote that they were betting the company’s future on it. Good bet.