At this year’s WWDC Keynote address, Apple announced and previewed the next version of the Mac operating system which is macOS 15, Sequoia. If you missed the WWDC24 Keynote, you can view it here.
We often here from people new to the Mac how impressed they are with macOS and how feature rich it is. But those of us that have been loyal to the Mac for a long time knows it didn’t start out that way.
With the public release macOS 15 expecting in September or October, we thought this would be a good time to provide a brief history of OS X, with the major highlights of each version, that brought it to the macOS operating system we know and love today.
Version Number Version Name Date Announced Date Released Price Major Enhancements OS X 10.0 Cheetah 1/5/2000 3/24/2001 $129 Aqua Interface Dock Terminal Mail Address Book Text Edit OS X 10.1 Puma 7/18/2001 9/25/2001 $129 CD Burning Customizable Dock 3rd Party Peripheral Support OS X 10.2 Jaguar 7/17/2002 8/23/2002 $129 Finder with Built-In Search iChat Mail with Junk Filter OS X 10.3 Panther 6/23/2003 10/24/2003 $129 Expose Font Book iChat AV Safari Updated Finder OS X 10.4 Tiger 6/28/2004 4/29/2005 $129 Automator Dashboard iChat with multi-video and audio Safari RSS Spotlight VoiceOver OS X 10.5 Leopard 8/7/2006 10/26/2007 $129 3D Dock with Stacks Boot Camp Cover Flow Quick Look Spaces Time Machine OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 6/9/2009 8/28/2009 $169 64-bit Grand Central Dispatch OpenCL OS X 10.7 Lion 10/20/2010 7/20/2011 $29.99 Download $69.99 USB Flash Drive Full Screen Apps Launchpad Mac App Store Mission Control Multi-Touch Resume and Auto Save OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion 2/16/2012 7/25/2012 $19.99 Airplay Dictation Facebook and Twitter Integration Game Center Gatekeeper iCloud Messages Notes Notification Center Reminders OS X 10.9 Mavericks 6/10/2013 10/22/2013 Free Finder Tabs iBooks iCloud Keychain Maps Multiple Display Support Tags OS X 10.10 Yosemite 6/2/2014 10/16/2014 Free Continuity iCloud Drive Handoff OSX 10.11 El Capitan 6/8/2015 9/30/2015 Free Muti-Touch Gesture Support Split View Spotlight Improvements macOS 10.12 Sierra 6/13/2016 9/20/2016 Free Now called macOS Siri on the Desktop Universal Clipboard Unlock with Apple Watch macOS 10.13 High Sierra 6/5/2017 9/25/2017 Free Apple File System HEVC Metal 2 Virtual Reality Support macOS 10.14 Mojave 6/4/2018 9/24/2018 Free Dark Mode Desktop Stacks Enhancements to Quick Look Redesigned Mac App Store macOS 10.15 Catalina 6/3/2019 10/7/2019 Free Separate Music, Podcasts, and TV apps Redesigned Reminders and Books apps A new Find My app Sidecar app First version of macOS not to support 32-bit applications macOS 11 Big Sur 6/22/2020 11/12/2020 Free Version number changed for the first time. Introduced Rosetta 2 to allow 64-bit Intel applications to run on Apple silicon Macs macOS 12 Monterey 6/7/2021 10/25/21 Free Universal Control AirPlay Shortcuts Final version of macOS that officially supports macOS Server. macOS 13 Ventura 6/6/2022 10/24/2022 Free Stage Manager Continuity Camera macOS 14 Sonoma 6/5/23 9/26/23 Free Revamp of Widgets Video wallpaper/screensaver feature using Apple TV’s screen saver videos. macOS 15 Sequoia 6/10/2024 TBD Free Apple Intelligence Continuity Improved window tiling New Password app
Apple obviously packs a lot more into each version than what we listed here but these are what we considered the major highlights of each version.
How long have you been using a Mac and what were your favorite enhancements since the early days of OS X? Why not join the conversation and leave a comment below.
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