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MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

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Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#61

Post by Reason077 »

LeanderK wrote: post #2

Wow, unbelievable that it was designed in 2001! It still looks fresh and modern, although maybe a bit too playful so that it appears a bit childish? But only barely. It appears to have all the basic functionality expected from a modern operating system, I instantly feel right at home although I've never used it. I find the review terrible though, one of the major changes was the user interface, revolutionary I would…

This was the first version of Mac OS X I ran on my first "modern" Mac, a 2001 Titanium PowerBook G4. There were some performance issues in this first release, but 10.2 (Jaguar, pronounced "Jag-wire" by Steve Jobs) had a focus on performance and resolved much of it.

I vaguely remember dual-booting Mac OS 9 and X for a while, but it wasn't long before Mac OS X took over full time.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#62

Post by theandrewbailey »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #41
LeanderK wrote: post #2

Wow, unbelievable that it was designed in 2001! It still looks fresh and modern, although maybe a bit too playful so that it appears a bit childish? But only barely. It appears to have all the basic functionality expected from a modern operating system, I instantly feel right at home although I've never used it. I find the review terrible though, one of the major changes was the user interface, revolutionary I would…

> It still looks fresh and modern, although maybe a bit too playful so that it appears a bit childish? The aesthetics is called „Frutiger Aero“. Lots of colors and especially of blue, lots of transparency effects and fake light reflections. It all is inspired by natural landscapes with blue skies or blue water surfaces. Also skeuomorphisms everywhere. Windows 7 could be called the pinnacle of the use of Frutiger Aero…

> I wonder what will be next or are we going to stick with heartless, cold metal designs forever?

CARI has probably cataloged it already. Apple is already going all in on colorful aesthetics recently, not sure if it will spread into hardware.

https://cari.institute/aesthetics

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#63

Post by rvense »

lvl102 wrote: post #47
zoky wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although, OS X was painful for many years. I guess it depends on how you define "many". I bought my first Mac in 1998 (the "Smurf" G3) and used MacOS 8/9 for quite a few years after that. I remember looking forward to OS X once they announced it—it was literally the coolest shit ever. Like, the ability to run Photoshop and Emacs on the same system at the same time? Wow, was that cool. There was definitely a period…

To be fair, OS X was OK by 2003 but third-party softwares and especially MS Office sucked until 2007-08.

Well, depends. For music that era is just an explosion of great things. From 10.3 or so a Mac and a Firewire audio interface was an amazingly stable and portable package, with possibilities you could hardly have dreamed of even with a studio full of gear ten years before. The extra power that became available in the Core 2 Duo era was transformative, too, but the software was available for a good while before.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#64

Post by badsectoracula »

Reason077 wrote: post #57
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the textured Aqua days. Peak was Leopard/Snow Leopard. Flat is just so... flat. And boring. And also harder to read, because it's harder to orient yourself in a big textureless area than in a space with some texture in it.

Boring, perhaps. But definitely not harder to read. The old styles with text against textured backgrounds (for example, the pinstriped menu bars) detracted from readability. Current design is significantly better, especially dark mode, although lately there is a trend towards low-contrast UI (text against similarly-coloured backgrounds) in recent versions of iOS and macOS which is also detracting from readability, IM…

The pinstripes were only in the earliest versions. By Leopard/Snow Leopard (which i also find the best one) the theme looked clean without looking flat.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#65

Post by freedomben »

> This screen shot shows the login screen. It displays a graphical list of users that can login on this system. (Interestingly Windows XP does something similar)

> Being based on BSD Unix, MacOS X inherits many useful unix features such as real security and user accounts.

> This means that, for example, you can create a special account for someone else to play games and don't have to worry about them deleting system files, accessing your personal files, or changing system setting.

> This can be somewhat confusing to users who are used to having complete control over their systems in earlier versions of MacOS. To do things like install software you must be logged in as the Administrator. While this can be annoying it prevents users from accidentally messing up their system or from malicious programs or viruses that could otherwise infect the system. There is also a hidden "root" account that has slightly more privileges than the Administrator, but this is rarely needed.

Reading this now in 2023 it seems laughably primitive, but I remember the mass confusion at the time! Very similar thing happened with Vista. When old people like me pine for the simpler days of yore, it's hard to imagine just how much simpler those times were (mostly in a good way!)

I love modern Linux and use it on my family PC and it's great having full multi-user tooling for my kids to have their own spaces with no root, but I do fondly remember the days before user accounts were a thing on your PC. Not to mention how open and interopable things were. Those days don't come back

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#66

Post by fredoralive »

rsynnott wrote: post #33
jeroenhd wrote: post #4

Having never actually interacted with a mac from that era, are the grey and white stripes in the toolbar screenshots actually visible on the screen or are they an artifact of old screenshots on modern displays?

They were toned down a lot by the time most consumers saw this (I don’t think any machine actually shipped with 10.1? They stuck with MacOS9 until 10.2, iirc…) and totally vanished soon after. But they were there, to start with.

I got an iBook in mid 2002 that shipped with 10.1 as the default OS (with Mac OS 9 as a dual boot option).

In hindsight, the pinstriping in the first couple of releases was a bit much, but sadly the buttons also got toned down at the same time as the pinstripes, and they've never looked as good since.

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#67

Post by freedomben »

coreyh14444 wrote: post #56

I was deep into OS explorations in this period. I ran BeOS, Yellow Dog linux on PowerPC, had all flavors of NT, etc. My feeling about OS X at this time was that it was the right choice but that it was "too late" and that Apple took too long and the window of opportunity had passed. I take that now as startup advice: It isn't too late!

I remember feeling that way too but had forgotten about it! Wow, what great life lesson I nearly missed, thank you! It's never too late (well, usually not)

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#69

Post by sylens »

vbezhenar wrote: post #29
baal80spam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call XP (Luna) theme ugly. It wasn't as clean as Windows2k but it was just fine.

Everything after Windows 2000 was ugly. Windows 2000 was the last system in the world with coherent and beautiful UI. Those times are over. We can't have good things.

I really loved the balance Microsoft found in Windows 7 with Aero Glass

Re: MacOS X 10.1 (2001)

#70

Post by anthk »

Reason077 wrote: post #57
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the textured Aqua days. Peak was Leopard/Snow Leopard. Flat is just so... flat. And boring. And also harder to read, because it's harder to orient yourself in a big textureless area than in a space with some texture in it.

Boring, perhaps. But definitely not harder to read. The old styles with text against textured backgrounds (for example, the pinstriped menu bars) detracted from readability. Current design is significantly better, especially dark mode, although lately there is a trend towards low-contrast UI (text against similarly-coloured backgrounds) in recent versions of iOS and macOS which is also detracting from readability, IM…

Mac OS X Tiger was not stripper and far more usbable than flat interfaces.
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