(If you can read that list without flinching, turn in your Apple Extended Keyboard II and your old-school Mac cred.) And even these grim options represented the end of a longer succession of abortive attempts at technological rejuvenation: OpenDoc, QuickDraw 3D, QuickDraw GX, Taligent, Pink, Copland, Gershwin, Dylan-truly, a trail of tears.

No amount of translucent plastic was going to change that.Īpple was so desperate for a solution to its OS problem in the mid- to late 1990s that both Solaris and Windows NT were considered as possible foundations for the next-generation Mac OS. By the turn of the century, Apple needed a new OS, and it needed one badly. But that iMac was merely a stay of execution at best, and a last, desperate gasp at worst. Historians (and Wall Street) may say that it was the iMac, with its fresh, daring industrial design, that marked the turning point for Apple. First and foremost, it was the end of one of the most drawn-out, heart-wrenching death spirals in the history of the technology sector. Mac OS X 10.0 was the end of many things. But the road that led to Mac OS X extends much farther into past-years, in fact.

At that point, I'd already written over 100,000 words about Apple's new OS for Ars Technica, starting with the second developer release and culminating in the public beta several months before 10.0. To me, it felt like the end of a long road rather than a beginning.

Mac OS X 10.0 was released five years ago today, on March 24th, 2001.

Mac os x 10.0 login screen