May 13, 1997: System 8 Demoed

Apple had ditched the System 7.7 iteration of Mac OS in an effort to kill the clone makers. That didn't stop the software from actually showing up renamed as System 8.0.

System 8.0 featured many improvements to System 7.6--a multithreaded finder, an appearance manager and some under-the-hood optimizations. Unsurprisingly, System 8.0 didn't address the largest concerns about Apple's classic OS--preemptive multitasking, a true multiuser environment and stability-- but it was enough of a stopgap to get loyalists to whip out their credit cards.

Developers got their first look at Apple's placeholder while the world waited for OS X when System 8.0 was demoed at the World Wide Developer Conference in May of 1997.