| Mac OS X Public Beta | |
|---|---|
| Version of themacOS operating system | |
 | |
 | |
| Developer | Apple Computer |
| OS family | |
| Working state | Historic, not supported |
| Released to manufacturing | September 13, 2000 |
| Supported platforms | PowerPC |
| Kernel type | Hybrid (XNU) |
| Default user interface | Aqua |
| Preceded by | Mac OS 9 Mac OS X Server 1.0 |
| Succeeded by | Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah |
| Official website | Apple - Mac OS X at theWayback Machine (archived November 9, 2000) |
| Support status | |
| Historic, unsupported as of March 24, 2001. Expired on May 14, 2001. | |
Mac OS X Public Beta (internallycode named"Kodiak") was the first publicly available version ofApple Computer'sMac OS X (now named macOS)operating system to feature theAqua user interface. It was released to the public on September 13, 2000, for US$ 29.95. Its release was significant as the first publicly available evidence of Apple's ability to ship the "next-generation Mac operating system" after theCopland failure. It allowedsoftware developers andearly adopters to test a preview of the upcoming operating system and develop software for it before its final release. It is the only public version ofMac OS X to have a code name not based on a big cat until the release of10.9 Mavericks in 2013. The US version had a build number of 1H39 and the international version had build number 2E14.[1]
The Public Beta succeededMac OS X Server 1.0, the first public release of Apple's newNeXTOPENSTEP-based operating system, which used a variant of theclassic Mac OS's "Platinum" user interface look and feel. The Public Beta introduced theAqua user interface to the world. Fundamental user interface changes were revealed with respect to fonts, theDock, themenu bar (with an Apple logo at the center that was later repositioned to the left of the menu bar and made anactive interface element).[2] Systemicons were much larger and more detailed, and new interface eye candy was prevalent.
The beta's arrival marked some fundamental technical changes, most courtesy of anopen sourceDarwin 1.2.1 core, including two features that Mac users and developers had been anticipating for almost a decade:preemptive multitasking andprotected memory. To illustrate the benefits of the latter, at theMacWorld Expo in June 2000, AppleCEOSteve Jobs demonstratedBomb.app, a test application intended to crash.[3]
The Public Beta included many of the standard programs bundled with macOS for decades to come, such asTextEdit,Preview,Mail,QuickTime Player andTerminal. Also included with the Public Beta, but not in any subsequent versions of Mac OS X, were a simple MP3 player (iTunes had not yet been introduced), Sketch, a basic vector drawing program demonstrating features ofQuartz, and HTMLEdit, aWYSIWYG HTML editor inherited fromWebObjects.[4]
Nativeshrinkware applications were few and far between.[5][6][7][8]Early adopters had to turn toopen source orshareware alternatives, giving rise to an active homebrew software community around the new operating system. Many programs in use on early Mac OS X systems were inherited fromOPENSTEP orRhapsody developer releases (e.g.OmniWeb or Fire), or were simplewrapper apps that provided a graphical interface to a command-line Unix program.
The poor state of theCarbon API contrasted with the relative maturity ofCocoa gave rise to an anti-Carbon bias among Mac OS X users.[9][10]
The Mac OS X Public Beta expired on May 14, 2001; approximately two months after the release ofMac OS X 10.0, the completed version of the operating system released in March 2001.[11] As a result, it will not run on laterPowerPC-based Macintosh computers released after early 2001, nor on current Macintosh hardware, which uses thex86 orARM64 processor architectures. Using the Mac OS X Public Beta on compatible equipment today requires setting the hardware clock to a date prior to the expiration date.
The expiration date forced users to purchase a copy of the final release rather than continuing to use the Public Beta, as well as reassured industry observers skeptical after the Copland and Rhapsody failures that Apple would actually release a next-generation operating system this time. Owners of the Public Beta version were entitled to a $30 discount on the price of the first full version of Mac OS X 10.0.[12] Only the Aqua GUI and related components of the Public Beta were subject to expiry; the underlying Darwin command-line based OS continued to function.[13]
One relatively common notion about Mac OS X seems to be that there's not a lot of software for it. While it is true that the quantity of software available for Mac OS X is not as large as, say, that on Windows or Linux...
The first applications will appear this spring; many more are targeted for later months.
The general consensus is that Cocoa applications are superior to Carbon applications in terms of support for OS X features, multitasking ability, and interface responsiveness. Whether this is due to any inherent superiority of the technologies in Cocoa or is merely a byproduct of the immaturity of the Carbon implementation (as compared to Cocoa/OpenStep, which has been around for years) is still open for debate
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