Apple Operating System History

1. Apple Macintosh Operating System History
2. History Of Mac Os
3. Mac Os History Timeline
4. Apple Operating Systems History

Updated and republished for macOS 10.15.7; skip it unless you really really care about all the macOS releases. Originally published on November 14th, 2005.

Below the break is a table showing all major releases of macOS (previously Mac OS X) from the public beta through the latest public version, which is macOS 10.15.7, as of September 23rd, 2020—the 138th release in total.

Note: Click the ⓘ symbol to read Apple's release notes for a given update.

The early 1980s. 1981 – Apple II has become the world's most popular computer, and Apple has grown to a 300 million dollar corporation, becoming the fastest growing company in American business history. With over fifty companies vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market in November of 1981, with the IBM PC. On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer Inc.' S chairman Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Apple's annual shareholders meeting in Cupertino, to show off the very first Macintosh personal computer in a live demonstration. Macintosh 128 came bundled with what was later called the Mac OS, but then known simply as the System Software. Apple launched iOS—then called iPhone OS—on June 29, 2007, with the very first iPhone. Since then, the mobile operating system has gone through some major upgrades. But it didn't happen.

The following was culled from Apple's support downloads page, and as such, some of the dates may be off just a bit. If you know for certain that something is incorrect, please let me know and I'll get it fixed. (Scroll to see all entries.)

Note: The headings on this list indicate the Macintosh System bundle names; the bullet points indicate the version of the System File included in that bundle. This is to make it clearer for people searching for specific bundle versions as opposed to System File versions. Finder File versions are not indicated. 1 Classic Mac OS 1.1 Macintosh System Software (0 - 0.3) 1.1.1 System File 1 1.1.2. Mac OS History By: Mike Yocom - Revised: 2006-06-01 devin. Introduction The Mac OS was not the first graphical user interface, but it was the first successful one. The reason for this is simple: affordability. The Xerox Alto cost $32 000 to build, the Xerox Star retailed for $16 600, and the Apple Lisa retailed for $10 000. The first Macintosh.

Note: The Days column reflects the number of days between releases.

Some entries may appear out of chronological order (i.e. 10.5 is shown on Oct 26, but above Nov 14 for 10.4.11). This is to keep the version numbers in the proper order, even when an older OS received an update after a major new release came out. This has happened a few times over the years.

Some random notes, updated from the original post:

• Starting with the Public Beta and up through macOS 10.15.7, there have been 138 macOS releases, both major and minor. This figure includes the one odd macOS X release: 10.2.7. This version was only for the then-new PowerMac G5 and the flat panel iMac G4, and was never generally released.
• As of September 23rd, 2020 (macOS 10.15.7's release date), it's been 7,315 days since the Public Beta was released. So on average, we've seen some sort of update every 53.0 days.
• The shortest time period between any two releases is six days, which is how quickly the 10.15.5 Supplemental Update 1 came out after the 10.15.5 release.
• The longest time period between any two minor releases is 165 days, which was how long we waited for the 10.4.9 update. (Tecnically, it's actually the 192 day interval between the Mac OS X Public Beta and version 10.0, but I'm counting from the official 10.0 release.)
• The smallest update was 10.3.1, at only 1.5MB. The largest (non-combo, non-main OS release) update was 10.15.1 at 5.3GB.
• The '???' entry for Size on a given release indicates I was unable to find the size. Feel free to contact me if you can help replace any of the '???' entries.

And now, gratuitous graphics…

Releases by version number

Releases by year

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A special 'thank you!' goes to Mr. Ziebell (for providing some size values on very-old minor updates), and to Benton Quest (for providing size info on all the major releases up through Snow Leopard). See Benton's comment below if you want a nicely detailed history of those early releases.

Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., American manufacturer of personal computers, computerperipherals, and computer software. It was the first successful personal computer company and the popularizer of the graphical user interface. Headquarters are located in Cupertino, California.

Garage start-up

Apple Inc. had its genesis in the lifelong dream of Stephen G. Wozniak to build his own computer—a dream that was made suddenly feasible with the arrival in 1975 of the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which came as a kit and used the recently invented microprocessor chip. Encouraged by his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, a San Francisco Bay area group centred around the Altair, Wozniak quickly came up with a plan for his own microcomputer. In 1976, when the Hewlett-Packard Company, where Wozniak was an engineering intern, expressed no interest in his design, Wozniak, then 26 years old, together with a former high-school classmate, 21-year-old Steve Jobs, moved production operations to the Jobs family garage—and the Silicon Valley garage start-up company legend was born. Jobs and Wozniak named their company Apple. For working capital, Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak his programmable calculator. Their first model was simply a working circuit board, but at Jobs's insistence the 1977 version was a stand-alone machine in a custom-molded plastic case, in contrast to the forbidding steel boxes of other early machines. This Apple II also offered a colour display and other features that made Wozniak's creation the first microcomputer that appealed to the average person.

Commercial success

Though he was a brash business novice whose appearance still bore traces of his hippie past, Jobs understood that in order for the company to grow, it would require professional management and substantial funding. He convinced Regis McKenna, a well-known public relations specialist for the semiconductor industry, to represent the company; he also secured an investment from Michael Markkula, a wealthy veteran of the Intel Corporation who became Apple's largest shareholder and an influential member of Apple's board of directors. The company became an instant success, particularly after Wozniak invented a disk controller that allowed the addition of a low-cost floppy disk drive that made information storage and retrieval fast and reliable. With room to store and manipulate data, the Apple II became the computer of choice for legions of amateur programmers. Most notably, in 1979 two Bostonians—Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston—introduced the first personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, creating what would later be known as a 'killer app' (application): a software program so useful that it propels hardware sales.

While VisiCalc opened up the small-business and consumer market for the Apple II, another important early market was primary educational institutions. By a combination of aggressive discounts and donations (and an absence of any early competition), Apple established a commanding presence among educational institutions, contributing to its platform's dominance of primary-school software well into the 1990s.

Competition from IBM

Apple's profits and size grew at a historic rate: by 1980 the company netted over $100 million and had more than 1,000 employees. Its public offering in December was the biggest since 1956, when the Ford Motor Company had gone public. (Indeed, by the end of 1980, Apple's valuation of nearly $2 billion was greater than Ford's.) However, Apple would soon face competition from the computer industry's leading player, International Business Machines Corporation. IBM had waited for the personal computer market to grow before introducing its own line of personal computers, the IBM PC, in 1981. IBM broke with its tradition of using only proprietary hardware components and software and built a machine from readily available components, including the Intel microprocessor, and used DOS (disk operating system) from the Microsoft Corporation. Because other manufacturers could use the same hardware components that IBM used, as well as license DOS from Microsoft, new software developers could count on a wide IBM PC-compatible market for their software. Soon the new system had its own killer app: the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, which won an instant constituency in the business community—a market that the Apple II had failed to penetrate.

Macintosh and the first affordable GUI

Apple had its own plan to regain leadership: a sophisticated new generation of computers that would be dramatically easier to use. In 1979 Jobs had led a team of engineers to see the innovations created at the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto (California) Research Center (PARC). There they were shown the first functional graphical user interface (GUI), featuring on-screen windows, a pointing device known as a mouse, and the use of icons, or pictures, to replace the awkward protocols required by all other computers. Apple immediately incorporated these ideas into two new computers: Lisa, released in 1983, and the lower-cost Macintosh, released in 1984. Jobs himself took over the latter project, insisting that the computer should be not merely great but 'insanely great.' The result was a revelation—perfectly in tune with the unconventional, science-fiction-esque television commercial that introduced the Macintosh during the broadcast of the 1984 Super Bowl—a $2,500 computer unlike any that preceded it.

Apple Macintosh Operating System History

• 1976 - present
  

History Of Mac Os

related people

Mac Os History Timeline

Apple Operating Systems History

• Co-founder Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800.
  
• Apple was founded on April Fool's Day in 1976.
  
• The Apple logo was designed with a bite so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a cherry from afar.
  
• Apple's market cap is greater than the GDPs of the Netherlands, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Norway.
  
• In 2011, Apple's financial reserves were greater than the U.S. Treasury's operating cash balance.