Mac OS X 10.0 ( code named Cheetah) is the first major release of

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, Apple's desktop and server

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

. It was released on March 24, 2001 for a price of $129 after a

public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

. Mac OS X was Apple's long-awaited successor to the classic Mac OS. It was derived from

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...

and FreeBSD, and featured a new user interface called

Aqua Aqua is the Latin word for water. It is used in many words which relate to water, such as aquatic life. In English, it may also refer to: Arts * Aqua (color), a greenish-blue color Business * Aqua (skyscraper), an 82-story residential skysc ...

, as well as improved stability and security due to its new

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

foundations. It introduced the Quartz graphics rendering engine for

hardware-accelerated Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcul ...

animations. Many technologies were ported from the classic Mac OS, including Sherlock and the QuickTime framework. The core components of Mac OS X were open sourced as Darwin. Six months after its release, Mac OS X 10.0 was succeeded by Mac OS X 10.1, code named Puma.

Development

New and updated features

The features of the release include the Dock which was a new way of organizing one's Mac OS X applications on a user interface, and a change from the classic method of Application launching in previous Mac OS systems. It included the

Terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

, it was a feature that allowed access to Mac OS X's underpinnings, namely the Unix core; Mac OS had previously had the distinction of being one of the few operating systems with no command line interface at all. Also, it included the

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sys ...

email client, it’s features included the ability to configure the software to receive all of a user's email accounts in the one list, ability to file emails into folders, ability to search for emails, and ability to automatically append signatures to outgoing emails. The

Address Book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone n ...

was a new application which had features including exporting and importing cards to and from

vCard vCard, also known as VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, NFC ...

format, API to interface with other applications, change of address notifications, contact groups, auto-merge when importing vCards, customizable fields and categories, the automatic formatting of phone numbers.

TextEdit TextEdit is an open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-like ope ...

replaced the

SimpleText SimpleText is the native text editor for the Apple classic Mac OS. SimpleText allows text editing and text formatting (underline, italic, bold, etc.), fonts, and sizes. It was developed to integrate the features included in the different version ...

application with new features. PDF support was added, it allows the user to create PDFs from any application. The OS introduced the new

UI. Several features of Mac OS 9 were ported to Mac OS X, including the Sherlock desktop and web search engine.

Removed features

*File-sharing client — The system can only use TCP/IP, not AppleTalk, to connect to servers sharing the

Apple Filing Protocol The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is a proprietary network protocol, and part of the Apple File Service (AFS), that offers file services for macOS and the classic Mac OS. In Mac OS 9 and earlier, AFP was ...

. It cannot use SMB to connect to

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

or Samba servers. *File-sharing server — As a server, the system can share files using only the

(over

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

, and

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

. *Optical media —

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

playback is not supported, and CDs cannot be burned to.

Architecture

Mac OS X is built on Darwin, a

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system derived from FreeBSD. It also adopted a new XNU kernel, derived from Mach, as a replacement for the

Mac OS nanokernel The Mac OS nanokernel is an operating system kernel serving as the basis of most PowerPC based system software versions 7 through 9 of the classic Mac OS, predating Mac OS X. The initial revision of this software is a single tasking system whic ...

used in classic Mac OS. Unlike Mac OS 9, Mac OS X had

protected memory Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern instruction set architectures and operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that h ...

and

preemptive multitasking In computing, preemption is the act of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This interrupt is done by an external scheduler with no assistance or cooperation from the task. This preemp ...

. This meant that if an application's memory becomes corrupted due to a bug, the application would crash without the entire system crashing and needing to be rebooted. Mac OS X also had support for OpenGL,

AppleScript AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. that facilitates automated control over scriptable Mac applications. First introduced in System 7, it is currently included in all versions of macOS as part of a package of system aut ...

, and the

Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...

and Cocoa APIs.

Language support

Mac OS X 10.0 began a short era (that ended with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar's release) where Apple offered two types of installation CDs: 1Z and 2Z CDs. The difference in the two lay in the extent of multilingual support. Input method editors of

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays ...

, and

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

were only included with the 2Z CDs. They also came with more languages (the full set of 15 languages), whereas the 1Z CDs came only with about eight languages and could not actually display simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and/or Korean (except for the Chinese characters present in Japanese

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

). A variant of 2Z CDs were introduced when Mac OS X v10.0.3 was released to the

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

n market (this variant could not be upgraded to version 10.0.4). The brief period of multilingual confusion ended with the release of v10.2. Currently, all Mac OS X installer CDs and preinstallations include the full set of 15 languages and full multilingual compatibility.

Marketing

Mac OS X 10.0 was not externally marketed with its codename, a practice which began with Mac OS X Jaguar.

Reception

Release history

System requirements

*Supported Computers: Power Macintosh G3 Beige, G3 B&W, G4, G4 Cube,

iMac G3 The iMac G3, originally released as the iMac, is a series of Macintosh personal computers sold by Apple Computer from 1998 to 2003. The iMac was the first major new product release for Apple under Steve Jobs, Apple's interim CEO and cofounder ...

PowerBook G3 The PowerBook G3 is a series of laptop Macintosh personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1997 to 2001. It was the first laptop to use the PowerPC G3 (PPC740/750) series of microprocessors, and was marketed as t ...

PowerBook G4 The PowerBook G4 is a series of notebook computers manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple Computer between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line of notebooks. The PowerBook G4 runs on the RISC-based PowerPC G4 processor, designed by the ...

iBook iBook is a line of laptop computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted entry-level, consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end ...

*RAM: **128 MB (unofficially 64 MB minimum) *Hard Drive Space: **1,500 MB (800 MB for the minimal install)

Timeline

References

External links

Mac OS X v10.0 review
at Ars Technica * from apple.com {{Apple Inc. 0 2001 software PowerPC operating systems