walls.corpus

By Nathan L. Walls

  • Sunset, Jan. 2, 2021/Williams Township
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  • Sunrise, Dec. 19, 2020/Williams Township
  • Sunset, Dec. 27, 2020

Catching up on Mac OS X history

Saturday, 29 August, 2009 — apple mac-os-x

While waiting for his own review of Snow Leopard to go live on Ars Technica, John Siracusa reminded his Twitter followers of his back catalog of authoritative examinations of previous Mac OS X versions.

They go back all the way to Mac OS X Developer Preview 2 from December of 1999.

Release-to-release, there’s always a lot more to ask for, and from 10.0 through 10.4, there was a whole lot of refinement needed. Heck, 10.2 was really the first version I gave an unabashed recommendation for to people who weren’t interested in being developers.

What’s nice about Siracusa’s reviews, release-to-release, is his consistent thoroughness. Part of that is revisiting past (and continued) frustrations.

From his 10.2 review:

By the time version 10.1 was released, I was ready for some salvation. Version 10.1 held the promise of being the “mainstream release”–something good enough for everyone to use, not just the brave early adopters that sweated out the public beta and the 10.0 release. Version 10.1 certainly was a vast improvement over 10.0. The previous statement can be read as praise for 10.1 or as a condemnation of 10.0, but it is undeniable.

In the end, I wanted more than something that was simply “better than 10.0.” As I wrote in my 10.1 review:

I want to believe that [Mac OS X] will replace Mac OS 9 in a way that improves upon every aspect of the classic Mac OS user experience. Unfortunately, although this may still come to pass, Mac OS X 10.1 is not that version of Mac OS.

It seemed that even Apple itself didn’t fully believe in its new OS, as it continued to ship hardware that booted into Mac OS 9 by default.

I’m reminded of several of my own frustrations with early Mac OS X. While I’m looking forward to Snow Leopard’s refinements and enhancements, I can’t think of an overarching complaint I have about the OS itself now. It’s come a long way in eight years or so of public release.

For instance, I remember purchasing the Public Beta and installing it on the PowerMac G3 I had at home and, somewhat ill-advisedly, my work machine. The Public Beta was interesting, but looking back, there were some nasty bugs and decisions I’m glad Apple rectified. Consider, the Apple Menu didn’t exist, but there was an Apple logo that sat dead center in the title bar. Then there was the train-wreck of differing user interfaces. Oh, and pinstripes. Lots of pinstripes.

Siracusa has the enthusiasm for the platform, but having the clear-eyed vision to identify its shortcomings and disappointments. That’s a valuable critique.

The past will inform the present. Here’s the list (with one addition) from Siracusa: