Last Train Out Mac OS

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1) Click on the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. 2) Under the About This Mac window’s Overview tab, click the button System Information. 3) Click on Software in the lefthand column. 4) The time since last reboot is shown next to “Time since boot” in the righthand section. Use a Mac OS X installation Disc. If you’re unable to use Internet Recovery Mode or create a bootable USB installer, you can still use a Mac OS X installation disc. These discs are available for OS X Snow Leopard, OS X Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion. If your Mac is from 2012 or earlier, there was an installation disc in the original box. The macOS High Sierra may not be the reigning Mac operating system anymore, with macOS 10.15 Catalina hitting the streets in late 2019. But, many people are still sticking to this older operating. To check the reboot history of your Mac, type ‘last reboot’ in the Terminal. This will provide you with the dates and times of the last few reboots the machine has gone through.

Since the release of System 1 in January 1984, Apple has played an integral role in designing and implementing the graphical user interface (GUI) as we know it.

With the announcement of OS X Mountain Lion this week, Apple is continuing the process it started with Lion by streamlining the connection between the Mac and iOS.

We wanted to take a look at some of the biggest changes in the history of the Mac Operating System over the last 28 years. Looking back, I can't help but be struck by how many elements of the original Macintosh OS are still there more than 30 years after the project started taking shape.

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Last Train Out Mac OS

It's a testament to the work of Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, Bud Tribble and the other members of the original Macintosh team that so many aspects from System 1 have become integral to personal computing as we know it today.

There are a few phases in the evolution of the Mac OS that are of particular note. System 7 was the longest-running release for Apple (until OS X); it shipped with all Macintosh machines from 1991 to 1997. If you're in your mid-to-late 20s and used a Mac in elementary or middle school, chances are it was running some iteration of System 7.

One of the many challenges Apple faced in the 1990s was figuring out a new operating system strategy. As revolutionary as the original Mac OS work was, by 1994 it was starting to look stagnant and stale. This was especially true after the first release of Windows NT in 1993, which cemented Microsoft's place in the corporate and enterprise space.

After the Copland project was cancelled in 1996, Apple was left to search for an operating system it could acquire. That led to the purchase of NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system.

Not only would NeXT technology serve as the foundation for the future of Apple as it is known today (OS X and iOS are direct descendants of NeXTSTEP), it was responsible for bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple.

It would end up taking ten years from the beginning of the search for a next-generation Mac OS. But the hunt finally reached its quarry with the release of Mac OS X in 2001. But it would take until Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) before the system was really able to hold its own.

Over the last decade, OS X has evolved into a powerful desktop and server platform — while also serving as the core for iOS. With OS X Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing more of the elements and features of its mobile OS to the desktop.

Vintage computer fans who want to take a look at more screenshots of classic Mac OS versions should check out Marcin Wichary's GUIdebook Gallery and Nathan Lineback's collection of GUI history.

Gallery created by Chelsea Stark

In June of 2004, during the WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs revealed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to developers and the public for the first time. When the finished product arrived in April of 2005, Tiger was the biggest, most important, most feature-packed release in the history of Mac OS X by a wide margin. Apple's marketing campaign reflected this, touting 'over 150 new features.'

All those new features took time. Since its introduction in 2001, there had been at least one major release of Mac OS X each year. Tiger took over a year and a half to arrive. At the time, it definitely seemed worth the wait. Tiger was a hit with users and developers. Apple took the lesson to heart and quickly set expectations for the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard. Through various channels, Apple communicated its intention to move from a 12-month to an 18-month release cycle for Mac OS X. Leopard was officially scheduled for 'spring 2007.'

As the date approached, Apple's marketing machine trod a predictable path.

Apple even went so far as to list all 300 new features on its website. As it turns out, 'spring' was a bit optimistic. Leopard actually shipped at the end of October 2007, nearly two and a half years after Tiger. Did Leopard really have twice as many new features as Tiger? That's debatable. What's certain is that Leopard included a solid crop of new features and technologies, many of which we now take for granted. (For example, have you had a discussion with a potential Mac user since the release of Leopard without mentioning Time Machine? I certainly haven't.)

Mac OS X appeared to be maturing. The progression was clear: longer release cycles, more features. What would Mac OS X 10.6 be like? Would it arrive three and a half years after Leopard? Would it and include 500 new features? A thousand?

At WWDC 2009, Bertrand Serlet announced a move that he described as 'unprecedented' in the PC industry.

That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: 'Snow Leopard.' Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.

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This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a 'time out?' I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the '150+ new features' in Tiger and the '300 new features' in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

It probably helps to know that the '0 New Features' slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ('well, there is one new feature...') slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, 'no new features' may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: 'We're adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we're going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We're not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we're going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers.'

But if Snow Leopard is a love letter to developers, is it a Dear John letter to users? You know, those people that the marketing department might so crudely refer to as 'customers.' What's in it for them? Believe it or not, the sales pitch to users is actually quite similar. As exhausting as it has been for developers to keep up with Apple's seemingly never-ending stream of new APIs, it can be just as taxing for customers to stay on top of Mac OS X's features. Exposé, a new Finder, Spotlight, a new Dock, Time Machine, a new Finder again, a new iLife and iWorkalmost every year, and on and on. And as much as developers hate bugs in Apple's APIs, users who experience those bugs as application crashes have just as much reason to be annoyed.

Enter Snow Leopard: the release where we all get a break from the new-features/new-bugs treadmill of Mac OS X development. That's the pitch.

Uncomfortable realities

But wait a second, didn't I just mention an 'hour-long presentation' about Snow Leopard featuring 'major new APIs and technologies?' When speaking to developers, Apple's message of 'no new features' is another way of saying 'no new bugs.' Snow Leopard is supposed to fix old bugs without introducing new ones. But nothing says 'new bugs, coming right up' quite like major new APIs. So which is it?

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Similarly, for users, 'no new features' connotes stability and reliability. But if Snow Leopard includes enough changes to the core OS to fill an hour-long overview session at WWDC more than a year before its release, can Apple really make good on this promise? Or will users end up with all the disadvantages of a feature-packed release like Tiger or Leopard—the inevitable 10.x.0 bugs, the unfamiliar, untried new functionality—but without any of the actual new features?

Yes, it's enough to make one quite cynical about Apple's real motivations. To throw some more fuel on the fire, have a look at the Mac OS X release timeline below. Next to each release, I've included a list of its most significant features.

That curve is taking on a decidedly droopy shape, as if it's being weighed down by the ever-increasing number of new features. (The releases are distributed uniformly on the Y axis.) Maybe you think it's reasonable for the time between releases to stretch out as each one brings a heavier load of goodies than the last, but keep in mind the logical consequence of such a curve over the longhorn haul.

And yeah, there's a little upwards kick at the end for 10.6, but remember, this is supposed to be the 'no new features' release. Version 10.1 had a similar no-frills focus but took a heck of a lot less time to arrive.

Looking at this graph, it's hard not to wonder if there's something siphoning resources from the Mac OS X development effort. Maybe, say, some project that's in the first two or three major releases of its life, still in that steep, early section of its own timeline graph. Yes, I'm talking about the iPhone, specifically iPhone OS. The iPhone business has exploded onto Apple's balance sheets like no other product before, even the iPod. It's also accruing developers at an alarming rate.

It's not a stretch to imagine that many of the artists and developers who piled on the user-visible features in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 have been reassigned to iPhone OS (temporarily or otherwise). After all, Mac OS X and iPhone OS share the same core operating system, the same language for GUI development, and many of the same APIs. Some workforce migration seems inevitable.

And let's not forget the 'Mac OS X' technologies that we later learned were developed for the iPhone and just happened to be announced for the Mac first (because the iPhone was still a secret), like Core Animation and code signing. Such conspiracy theories certainly aren't helped by WWDC keynote snubs and other indignities suffered by Mac OS X and the Mac in general since the iPhone arrived on the scene. And so, on top of everything else, Snow Leopard is tasked with restoring some luster to Mac OS X.

Got all that? A nearly two-year development cycle, but no new features. Major new frameworks for developers, but few new bugs. Significant changes to the core OS, but more reliability. And a franchise rejuvenation with few user-visible changes.

It's enough to turn a leopard white.