MacOS

Apple Mac OS X is the operating system for Apple Macintosh computers on the PowerPC (PPC) and Intel x86 platform. The latest version of OS X is Mavericks (10.9), released on October 22, 2013.

Known versions

Mac OS X Developer Preview 2

Public Beta

Apple released to the public, on September 13, 2000, a "preview" version of Mac OS X (internally codenamed Kodiak) in order to gain feedback from users, which cost $29.95. The "PB" as it was known marked the first public availability of the Aqua interface and Apple made many changes to the UI based on customer feedback. Mac OS X Public Beta expired and ceased to function in Spring 2001. However, via some commands in OpenFirmware on G3 and G4 Macs, the system clock can be altered, allowing the use of it even after Spring 2001. (Intel-based Macs do not have OpenFirmware, nor can they run classic versions of OS X, which were compiled for the PPC platform).

Cheetah (10.0)

10.0 "Cheetah" was the first officially released copy of OS X for the public, after the aforementioned Public Beta. It was the first version of Mac OS that was based on top of new UI frameworks adapted from the NeXtStep OS, the Mach microkernel, and a fork of FreeBSD UNIX nicknamed "Darwin" by Apple. Several new applications were written for the new operating system, and others, such as the Finder, were rewritten in the Carbon framework. Despite it's tremendous internal changes that allowed complete Posix support and new frameworks, Mac OS X was not without criticism when it first launched for $129.

Mac OS X 10.0, similar to the Public Beta, sported a new UI called "Aqua", which featured all-new water-like UI elements, animations, and a new rendering engine that supported advanced compositing at the time of its release and PDF support. Aqua was slow, was careful in rendering elements and scrolling, and favored cleaner redrawing, leading to an impression of sluggishness on this system. Furthermore, several features, such as labels in the Finder, the ability to burn CDs and the DVD Player, were not present as they were in OS 9. While people liked the new Aqua UI, and found it innovative and fresh, the Dock was criticized as an issue for usability and yet others missed the customizable Apple menu from earlier Mac OS versions. Finally, independent benchmarks had shown that copying and transferring files in the gold release was slower than on OS 9. Apple wisely continued to ship Mac OS 9.2.2 as an option for Macintosh users, who were not used to the revolutionary, but baby OS that would take until 10.2 "Jaguar" to fully mature.

Puma (10.1)

"Puma" looks identical to the "Cheetah" release, but it contains several improvements to "Cheetah", and is a critical point of OS X history. Echoing what would occur later with 10.6 "Snow Leopard", 10.1 focused on fixing, maintaining, and improving OS X internally, rather than being another revolutionary release. Unknown to newer Mac users, before 10.9 "Mavericks" was released in 2013, this was the first OS X release offered for free to users of a previous OS X release--10.0 "Cheetah" (who needed the upgrade). Perhaps the most important of these changes was the vast amount of general system improvements to both performance and to 3D and OpenGL rendering, which finally made the next-generation operating system a viable solution for the last generation of Macintosh users, who had grown accustomed to stability within the Classic Mac OS. It also improved upon ColorSync, allowing media professionals to more easily manage color on the then-young Mac OS X.

"Puma" now also supported playing DVDs as in Mac OS 9, and finally, the burning of optical discs in OS X, from both the Carbon Finder, and in iTunes as well--bringing back an important feature to Mac users. As a bonus feature, Image Capture also shipped with this version of OS X for the first time.

Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma" shipped by default on new Mac systems at the time, such as the iMac G4. While it was a vast improvement that had fixed the initial problems of its predecessor, it would still be months before the Mac community would begin to run and depend solely on Mac OS X for booting their systems.

Jaguar (10.2)

Mac OS X "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...

Panther (10.3)

After the major fixes in 10.1 and 150 improvements and features brought to "Jaguar", which finally solidified OS X as a mature operating system platform recognized by reviewers and critics, Apple announced the fourth major release of Mac OS X, and yet again, boasted 150 new features. Codenamed "Panther", Mac OS X 10.3 vastly improved boot and launch times, and was the first release to support 64-bit machines, specifically the then newly-released Power Macintosh G5. It also included new and improved search APIs and integrated search in the Finder with local, per-folder, and remote search options that preceded the system-wide Spotlight framework that would be added later to 10.4 "Tiger". In addition to quicker searching, native PDF rendering and scrolling was also much faster, as demoed at a developer conference by Apple.

Out of all the new features that debuted in "Panther", one feature is worth highlighting, as it changed window management significantly. In Mac OS X "10.3", a revolutionary windowing feature dubbed Exposé was introduced, which for the first time, allowed Macintosh users to consolidate, move, and hide windows without having to manually minimize, hide, and flip through them traditionally. Exposé could be used in two ways -- the first was by using "screen corners", which could be assigned in the then-new Exposé pane or from the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane in System Preferences. The function keys also gained special actions for Exposé by default. F9 showed all applications, F10 showed windows for just the active application, and F11 hid or showed all windows to reveal the Desktop on demand.

Exposé was one of the top 10 most recognizable features of OS X in the last decade, and has influenced other user interface designs, including the Gnome UI team and the Flip 3D feature in Aero. Despite being in three more official OS X releases following Panther (four in total), it was eventually replaced by Mission Control in 10.7 "Lion".

The second major new feature, demanded by companies for better security on their mobile hard drives, such as in the PowerBook G3 and G4 as examples, was "FileVault". While per-file encryption had been supported in Mac OS 9, and file security had been supported overall in Mac OS, a real solution for protecting data was needed. FileVault allowed the entire home folder to be easily encrypted with a password on logout or upon setup, then decrypted on login. Along with the new security features, an improved system firewall and Secure Empty Trash were added to 10.3.

The third notable feature in "Panther" was a completely redesigned Finder, whose brushed metal appearance caused controversy amongst users until the universal unirfied design introduced in Leopard. It also did something very important -- the Finder from the very first OS X release focused primarily on the devices and computers, whether local or on a network, inherent from the design the new Finder gained from the Next file browser. The design in Panther focused on the home folder and user folders such as Pictures and Music, though other folders could easily be added and removed, similar to the Dock. It also added a large, easily-navigable sidebar, which was short-lived, only lasting into Tiger. Panther also, for the first time since 9.2.2, had labels in the Finder--but these, despite the internal metadata on HFS filesystems for detecting the presence of labels being the same, appeared as rounded highlighting on the folder labels themselves, and did not colorize the folder, as System 7 to Mac OS 9.2 had done. While this was a significant improvement that many Mac users were thankful for, some reviewers at the time noted the dot and file highlight inconsistencies labels caused in list and column views, and complained over the bug. The new Finder also included a new Action menu, meaning that most (but not all) functions that could be completed with a contextual menu and previously required it or going to the Menubar now could be done directly from the Finder. Other minor improvements taken advantage of in the Finder today, such as DVD burn support for Windows machines, a easily customizable command toolbar, and the ability to compress folders were added in 10.3.

Font Book was added to OS X for easy access and installation of fonts on the system, and several fonts - Hoefler, Skia, and others were added along with improved effect and new shadow controls in system font boxes. iChat gained a new video conferencing feature, and "AV" was added to denote audio/video in the application name. Similarly to Microsoft's Windows XP, which already had introduced such a feature, Panther introduced Fast User Switching on the Mac, meaning that users on OS X no longer had to log out to allow someone to log into his/her separate account. It also took advantage of the Quartz Extreme stack and allowed cube rotation animations of different desktops if the GPU on that system supported it. Major improvements to Mail and iDisk service were also added to the Mac OS X line, such as better junk filtering, starting with Panther. HFS (the default OS X filesystem) also continued to receive several major improvements, such as better journaling support and automatic optimization upon installation or when handling large files that improved usage of all Mac OS Extended filesystems attached to that Mac.

Other minor tidbits were gracefully added to this major release, such as the ability to customize all system keyboard shortcuts, or to assign menu items intelligently to a shortcut when added manually. The new "Vicki" speech voice, the next-generation daughter of the aging MacInTalk Victoria voice was also introduced as the system default in Panther. The Aqua UI also received notable subtle improvements the Mac community had sent feedback on, such as refined transparency in menus and sheets, smoother antialiasing, animation and scroll handling, and reduced striping details begun in Jaguar (the previous release) complemented by the new milky-striped Menubar and refined Apple logo.

Panther, for the first time, began to look at the world maturely in terms of its support, and included yet more print and scan drivers and extensions, improved SMB and Windows networking support, Word format support in TextEdit, and yet more international support from the previous release. UNIX tools, the BSD subsystem, and CUPS also received several improvements, as well as a new XCode release that introduced smarter garbage collection and cleanup, along with new compilation mechanisms and an easier UI.

Overall, Panther was a large and significant improvement to Mac OS X that cannot be undermined, and set the trend for releasing large amounts of improvements and features to the Mac OS X line that would continue into future releases until Mavericks.

Tiger (10.4)

After several successful desktop releases, and the establishment of Mac OS X as a serious desktop operating system with Jaguar and Panther, Apple pushed forward yet again with the next large update of OS X - 10.4 "Tiger". On June 28, 2004 Tiger was announced at the WWDC, and took one of the longest wait times to release on April 29, 2005. Outside of the introduction of Exposé in Panther (the previous release), Tiger added several notable killer features that would become OS X icons throughout the decade, and was notable for being the longest running OS X release in history with 11 minor updates (10.4.11), while all other versions of OS X at most had received 8 or 9 updates in total.

One of the first breakthrough features was dubbed "Spotlight", which improved upon the per-application instant search stack and APIs introduced in 10.3 "Panther" was a new system-wide expansion of this technology that was now available to all applications, including to major OS X applications such as System Preferences and Address Book with full metadata details and "smart folders", a new saved search feature in the Finder, Mail 2, and iTunes. Spotlight was prominently featured throughout the entire OS, from the installation welcome window and introduction video, to the highlighting effect used when searching with the new toolbar in System Preferences. The Menubar also gained a blue (or graphite, depending on Appearance preferences) circle with the Spotlight search glass inside, which allowed universal searching of the entire system, whether files, folders, e-mails, or any other data specified in Spotlight preferences. Spotlight was developed much faster than competing desktop environment search engines at the time, and indexed new drives and ran as a system service in the background by default. This feature was so successful that it is widely speculated today that the Aero Search and Start Search features in Windows Vista may have at least been heavily influenced in design and placement by Spotlight.

Tiger also brought a new Grapher application (not seen since Graphing Calculator on Mac OS 9), and a new Dictionary application with a system-wide dictionary and thesaurus that could be called by applications as a service, such as in TextEdit. It also introduced RSS to Safari, and a new layered widget system called Dashboard to OS X, which was added as F12 by default, next to the F9-F11 Exposé key set previously assigned in Panther (although the MacBook had a dedicated Dashboard key and moved it). Tiger also brought several important security enhancements to Safari, and a redesigned firewall with Stealth Mode and other controls for easier management. New to Mac OS X was also the H.264 codec, which allowed editing and viewing of videos packaged in a more compact encoding along with QuickTime 7, which was later backported to Panther users. Tiger also brought several Accessibility improvements, including a redesigned Accessibility preference and Speech pane, and a new system-wide screen reading feature called VoiceOver. Parental Controls were also first added to Tiger for easier household management, although Leopard would greatly enhance this feature. Apple also focused on improving the Mac experience in the home and work with Tiger as well. Integrated into Setup Assistant and also as a seperate app, Migration Assistant allowed Mac users to retrieve and sync data, and additional support for the .Mac and iTools services (the predecessor to iCloud) with better syncing were added, along with a new automated scripting framework and the Automator application.

As with Panther, Apple continued to carefully craft the young Aqua into a more refined and mature UI, continuing the use of brushed metal over plastics, a gloss/glass menubar style that mirrored the current product lineup, and changed the overall look of highlights and the Apple logo. Aqua now allowed cycling through windows from the Window menu in addition to Exposé, and brought a new aluminum unified title and toolbar style in select applications, such as System Preferences and Mail, that would finally be completed and used system-wide in all applications in the next release, 10.5 Leopard.

In pursuit of 64-bit computing, Mac OS X 10.4 continued this evolution by allowing 64-bit application support on the system by allowing applications designed for the new framework to address more than 4 GB of memory on supported systems, such as the G5, and also allowed 64-bit Macs to boot from the unified Tiger DVD, whereas 10.3 required a machine/CPU-specific copy for the G5. Despite the improvements, 64-bit support was far from complete, and many more improvements would follow in 10.5, and full 64-bit support would finally be complete from the kernel and system extensions down to the userland with the release of 10.6 in August 2009. 10.4 also improved SMP and changed the OS X boot process and significantly improved system launch, boot, and response times by using the new launchd process to spawn different jobs on the system, and made significant improvements for filesystem support, including for mounting NTFS drives. Minor improvements were made to the updated Finder and to the new Finder Labels previously introduced in 10.3 Panther to address their behavior, and tools within the BSD subsystem, such as the cp command, were patched and released with Tiger to better handle resource forks better than previous releases had. The development environment, XCode, also received significant improvements, such as the ability to visually model and use graphics with CoreImage and CoreVideo. Quartz Composer, Core Data, and several new APIs that extended on the previous work done in Panther were also added to 10.4 Tiger for developers as well. Finally, Tiger also introduced AU Lab and crisper audio playback and support in Mac OS X.

With the release of 10.4.4, Tiger finally supported the new Intel (x86) based Core Solo and Core Duo Mac models that were part of Apple's transition from the PowerPC architecture to the Intel architecture that started in 2006. Some Intel models required later revisions such as 10.4.7; it could very well be that due to the transition, Tiger remained the longest running OS X version in history. The change also prompted the Hackintosh community to rise in popularity with installation guides and support for running Mac OS X on x86-based computers as a 'hack', hence the title. This movement was criticized by Apple, with several kernel and system patches made to prevent it with most later major software updates to Tiger, and is considered to break the SLA -- as OS X is not running on "Apple-branded" hardware. Regardless, Tiger still required architecture-specific discs and it wouldn't be until 10.5 Leopard that Apple would finally release OS X for a quad-architecture universally on one disc.

Overall, Mac OS X Tiger clearly helped evolve Mac OS X into an advanced operating system, which helped to set both performance and feature set expectations in later releases. Mac OS X 10.4.11 is the last version to support G3 processors and early G4 processors (though rare, early developer builds of Leopard can legitimately boot on G3, and all G4 processors can run Leopard with a CPU clock speed OpenFirmware hack.)

Leopard (10.5)

This version of Mac OS X introduces a lot of new features, most notably: Time Machine, to find and restore your backups when you need them, or if you just accidentaly deleted a file, and Spaces, Moving your windows into 4 (or more) personalizable spaces. The dock also got a new fuction named "Stacks", which allows an easy way of using files from folder pinned on the dock, as well it got a graphical overhaul. Like Mac OS X 10.4, it could run on PowerPC and Intel processors. It is the last release to run on PowerPC Macs.

Snow Leopard (10.6)

Requirements: Intel Core Duo or newer processor, 1 GB of RAM; latest update is 10.6.8, dropped PowerPC support

Lion (10.7)

A preview of Lion was publicly unveiled at Apple's "Back to the Mac" event on October 20, 2010. It will bring many developments made in Apple's iOS, such as an easily-navigable display of installed applications, to the Mac, and will include support for the Mac App Store, as introduced in Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.6. On February 24, 2011, the first developer's preview of Lion (11A390) was released to subscribers of Apple's developers program. The latest preview (build 11A459e) was released on May 13, 2011.

In a press release by Apple on May 31st, 2011, an announcement was made that this new release will be unveiled by Steve Jobs on June 6th at the WWDC 2011.

It was scheduled to release on Summer 2011.

This was also the last Mac OS developed before Steve Jobs died.

A Intel Core 2 Duo or newer processor and 2 GB of RAM is required.

Mountain Lion (10.8)

Released on July 25, 2012.

Basic System Requirements for OS X Mountain Lion:

• 64-Bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better required
• Ability to boot into OS X 64-bit kernel
• Advanced GPU chipset required
• Internet connection required to download and install OS X 10.8

Macs that support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

• MacBook Pro – 13″ from mid 2009 or later, 15″ from late 2007 and newer, 17″ from late 2007 and newer
• MacBook Air – late 2008 and newer
• iMac – models from mid 2007 and newer
• MacBook – 13″ aluminum from 2008, 13″ from 2009 and newer
• Mac Mini – early 2009 and newer
• Mac Pro – early 2008 models and newer
• XServe – early 2009 models and newer

Macs that do NOT support OS X Mountain Lion

• Anything with an Intel GMA 950 or x3100 integrated graphics card
• Anything with an ATI Radeon X1600
• MacBook models released prior to 2008
• Mac Mini released prior to 2007
• iMac models released prior to 2007
• Original MacBook Air

Mavericks (10.9)

Mavericks is the tenth major release of OS X. It was announced at June 10, 2013, at WWDC 2013. The RTM was released on October 22, 2013 and it boasts several changes over the original OS X releases.

Mavericks made Apple history for two distinct reasons: 1) For the first time, OS X was released to all qualifying Mac users free of charge as a system upgrade on the Mac App Store, and 2) Mavericks is the first release that stopped using feline codenames and switched to California-based titles, thus making it the start of a new generation or line of OS X. Mavericks also did not change system requirements significantly (if at all) from Mountain Lion.

While aestetically the same as 10.8 "Mountain Lion" (the previous release), 10.9 introduced memory compression, improved paging, and new energy management features, along with Time Coalescing.

Yosemite (10.10)

Yosemite is the next, upcoming version of OS X. It was announced at the 2014 WWDC, and is currently only available as a Developer Preview for Mac OS X developers or as a limited beta release for users. It has yet to be released, but as a completely redesigned Aqua UI inspired by the translucent "Glass" design of iOS 7, bringing changes not seen since Mac OS X 10.0's original introduction of Aqua.