![]() System 6 consolidated the previous releases into a much more complete and stable operating system. System 5 was also the first Macintosh operating system to be given a unified "Macintosh System Software" version number, as opposed to the numbers used for the System and Finder files. This significantly altered the extent and design of the underlying graphics architecture (and its APIs), but it is a credit to Apple that most users, and perhaps more importantly existing code, were largely unaware of this. The other significant change that System 5 brought to the Mac was Color QuickDraw, which debuted with the Macintosh II. Time was given to the background applications only when the foreground (or "running") applications gave it up ( cooperative multitasking), but in fact most of them did via a clever change on the OS's event handling. System 5 added MultiFinder, an add-on replacement for the Finder which could run several programs at once. System 4.0 came with the Mac SE and Macintosh II.Ĭhanges in early Macintosh operating systems are best reflected in the version number of the Finder, where major leaps are found between 1.x, 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x. System 3.0 was introduced with the Mac Plus, adding support for several new technologies including SCSI and AppleTalk. System 2.1 (Finder 5.0) introduced the HFS (Hierarchical File System) which had real directories. Systems 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 used a flat filing system called MFS (Macintosh File System) its support for folders (subdirectories) was incomplete. These releases could only run one application at a time, though special application shells such as Switcher (discussed under MultiFinder) could work around this to some extent. Note: The Days column reflects the number of days between releases.Early versions of the operating system were identified by the version numbers of two files they included: System (the kernel) and Finder (the desktop interface). Some entries may appear out of chronological order (i.e. 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. Some random notes, updated from the original post: This has happened a few times over the years. Starting with the Public Beta and up through 11.6.4, there have been 162 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 February 14th, 2022 (11.6.4's release date), it's been 7,824 days since the Public Beta was released.So on average, we've seen some sort of update every 48.3 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.Ī 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). You know what's missing from your big lists? Build numbers.Īnd because you asked nicely, here's some extra size data for the list: See Benton's comment below if you want a nicely detailed history of those early releases. Mac OS X 10.0.0 "Kodiak": There were four different iterations of the Mac OS X Public Beta, but they all fit onto a single CD-ROM. ![]() DP1 occupied slightly more of the CD than the final DP4 release did, so you can count either: DP1 is 679.1 MB, DP4 is 676 MB. It was slightly smaller than Kodiak as it didn't pack as much nerd into it - it is a consumer OS first and foremost - so Cheetah's disk-usage is 659 MB Mac OS X 10.0.4 "Cheetah": Standard way to get it was to bu the box that was approximately 85% air, 10% printed matter and 5% being a single CD in a sleeve. Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma": The retail Puma package has two CDs the main OS installer is still a single CD, but there's a second CD labeled "Tools" that has some extra fonts, utilities and a few dev goodies that are all completely optional. You got a LOT more when you bought a brand-new Mac that shipped with Puma - eleven CDs, which included Puma, Mac OS 9.2.2, a Hardware Test CD, an Applications disc, and a 6-CD set holding a system-restore image.
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