Mac OS X Over the Years

carterx

carterx

Registered
Almost spanning a decade and OS X (pronounced as "O"-"S"-"10" not "O"-"S"-"X") has gone through seven major OS revisions, eight including the up and coming OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and today I decide to to actually install each of the OS X versions excluding Public Beta which I do not have and just have a quick review for myself of the differences from version to version which I happen to take screen shots to share my OS X review today.

Full article Mac OS X Over The Years

OSX_overtheyears.jpg


 
Last edited:
Thanks for doing this, it's a nice idea. :)

Actually, I was recently thinking about how the appearance of OS X has changed over the years, and this quite nicely demonstrates it!
 
Ya, big difference from 10.2 - 10.3, Panther made it a lot easier on the eyes as well was a smoother running system at least for me when it came to working in big networking environment.
 
The stripes in 10.2 and earlier were awfully bold. I think the appearance of OS X has been steadily improved. Except maybe for iTunes. I still think the newest iTunes look is a bit off (though I was never a fan of brushed metal).
 
Ya, when I look back OS X 10.0-10.2 had a not so great DUI. Panther turned it around. As for iTunes, went from being a mp3 player to, well, everything related to Apple such as iphones, ipods, music, applications etc. :p
 
You should've included the music player thingie from 10.0 Public Beta. I still miss that incredibly sweet interface. ;)
 
Great site! I used to use the GUI Gallery for my research at university, which has less of a mac focus but is amusing for looking at Windows 1 etc.

Mikuro - I didn't think the latest iTunes was brushed metal, more like 'unified' certainly not the obvious metal it used to be.
 
I wonder why they call it "CD Player". It was called "Music Player" afaik and was my favourite MP3 player on my blueberry iBook G3 back then. ;) (That's when I started using macosx.com, btw.) :)
 
fryke said:
You should've included the music player thingie from 10.0 Public Beta. I still miss that incredibly sweet interface. ;)
Click to expand...

After some requests I'm trying to either get a copy of the install or permission for screen shots from else where to add to this article. Hope to add it because I think it would look cool. Also trying to to get Pre Beta images as well.
 
I wonder if anyone has screen-shots of the early OS X intel builds, as they claimed to have been compiling from x86 since public beta days.
 
carterx said:
Also trying to to get Pre Beta images as well.
Click to expand...

You're opening a can of worms here. ;) ... The Public Beta was the first, well, public beta. In many ways, it's the part where the public interest really began, since they could get their hands on it. I think Mac OS X DP3 was the first to include Aqua, DP4 looked much the same, the more interesting builds, look-wise, would be Mac OS X DP1 and DP2, which still looked much like Mac OS X Server 1.x or "Rhapsody".

There are, however, a few interesting builds between 10.1 and 10.2 that should be reviewed once in a while. Early betas of 10.2 had a different Dock.app that allowed "minimize-in-place", a very interesting concept that I still miss occasionally. It was *GREAT* for Photoshop work! Screenshots of that would be interesting. (I think build 6C48 was the last one to have that feature. Some people took that build's Dock.app to the final version of Jaguar in order to retain the feature...)
 
Another one of the reasons why all versions of OS X prior to 10.2 looked a bit weird was because of the shadowing on the fonts. It was either with 10.2 or 10.3 when the shadowing on the fonts was removed (along with the softening of the stripes, especially in the menus). And even to this day I cannot get over that Apple logo dead center in the menubar like a bindi. :p

I still do love the Mac OS X Server 1.0 look and feel. Yeah, the icons were a little bigger than normal, but it made the platinum look much cooler than it did in OS 9. I especially loved the Finder window resize edges and the darker Finder window color. :D
 
My feelings exactly. Although you *could* colour every aspect of that "Dark Platinum" look in Rhapsody and OS X Server 1.x. Pink shadows, blue highlights, yellow fonts, whatever you wanted. (And then you went back to Dark Platinum.)
 
carterx said:
Also trying to to get Pre Beta images as well.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't have thought that screen shots of either the Public Beta or DP4 would be that hard to come by. I could put either of those on my Wallstreet for shots if you need something specific... I just need to pull my main hard drive (running Rhapsody 5.6) and put in a spare.

I still have apps for DP4 and PB as I recall... many of which are essentially the same as the ones I use in Rhapsody 5.6 today.

Apps like Create 10.0 worked the same in Rhapsody 5.6 as the did in DP4.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top