History of Mac OS X, the short version with the major highlights.
A little short history of Mac OS X and the different releases during the years. This will be a brief history of Mac OS X where you can learn about the major milestones with every release.
Mac OS X Public Beta
Released September 13, 2000. This version allowed people to get a preview of the next big operating system from Apple. Also at the same time developers could start developing applications before it was released as a final version.
Mac OS X 10.0 - Cheetah
Released March 24, 2001. This was the first big release of Apple´s operating system. A big change compared to the older classic operating system. This version got some criticism due to missing features and issues regarding performance. Still it was given good reviews when taking into account that this was a completely new operating system.
Mac OS X 10.1 - Puma
Released September 25, 2001. The second major release of Mac OS X featuring some improvements like performance enhancements. DVD playback support, better OpenGL performance and many other fixes. This version also got some criticism because of lacking features and bugs.
Mac OS X 10.2 - Jaguar
Released 23 August, 2002. The third major release of Mac OS X where it got some good reviews regarding better stability and speed. But not everything was fine, some still experienced issues with the user interface being slow and a pain to work with. This version also introduced iChat. Adaptive spam filter in Mail.app amongst many other new features and fixes.
Mac OS X 10.3 - Panther
Released October 24, 2003. Fourth major release of Mac OS X featuring new applications like iChat AV. Now you can use iChat with audio and video conferencing. Panther also introduced the new web browser Safari. And not to forget: Expose. There was also some improvements to Xcode providing faster compile times, increased PDF rendering with Preview to name a few of the 150+ new features.
Mac OS X 10.4 - Tiger
Released 29 April, 2005. This was the fifth major release of Mac OS X where it introduced many new features like Spotlight, a system you can use to search for files fast. Dashboard providing you with mini-applications called widgets. Automator to help you create workflows that does repetitive tasks automatically. Many other features and improvements. According to Apple Tiger was the most successful operating system in the history of Mac OS X.
Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard
Released 26 October 2007. The sixth major release of Mac OS X providing even more features, fixes and improvements. For example Boot Camp, a software that will assist you in installing other operating systems on your Mac. Easy and automatic backup system with Time Machine. Spaces, where you can create virtual desktops. Quick Look that makes you able to preview a document without having to open it. This was justa a tiny bit of some of the new features in Mac OS X Leopard.
Mac OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard was announced on WWDC June 9, 2008. This version will mostly focus on improving performance, and reducing the size while maintaining and increasing the performance. There are some new interesting features like Open CL where developers can take advantage of dual core CPUs and GPUs. Being able to code applications to take advantage of the Graphics Processing Units without actually having to code a graphical application.
In 20 years when we look back, I wonder how the history of Mac OS X will look like ... We are definitively progressing into interesting times.
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