Today is the 20th anniversary of the launch of Mac OS X, and Macworld has an interesting piece on the history leading up to it. Jason Snell goes so far as to say that the new operating system for Macs was “an act of desperation” by Apple.

When Yosemite was released, a more detailed boot screen came to your Mac. So now, just like on Apple's mobile devices, you will see a loading bar telling you how far into the startup process you are. Apple also decided to add a black version of this boot screen to newer Macs, leaving those of us who purchased a computer before 2011 out of the loop. Oct 16, 2014 Here's how you can enable Dark Mode on your Mac. Launch System Preferences from your Applications folder. Click on General in the top-left corner of the preferences pane. Check the box next to 'Use. Apr 27, 2021 Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing. Press and hold the Option (Alt) ⌥ key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac. Release the Option key when you see a dark screen showing your bootable volumes. Although the system was originally marketed as simply 'version 10' of Mac OS, it has a history that is largely independent of the classic Mac OS. It is a Unix -based operating system 11 12 built on NeXTSTEP and other technology developed at NeXT from the late 1980s until early 1997, when Apple purchased the company and its CEO Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

The reason, he explains, is that while Apple had set a new direction for personal computers with the launch of the Macintosh in 1984, it had lost its way by the late 1990s …

In 1984, a graphical user interface on a personal computer was revolutionary; by the late 1990s, not so much.

As revolutionary as the original Mac was, it was also an early-1980s project that didn’t offer all sorts of features that would become commonplace by the late 1990s.

That operating system had been originally designed to fit in a small memory footprint and run one app at a time. Its multitasking system was problematic; clicking on an item in the menu bar and holding down the mouse button would effectively stop the entire computer from working. Its memory management system was primitive. Apple needed to make something new, a faster and more stable system that could keep up with Microsoft, which was coming at Apple with the user-interface improvements of Windows 95 and the modern-OS underpinnings of Windows NT.

By 1996, says Snell, Apple had given up.

In a spectacularly humbling moment for Apple, the company began searching for a company from which it could buy or license an operating system or, at the least, use as the foundation of a new version of Mac OS. The company’s management, led by CEO Gil Amelio and CTO Ellen Hancock, clearly had come to the conclusion that Apple itself was incapable of building the next-generation Mac OS.

We all know what happened… next.

Dark

Dec. 20, 1996–Apple Computer, Inc. today announced its intention to purchase NeXT Software Inc., in a friendly acquisition for $400 million. Pending regulatory approvals, all NeXT products, services, and technology research will become part of Apple Computer, Inc. As part of the agreement, Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO of NeXT Software, will return to Apple–the company he co-founded in 1976–reporting to Dr. Gilbert F. Amelio, Apple’s Chairman and CEO.

The acquisition will bring together Apple’s and NeXT’s innovative and complementary technology portfolios and significantly strengthens Apple’s position as a company advancing industry standards. Apple’s leadership in ease-of-use and multimedia solutions will be married to NeXT’s strengths in development software and operating environments for both the enterprise and Internet markets. NeXT’s object oriented software development products will contribute to Apple’s goal of creating a differentiated and profitable software business, with a wide range of products for enterprise, business, education, and home markets.

Snell gives a good outline of the software challenges that followed, and says that’s what makes the anniversary such an important one.

When we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X, it’s important to realize what we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating a software release that was the culmination of Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. We’re celebrating the operating system we still use, two decades later. But we’re also celebrating the foundation of iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

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In that way, this isn’t just the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X 10.0. It’s the 20th anniversary of modern Apple, and the end of the dark days when Apple couldn’t fix its own operating system.

The full piece is a good read.

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