Hey guys, it’s Greg with Apple Explained and today we’re going to explore the historyof macOS.This topic was the second place winner of last weeks voting poll and if you didn’tget to vote, make sure you’re subscribed, that way the voting polls will show up rightin your mobile activity feed and you can let me know which video you’d like to see next.So Apple is known for their well designed hardware, but even more recognizable are theadvanced operating systems they create for their hardware.Right now, they ship four different operating systems for four different lines of products:tvOS for Apple TV, watchOS for Apple Watch, iOS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, andmacOS for the Mac.They all provide an excellent user experience and optimization for the hardware they runon, but one OS stands out from the rest, and that is macOS.Because it is the oldest of the four operating systems, as it’s been around for 18 years.So let’s go back to January 1997, before macOS was even publicly available, becausethis was when Apple announced their software roadmap for the following years, and one ofthe biggest announcements was a new operating system codenamed “Rhapsody”.It was the product that resulted from the NeXT acquisition, with NeXTstep serving asthe underlaying architecture of the operating system and Mac OS 8’s platinum UI overlaidon top of it.Because it was a dramatically new OS, previous Mac OS apps weren’t compatible with it,and beta testers were ultimately stuck with the handful of stock apps Apple had includedin the software install disk.Later this software was packaged and sold to system admins on March 16, 1999 under thenew name, Mac OS X Server 1.0, and included a tool called Classic Environment which allowedusers to run Mac apps previously available on Mac OS 8.Apple saw the incredible response to the technologies inside Server 1.0, and built a developer previewof Mac OS X, the operating system built for average consumers.The first two developer previews of OS X looked really similar to Server 1.0, but the thirdpreview included an entirely new user interface named Aqua, which was clearly influenced bythe fruity, colorful iMac and iBook.It featured glossy buttons, pin stripes, and all sorts of digital luster.Now rendering all these different elements may be easy for todays video cards and CPUsbut back in early 2000 when machines had 16 MB of video memory, it got pretty sluggish.ARS Technica’s John Siracus called Aqua “unbearably slow and a huge resource hog.”And after optimizing the user interface a bit, Apple released Mac OS X Public Beta codenamedKodiak to the general public via CD ROM in September 2000.It cost $29 for an install disk, and was primarily released to gather feedback from users.And after listening to what they had to say, Apple tweaked more elements of the UI, squashedsome bugs, and optimized the operating system’s performance.Once things were cleaned up, Apple released Mac OS 10.0 Cheetah to the public in March2001.And while it was a landmark release, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was an outstandingoperating system.The Aqua UI was still pretty slow compared to its competition, kernel panics were quitecommon, and it was missing critical features like a DVD player, disc burning, and printerdriver support.Later on in 2001, an incremental release called Mac OS X.1 Puma was shipped to address themajority of concerns users had with OS X Cheetah.The most notable improvement was the speediness of the Aqua UI.It was not only much quicker, but different elements were reorganized and streamlined,making the operating system more intuitive.(Screenshots: 10.0 vs 10.1, 10.0 vs 10.1).It also included features like DVD playback, disc burning, expanded printer support, andImage Capture for importing photos from a digital camera which is still around today.It also marked the first release of Mac OS X to serve as the default operating systemfor Macs right out of the box.Now less than a year after that release, Apple was ready to give Mac OS X its first full-featuredupdate, called Mac OS X.2 Jaguar.It was regarded as the first version of Mac OS X that pro users could push to its limits,the same way they could with Mac OS 9.It solidified the decade-long tradition of naming Mac OS releases after big-cats.And on posters of the disc artwork for Jaguar, the roman numeral “X” featured 3D renderedfur thanks to the folks at PIXAR, even one of the wallpapers was a jaguar fur texture.Along with many performance optimizations, Jaguar also included over 150 new user features.Including MP4 support in Quicktime, junk mail flagging in the Mail app, and better compatibilitywith Windows.Although there was something that Jaguar did not have, and that was the happy Mac startup icon.Now a little over a year after Jaguar, the next update to Mac OS X arrived, this timecalled Panther.It was the most substantial release to date, boasting hundreds of features including aredesigned Finder with a sidebar for recently accessed drives and folders along with a muchfaster search field and brushed metal accents, Exposé for a one click birds eye view ofall active windows and iChat AV, a video conferencing app for the mass market.Panther also came with a bunch of updated or brand new applications, like a Font Bookfor installing and browsing installed typefaces, Xcode for app development, and for the firsttime, Apple’s own web browser called Safari.Previously they were using a port of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and once Safari was released,it paved the way for several other browsers to use its incredible open source WebKit framework,including Google Chrome in 2008.Now Panther cost $130 for a single use upgrade, which many seem pretty steep considering newreleases of macOS today are free, but $130 was pretty reasonable compared to the priceof other operating systems like Windows.Now the next release, OS X.4 Tiger, was critical for multiple reasons.Aside from the over 200 new features, it was the first OS X release to break the annualrelease cycle, as Tiger came out two years after Panther.And tiger dropped support for quite a few machines by requiring a Firewire port forinstallation.It was also the release that powered the first Apple TV and served as the framework for thefirst iPhone’s operating system in 2007.Finally, it was the first public release to support two types of processors, the legacyPowerPC architecture, and the new Intel architecture that was used in new Macs.Now Tiger introduced some really useful features including Spotlight search, Dashboard widgets,RSS support in Safari, an unabridged virtual dictionary, and the classic Photo Booth application.Aqua was improved even further, with the pinstripes being replaced by more subtle glass and brushedstainless steel elements.Tiger was the longest running version of Mac OS X, with 11 supplemental updates releasedover 3 years beginning in 2005 and ending in 2007, when OS X.5 Leopard was released.Speaking of which, Leopard had a bit of an unconventional release, since it was delayedtwice, likely because of the iPhone taking away resources from Mac projects.But at Apple’s 2006 WWDC, they previewed a few features of Leopard, which would bereleased a year later.A few of those features were: Time Machine, an easy backup solution, a much improved Mailapp with notes support and stationary, iChat AV with Photo Booth filters, Spaces whichorganized your windows into different desktops, and support for 64 bit applications.Now Leopard was finally released in October 2007 and included even more new features thatweren’t mentioned at the 2006 WWDC.Like a redesigned desktop and dock with more 3D elements and file stacks, Boot Camp foreasy switching between Mac OS and Windows, and Quick Look which allowed users to pressthe space bar to preview a selected item in Finder.Now Mac OS X Snow Leopard was the next update, and it's regarded by many to this day as thesingle best Mac OS X release ever.While the majority of the appeal of Snow Leopard were under the hood improvements like a moreresponsive Finder rewritten in Cocoa, and sandboxed apps for heightened security, therewere a number of visible improvements, like over 7GB of recovered disc space when youupgrade from Leopard, the redesigned QuickTime X, and the Mac App Store.And I should also mention that Snow Leopard was the final version of Mac OS X to be solelyreleased on physical disks.Because from OS X Lion and onwards, the system could only be updated via the Mac App Store,with the small exception of Lion being available on USB drives for a short time.Now Mac OS X.7 Lion was released eight months after Lion, and I think this was one of thecoolest updates in the modern history OS X.And a big reason why, was that elements from iOS were finally being included in Mac OS.Things like FaceTime was finally bundled in with Lion, Mail and Address Book were reallyreminiscent of the iPad’s interface, most system apps gained auto save, full screen,and auto resume, there was system wide implementation of auto correct and emoji pickers, and multitouchgestures were implemented across the entire operating system.And while some people considered this transformation to be dumbing down of Mac OS, I’d arguethat the features added to Lion increased productivity by a very large margin.Also, these new features propelled the Mac even further ahead of its Windows counterpart.There was also the introduction of AirDrop for easy file sharing without the use of Wi-Fiand Mission Control, which consolidated Spaces, Dashboard, and Exposé.Now Mac OS X.8 Mountain Lion further integrated iOS in with the Mac in July 2012 by introducingNotification Center, iMessage as a replacement for iChat, Game Center, Reminders, and Notes.Apps like Address Book and iCal were renamed to Contacts and Calendar to better match theiriOS counterparts.And Mac OS X.9 Mavericks was released a year later, making it the second annual releasein years.Apple joked on stage at WWDC 2013 that they’d run out of big cat names for new versionsof Mac OS X, so they decided to use names of California landmarks instead.The first being Mavericks.Now this upgrade was an incremental release, featuring improved performance and improvedbattery life of MacBooks.And it achieved this by using a new memory management technology called Compressed Memory,which, according to Apple, shrinks inactive data to keep your Mac fast and responsive.Many other features were included like iCloud Keychain to generate, store, and sync passwordsand credit card numbers, tabbed windows and file tagging in Finder, the ability to takeaction on notifications directly inside the banner, and ported versions of iBooks andMaps.It was also the first version of Mac OS in history to be released for free via the MacApp Store.A year later, at WWDC 2014, Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite was introduced and released to developers.Although it featured a flatter user interface that was more in line with the now iconicdesign of iOS 7, it was pretty light on features.We got Handoff, which seamlessly allows you to work on a document on one device and “handit off” to another device without skipping a beat and the ability to take and place callson the Mac via your iPhone, but that was pretty much it feature-wise.In 2015, OS 10.11 El Capitan iterated upon the already minor Yosemite update, addingthe Metal API to make graphically intense apps run smoother, a system wide transitionfrom the Helvetica typeface to San Fransisco, and public transport in the Maps app.But the big update wouldn’t arrive until 2016 with the release of Mac OS 10.12 Sierra.Now there were quite a few things that made this a major update.First, the name “Mac OS X” was simplified to “macOS” adopting the same naming schemeas their other operating systems like iOS, and tvOS.Also, there were a lot of useful productivity features like Auto Unlock, which uses yourApple Watch to detect when you’re in close proximity and unlocks your Mac automatically.Universal Clipboard used wifi and bluetooth to share clipboard content between all devicesusing your Apple ID.We also got Picture in Picture for videos, Night Shift, Siri support, and the Apple FileSystem, which allows solid state and flash based Macs to use more complex file systemfeatures, like snapshots for file recovery and system encryption.Now the following update in 2017 was called High Sierra and introduced new features likeHVEC video support, Metal 2, eGPU support for some Macs with Thunderbolt 3 ports, althoughHigh Sierra was almost completely devoid of visible end user features.But fortunately this years release of macOS is a much different story, since 2018 broughtmacOS Mojave, easily the most pro-focused release of macOS in a while.Mojave introduced a full dark mode toggle in system preferences to reduce eye strainat night.And new dynamic wallpapers were included to sort’ve compliment dark mode.Stacks has been expanded from the dock to the desktop to reduce clutter and help withorganization.FaceTime now supports up to 32 people in a video call, the App Store was redesigned tobetter align with the iOS App Store, and four iOS apps were included as Mac versions todemo how seamless porting apps from iOS to macOS will become.So macOS has evolved dramatically over it's 18 years on the market, and trying to predictwhere it’s headed is almost impossible.Some people believe Apple is trying to merge iOS and macOS, but Apple themselves dismissedthat claim.Personally, I think Mac computers will always have their own operating system optimizedfor it, but we will continue to see iOS and macOS become more deeply integrated in reasonableways that make using Apple products even more seamless.So that is the history of macOS, and if you want to vote for the next video topic, don’tforget to subscribe.Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.