Yup. Thirteen years ago today, on March 24, 2001, Apple and Steve Jobs unleashed the first version of Mac OS X 10.0 (code named ‘Cheetah’) on to the world.
Despite officially being a teenager, OS X is holding up better than most 13 year olds: its voice isn’t cracking, it’s not awkward around girls, and since Scott Forstall’s departure, there’s barely a blemish to be seen on its otherwise pristine countenance.
What’s your earliest memory of OS X? Share it with us in the comments.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
7 responses to “Mac OS X Became A Teenager Today… Happy Birthday!”
I think I used Mac OS X either leopard back in middle school
It took me almost a full year to decide to upgrade from OS9. I had so many nice extensions I didn’t want to give up and my computer couldn’t run OSX nearly as fast as OS9. I knew OSX was the wave of the future but I would use OSX for a day or two and then go back to OS9. I did this for about a year but when I got a newer Mac I simply gave up all those neat extensions and moved to OSX. I had a few OSX kernel panics but OS9 was definitely less stable than OSX. However, sometimes it’s just hard to let go of the past.
I got my first Mac SE/30 in 1989 which operated on OS6. I upgraded each time a new Mac OS came out, and finally in 2001 I had a Mac IIci running OS9 with a 20 inch Ikegami color monitor. It was a great setup that I used for many years for graphic design work. I was wary of OSX but bought it anyway to research what programs I’d need to upgrade. It wasn’t until OSX 10.2 Jaguar that I moved completely over to OSX, and I haven’t looked back since. Greater stability, gorgeous modern interface, everything I needed. I still use 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on several of my Macs because they still run legacy PowerPC apps. Until I finally find a solution for these legacy apps I’ll continue to use Snow Leopard, but I have Mavericks on my MacBook Pro, and it’s terrific.
PowerPC transition started 9 years ago. Time to modernize your workflow.
I used a tangerine iMac that my friend had to play some dinosaur game in which you had to collect some stuff around 10 years back.
I clearly remember when OS X landed in my house, I was 9 at the time and we revolutionized all our family’s Mac range.
The first Macs we had with Cheetah were a couple of Power Book Titanium, then we upgraded my iMac G3 Bondi Blue (which still rocks today)!
OS X Panther. Then Tiger. Then Leopard. Then Snow Leopard. Then Lion. Then Mavericks. The iMac G5, then the Mac Mini, then another Mac Mini, then a MacBook, and right now, a MacBook Pro with Retina Display.