Today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Mac OS X.

On Saturday, March 24, 2001, Apple began allowing customers to purchase Mac OS X, the successor to the classic Mac OS. The first version of Mac OS X, “Cheetah”, was famous for its “Aqua” interface with a bubble-shaped design, from windows to buttons.

Today, March 24, 2021, marks 20 years since Mac OS X went on sale, and Mac Apple’s software has undergone many changes over the past two decades, but it was with Mac OS X that Apple took one of the the first steps towards transforming from a company on the verge of failure into one of the most successful companies in the world. Mac OS X preceded the launch of the first iPod and announced what was in store under Jobs.

Mac OS X was introduced to Apple’s January 2000 keynote at the Macworld Expo. At the time, Steve Jobs said that Mac OS X “will delight consumers with its simplicity and amaze professionals with its power.” He also said it was “the most important software” from Apple since the original Macintosh operating system in 1984.

The Aqua interface has now introduced the well-known Dock for easy access to applications and documents, plus it has included Apple’s revamped File Management Finder. And, of course, the Aqua was best known for its iconic look, which included translucent scroll bars and buttons.

Other features include advanced power management to allow iBooks and PowerBooks to wake up instantly, dynamic memory management and the Apple Quartz 2D graphics engine for “stunning graphics” and wider font support. It came with QuickTime 5, iMovie 2, iTunes and AppleWorks (Apple’s productivity software at the time).

The new software, which was built on Apple’s “Darwin” operating system, had support for many existing Mac OS applications, but developers were forced to “tweak” their applications, so Apple launched it in followed for a beta period of 12 months. before putting it up for sale.

At launch, Mac OS X was priced at $ 129, and its launch came at a time when Apple was still charging Mac users for upgrades. Mac upgrades have become less expensive over the years, and Apple finally stopped paying for them in 2013.

The debut of Mac OS X was far from perfect and had some major stability issues that Apple needed to address. Apple tracked it down with Mac OS X 10.1 “Puma” just six months later, and has continued to iterate that original version since 2001.

Mac OS X became OS X in 2012 with the launch of Mountain Lion, an operating system that introduced a more minimal design, moving from the skeuomorphic projects that Apple had used under the leadership of Scott Forstall. OS X Mountain Lion accompanied iOS 7, which is known to be one of the biggest design revisions of the iPhone operating system.

Apple introduced another major name revision in 2013 with the release of OS X Mavericks, the first version of Mac OS X that was not named after a big cat. Apple has used large cats from Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) to 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

The last significant change came in 2016, when Apple dropped the X and introduced macOS 10.12 Sierra, with the name macOS meant to better match iOS. We had several versions of macOS, culminating in the current version of the software, macOS Big Sur.

macOS Big Sur has brought the biggest Apple design update to macOS since the days of Mac OS X, renovating everything from the curvature of window corners to the colors and patterns of docking icons. Apple designed it to feel fresh and familiar at the same time, including less atrocious menu bars, a more translucent dock, a uniform squirrel shape for app icons, and completely refurbished system sounds.

The update also revamped the Notification Center to add Control Center quick switches, plus it has important updates for Safari, Messages, Photos, Maps, and more, with details available in our summary. At the end of this year, we expect to see macOS 12 and, although it probably won’t be the design review that Big Sur did, Apple probably has new useful features in store.