This accomplishment warrants a look back, so please join us on this retrospective as we take a look at the first ten years of Mac OS X. Microsoft suffers from a user base that is unwilling to give up support for legacy hardware and software, while Apple - on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s - knew that it could either force its small user base through a difficult transition or lose everything.Īpple has truly come full circle, with the tenth anniversary of Mac OS X punctuated by reports that, between the iPad and Mac platforms, Apple is poised to become the dominant computer company in 2011. We would argue that, while Windows 7 is Microsoft’s most visually appealing operating system yet, it still lags behind OS X in terms of computer navigation and overall ease of use. Today, Windows has caught up with OS X in some ways, and not in others.

Many PC owners were still using Windows 98, unwilling to become early adopters of Windows XP after the Windows Millennium Edition debacle, and resorted to using various skinning programs to make their computers look more like Macs.

By the end of the year, OS X was the envy of Windows users worldwide. On Maten years ago today - Apple released Mac OS X 10.0, also known as “Cheetah.” Although the transition was not initially easy for Mac owners, who were annoyed by speed and stability issues, Apple persevered and made one improvement after another to the operating system.

10.0 cheetah