By Jason Snell
March 24, 2021 9:38 AM PT
Mac OS X turns 20
Note: This story has not been updated since 2021.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Mac OS X. I wrote a bit about it in my Macworld column this week, and also put together a little Mac OS X timeline.
I’ve written a lot about Mac OS X over the years. Compiling that timeline reminded me of that. I was a features editor at Macworld when Apple began shipping OS X precursors, and so I edited most of our early coverage. Beginning with Mac OS X 10.1, I wrote most of Macworld’s big feature stories covering each release.
I’ve lived in the same house since 1999, so I have spent many springs and summers sitting out in my yard under our redwood tree writing and editing articles about Mac OS X, OS X, and now macOS.
How many? This many:
- OS X Prehistory (compiled by me from multiple Macworld features)
- Mac OS X 10.1
- Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
- Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
- Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
- Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- OS X 10.9 Mavericks
- OS X 10.10 Yosemite
- OS X 10.11 El Capitan
- macOS 10.12 Sierra
- macOS 10.13 High Sierra
- macOS 10.14 Mojave
- macOS 10.15 Catalina
- macOS 11 Big Sur
Wow, that’s a lot of operating-system releases. Here’s to the next uncountable number of them.
(While I wrote shorter reviews for Macworld, John Siracusa was always reviewing OS X at length for Ars Technica. Here’s a list of all his reviews.)
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