Mac OS X turns 10 today

Posted on Thursday, March 24 2011 @ 21:45 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Apple's Mac OS X operating system celebrates its tenth anniversary today, but BetaNews remembers the OS was born prematurely as the first edition lacked a lot of basic features:
I got a bad reputation among over-zealous Mac fans for writing stories like this one, on March 7, 2001, for CNET News.com: "Mac OS X code released, despite missing features." I observed that Mac OS X would ship without support for basic features like DVD drives and laptop sleep mode. Mac OS X 10.0 didn't fully support Apple's own hardware and took away features that Mac users had in v9.x.

The follow-up story was more explicit: Mac OS X 10.0 "will not support CD-rewritable, DVD or DVD-recording drives" -- even though movie making was a longstanding Mac selling point and Apple had included CD burning in iTunes. I later learned that the new operating system also had problems with external storage devices, too, as Apple hadn't yet made APIs available to developers.

Mac OS X also lacked major developer application support -- for three reasons...


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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