Mac OS X Jaguar

Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" was the first major release of Mac OS X since the initial launch, for several reasons, and was considered by many Mac enthusiasts to be the first serious, and mature, version of Mac OS X to ship on Apple hardware, such as the PowerBook G4, as it addressed several issues, slow performance, and it was toted by Apple's marketing team as having 150 new features! For the fans of Apple's classic programs, QuickTime and Sherlock were also updated to new versions, with new tweaks and features inside the applications.

One major shift that took place, indicating the placement of OS X as a truly different system, was the removal of the Happy Mac symbol and the older shade of gray that appeared when Mac OS started up since System 7 from the startup splash. It was instead replaced with a solid grey Apple logo that was slightly darker than the lighter, solid grey background.

"Jaguar" was the first OS X that supported Bluetooth, thanks to the new Apple hardware that needed such support at the time, and was the first to accept the industry-standard vCard formats seriously, with sync support built into the operating system. Every aspect from disk access, networking with Windows machines, I/O speed, and printing--as well as the graphics layer with the new Quartz Extreme, were introduced with this version. 10.2 included a much better version of Apple Mail, and it also sped up the Finder significantly, thanks to several internal code tweaks to the core application--though Finder would still need several changes, which finally took place in 10.3 "Panther", the next release. A new, simple networking stack which was then known as Revendous (now known as Bonjour) was also marketed with "Jaguar", along with a serious Universal Access component that advanced OS X accessibility. Also of interest with this release is that the "Inkwell" feature shared similarities to the cancelled Newton project, (including an easter egg in the code), and accepted handwritten characters in OS X for the first time. Safari could now be installed as the default web browser as well, as it debuted on OS X as a new browser; though Internet Explorer for Mac was installed and would still be bundled with OS X in 10.3 "Panther".

Perhaps more seriously, the journaled file system was also a major improvement that was evident throughout the system, meaning that file corruption on the HFS Extended format was much less likely to occur than it did on 10.0 or 10.1--a serious improvement. The combined improvements and new features that were poured into OS X 10.2 made it worth the $129 price for upgrading to it. However, despite all the new changes, including the more frequent use of brushed metal over pinstripes appearing in some applications, "Jaguar" was only the beginning, despite its jump forward, and Apple would yet again release another version of OS X, "Panther", again boasting 150 new features in the future...