January 6, 2000: Steve Turns OS X Out

Everybody knew a major change in the Mac's operating system was coming; after all Apple had been talking about the change for years, but nobody outside Apple was sure what the new OS would look like or behave like. Most Mac fans were hoping that it would be just a better Mac OS 9 with preemptive multitasking and a few more under the hood improvements. The folks thinking that were in for quite a surprise.

OS X featured a lot more than just preemptive multitasking. The finder was completely revamped, the Dock was put into place, Aqua was the new platinum and Graphics were handled by Quartz. Steve Jobs famously raved, "We made the buttons look so good you'll want to lick them." (Caution: Do not lick OS X.) Aside from good looks OS X also promised to run your older OS applications in classic mode with no problems. Apparently "very slowly" wasn't considered a problem.

Another computing revolution, according to Steve Jobs, was on its way. Of course, the only revolution in is the early version of OS X was Apple's ability to hide the Unix engine running underneath the eye candy because OS X didn't do much when first demoed at MacWorld Expo San Francisco on January 6, 2000.