La prima volta che il mondo mise le mani su Mac OS X

Oggi, dieci anni fa, usciva la beta pubblica di Mac OS X.

Steve Jobs unveiled Aqua to the oohs and aahs of a stunned audience, jaws agape, during his January 2000 Macworld Expo keynote speech. The delighted, newly full-time CEO-Jobs also dropped the "interim" label from his iCEO title that day-spent a large portion of his presentation demonstrating graphically stunning new features of Aqua, including the "genie" minimize/maximize effect, Dock magnification, and lushly illustrated, high resolution icons. The world had never seen anything like it, and Apple found itself-for the first time in at least a decade-with an operating system that people could not wait to get their hands on.

In September of that year, Apple obliged. According to Tevanian, the company knew that for a release as important, dramatic, and different as an entirely new OS, the company couldn't just keep the beta testing process under wraps. Apple needed to get the OS out into as many hands as possible so ordinary users run it through its paces in ways the company itself couldn't imagine. Apple set the price of "Mac OS X Public Beta," as it was called, at $29.95-low enough for anyone could get it if they wanted, but high enough to exclude folks who might not be constructive to the beta testing process. The beta sold through Apple's online store; the company later offered a $30 discount on the first full release of OS X (v10.0) when it shipped in 2001.