Weird Mac OSX Developer Previews

[@mspeter97]

here's a few extra facts for y'all: - DP4 & PB are mostly similar but PB adds a toggle to switch between the DP3 & DP4 app name/icon on the title bar (will you try PB on this monster of a machine one day?) - DP3's dock is actually a folder and you can put any number of icons you want in it, there's no limit and the dock can show icons that are 1px big at minimum. It also was part of the Finder app. Came DP4, the Dock got completely rewritten and was its own separate app (it still is to this day). - DP3 is still compatible with assets from DP2, meaning you can have the DP3 interface with the platinum look. - Wallpapers are hardcoded in the appearence files of DP2 & DP3, not sure about dp4, but you can change it in the public beta. - The public beta allowed the user to change the wallpaper by going into the preference option of the Desktop app. This behavior was retained in the final 10.0 release where the wallpaper option was in the Finder preference tab. This got moved to the settings app came 10.1

[@sjgrall]

Part of me at the time loved Aqua, yet part of me wondered if Platinum (or Dark Platinum, as used in Mac OS X Server 1.x), would've make G3 Macs run faster under Mac OS X.

[@charliesretrocomputing]

Tysm!

[@marklechman2225]

I’m so old I’m still impressed when I see a window moving along with its contents and not just the marching ants.

[@Jabjabs]

I know right! Still something cool about that.

[@punboleh7081]

I remember the first time I saw Windows NT in some computer show on TV. What impressed me the most was when someone casually moved a DOS box around the screen while it was scrolling down some text. The window moved with its content and it kept scrolling while moving! At the time Windows 3.x would stutter and freeze if you just moved the mouse, let alone typed anything. (My attitude towards Windows was already less than friendly and only got worse since, but for that one moment it looked like Windows might be usable one day.)

[@LX.Bissnuss-be2fn]

yes...

[@CRaDISHOfficial]

​​@@punboleh7081 Windows NT 6.1 Windows 11😂

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

10:04: The icons aren't SVGs. Mac OS X icons are just a collection of different size PNGs in a container file. From the earliest Aqua preview to the latest Sonoma previews.

[@nickwallette6201]

HUH. Well, TIL.

[@annaisannaing]

Yep, it’s the same for Windows too

[@fenixlolnope361]

yet another place where open source is superior in every way

[@fenixlolnope361]

@chillscd2667 gnome and KDE all use SVG by default

[@core36]

@chillscd2667 Haiku is using SVG as icons. Dunno about Linux. Pretty sure windows and mac still use pixel graphics today.

[@LlamasWithiMacs]

A neat fact: BlastApp did make it into the final release! It’s one of the examples that comes with the Xcode tools (I’m not sure about 10.0-10.2 because I’ve never used their developer tools). It comes on the 10.4 or 10.5 dvd, maybe the 10.3 developer cd.

[@pseudotasuki]

Did they include the source code?

[@LlamasWithiMacs]

@@pseudotasuki I think so, because you had to compile it yourself.

[@tschak909]

I used all these developer previews, and I cringed, especially because I had used Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server, and loved the evolution of the operating system into that form, to see them take what I saw as two steps back, made my eye twitch. (p.s. the reason Carbon happened was largely due to the major Mac application programmers all saying, "WE ARE _NOT_ REWRITING OUR WHOLE CODEBASES IN YELLOW BOX!")

[@LostieTrekieTechie]

I always figured that the reason that older versions of the dock had icons with backdrops was because they had not yet figured out whether or not they would be able to do scaling and compositing with alpha transparency, without nasty artifacts or color bleed.

[@karmatraining]

Sounds about right. When you compare it to the tasteful frosted glass used on the modern Dock, I think they made the right call

[@CRaDISHOfficial]

Cheap Mac OS X for $99

[@EnronnSierra]

I have an old PowerBook G3 Wallstreet running the Mac OS 10.0 final release. Its like an untouched part of a beach, not really much to do. I recently even picked up a box copy of 10.0 which is becoming a rare find. I noticed the 10.1 retail box copy is highly sought after for some reason. Its really great that you are maintaining copies of the early developer previews. Its pretty amazing to see how far macOS has come.

[@pseudotasuki]

The graphical glitches are probably due to the OS transitioning to the PDF-based Quartz graphics system. NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody, and Mac OS X Server 1.0 all used Display PostScript, but licensing it for a consumer OS was apparently too expensive.

[@JeffreyPiatt]

Adobe is apparently more restrictive on Postscript than the PDF format used in Quartz. It's why OsX can nativity view PDF files in preview and edit forms the entire os is rendered in PDF. Jobs apparently soured on his relationship with Adobe later in life. He really pushed for Adobe early in life but later worked to stunt there market share the first time being when Microsoft sharing there Postscript engine and getting rights to true type fonts.

[@Toonrick12]

​@@JeffreyPiattThat and also putting the first nail in the coffin of Flash by refusing it to be on early iOS.

[@pseudotasuki]

@@JeffreyPiatt Yeah, PDF is very similar to PostScript, but is an open standard. Apple had to do a lot of work to adapt it for a graphics engine (as Adobe had done for DPS) but it definitely paid off in the end.

[@pseudotasuki]

@elfrjz The internal representation has a structure based on the PDF specification. So it isn't literally a PDF.

[@charliekahn4205]

@@pseudotasuki obviously, it doesn't have multi-page, and instead just expands the "page" to keep up

[@chadmasta5]

Pre-release software like this is always so fun to me because it's cool to watch it evolve. Seeing the ones with the last bits of rhapsody left in them reminds me of a Windows 8 dev preview I used that still had a wavy Windows logo and the last remnant of the aero glass theme.

[@MaxOakland]

Seriously! So fun to see the process

[@charliesretrocomputing]

i wish i could heart this comment. it's so true!

[@WillOnSomething]

And how Whistler (XP) previews still had the classic boxy Windows logo up until the last few builds.

[@mecyanned]

What developer preview version is that?

[@chadmasta5]

@@WillOnSomething This too! I was just watching a video of all the Whistler boot animations. So cool to watch it take shape. I've also seen an extremely early version of XP 64 bit where the boot logo is literally just the Windows 2000 boot logo with the number 64 drawn on it with the MS Paint spray tool.

[@cjsebes]

I clearly remember when the ad agency I was working for got their first B&W G3. We nerds were in awe of how the whole side opened down to reveal the entire motherboard and hard drives. I had a beige G3 which was a tank, but that B&W had me hooked. I'll have one in my collection at some point. So innovative.

[@juddjonathan]

Wow, this brings back memories. I remember trying to install DP3 on my 233mhz G3. OS X was so wildly different. I remember geeking out doing the minimize with the shift key for the first time. It was magical.

[@minty_Joe]

"Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!" ~ Steve Ballmer 😂

[@mrgrumpy888]

15 year old me loved Aqua when it was first unveiled back in the day but my current, 38 year old self with his huge attention deficit issues would love simple and clean Platinum. They need to bring this back.

[@karmatraining]

Imagine how these devs would have reacted to seeing modern Mac OS Ventura running on an M2 Ultra with a ProMotion display and all the touch gestures

[@nickwallette6201]

This is just the most beautiful of Apple design language eras. The collectible, colorful computers, to OG Aqua... It's STILL gorgeous.

[@asystole_]

Apple was absolutely hitting its stride in the immediate years after the Jobs return and was so obviously full of new energy.

[@papasivir4241]

Couldn't agree more. I actually prefer the way it looks to modern macOS. I love that everything almost looks real and shiny! I really hope we get a visual refresh on modern operating systems pretty soon cuz I'm so sick and tired of just seeing flat minimalistic designs. It's almost like a weird modern version of the design language of the early '90s. Except nowadays there's no reason for it like there was back then!

[@rickkarrer8370]

I've used these before. The centered Apple logo made sense for an esthetic point of view, but not from a usability point of view. Going back to the Apple logo in the left is one of the very few times where function came before form on an Apple product lol. Could you imagine if the Apple logo had stayed in the middle up to today, with the screen notch on the laptops? Oops, gotta move it to the left of the notch lol.

[@drewzero1]

I liked the idea of it lining up with the built-in microphone on the iMac G3, but always wondered what would happen in programs like MS Word where the menus take up the whole bar.

[@Sm2n]

Yes I remember the furore when MacOS X public beta came out and didn’t have ‘the Apple menu’… i.e. and how Apple reacted by bringing it back for 10.0.0 with the clickable logo on the left… as you showed in this video. Cool video!

[@RojamZane]

So good to see these previews... At times, I do miss the Platinum of old Mac OS. As revolutionary as Aqua was the time, I like the Preview 1, where we see NeXTStep wrapped in Platinum. Good presentation.

[@ProdDeity]

That Cheetah version was the interface that I fell in love with, and spent so much time changing it in Windows and Linux to mimic even the slightest way.

[@jordillach3222]

No, that's Cheeter 3:03 😂

[@Miasmark]

you may want to glance at osX 10.4 server since that same tux icon is used on that as well. some things may have shunted to the server version of the OS.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Ah yes I remember the day the G3 and iMac came out. When the DP came out and there were no disk icons on the desktop I emailed Steve saying Apple was making a big mistake and he shot back “Boy are you wrong”.

[@MattExzy]

I remember being a kid back then and wondering if I could email Steve for a free iMac - no doubt that would be the same response.

[@karmatraining]

It was amazing how he would just randomly reply to people, what CEO does that today?

[@rudge3speed]

My favorite app from the early days of OSX was Quartz Composer. It came along just after this era, and ran on some surprisingly recent OS versions as I recall.

[@yobagme]

Awesome video, Sean! The Kodiak DP releases are really fun to play around with. If anyone is interested in trying these out yourselves but don't have access to a compatible Mac, the QEMU PPC emulator is capable of installing and running these betas virtualized on modern OSes.

[@toonman361]

This was an unusual but fun journey. I recall being quite frustrated when OSX came out because I constantly stumbled through my workflow. Not so much now.

[@puwazatza]

it is amazing to see how much DP3 still has NextStep's legacy in the GUI.

[@alextirrellRI]

Now I can't remember -- have you tried Mac OS X Server 1.0-1.2 yet? It's another "in-between" Rhapsody derivative. Might also be fun for running services at a future VCF.

[@retrotechguy]

Great seeing the OS X on the Sony Trinitron Multiscan 👍 lovely paradox for me somehow.

[@JohnKiniston]

I remember how excited I was when 10.0 came out, I bought a 400mhz PowerBook g4 to run it on as my first ever new Macintosh.

[@charliesretrocomputing]

Sean, I love your channel SO MUCH! I've been watching since the very beginning, and it's hard to believe you're almost at 100K subscribers!! Keep up the great work! (And great video by the way)

[@sjgrall]

The beautiful yet unreliable computer returns again. And yet, I can't help but see the metaphor in it, given a personal backstory. Perhaps we call it quirky instead? Quirky is a more lovable term, right?

[@danielnesbitt9565]

The "big bang" with Aqua was a mixed bag when OSX 10.0 came on the scene, it probably didn't help that the UI worked differently to Platinum, was resource intensive and of course the early versions of OS X were missing many user facing features provided by OS 9. In hindsight, perhaps Apple should have kept using Platinum (or offered it as a fallback) in the early versions of OS X to help users transition to the new OS? Mind you that would probably go against Steve's entire ethos!

[@williamcodywinter]

So awesome to see how the different betas of the original Mac OS X evolved.

[@CapnSlipp]

The icons don’t look like SVGs? Were they ever SVGs? To my memory they started at 128x128 raster images (Mac OS X 10.0, but might’ve been 64x64 in the developer previews), then were later distributed as 256x256, and finally 1024x1024 (current). Also, it’s extremely unlikely anything in Mac OS X / OS X / macOS would’ve been drawn with SVGs- if there were/are any vector elements, they would be PostScript or PDF vector files (or just CoreGraphics drawing commands in code, which is roughly based on PostScript).

[@44Bigs]

These early Mac OS X versions were so interesting. I didn’t get on the Mac train until 10.2 ‘Jaguar’ but was mesmerised by all the magnification goodness in early aqua screenshots.

[@keithws79]

Thank you so much for this trip down memory lane! I was lucky enough to experience every official and unofficial OS release from Apple between 7.0 and 10.0. Good times! I’m not sure if you’ve covered Copland, but that might be fun too.

[@SpikeGrobstein]

I used dp3 and dp4 full time before the beta came out. Each version felt like it slowed down as it gained functionality. But man, this video hits my nostalgia button.

[@ran2wild370]

Looks like they had the same burden of UI development as Windows95 with its Chicago previews. I dunno home many smokes it cost them but final product was pretty amazing back in 2001 when the rest of us were still looking into WIn2k like UI.

[@bitsmasher101]

I'm not addicted to A.R.'s mac vids, YOU'RE addicted....

[@sjgrall]

I’ve been watching this channel for years haha

[@MaxOakland]

Yes, I am

[@nomadic_shadow]

This is really cool. I like seeing the process of how they decide what to implement in their os

[@ericbauer4559]

I had acquired a burned copy of the public beta when it was released but never could get it to install on our Power Mac G4. Had to wait until Cheetah was released. Good times, I loved the transition from os9 to osX. I even took a couple unix classes so I could better understand how osx worked.

[@MaxOakland]

Did you feel like OS X was slow?

[@ericbauer4559]

@@MaxOakland I was running it on a sawtooth G4 that was upgraded to dual 800mhz and some form of Radeon 9xxx gpu upgrade so I didn’t feel it was very slow at all. Also think it was close to maxed out on ram as well.

[@onigvd77]

it’s amazing to see the progress made with each preview, thank you for showing us Sean :)

[@mistermac56]

There was a version of OS X Server before the one we all know and mostly love. I retired as an IT engineer from a local community college and we purchased a G3 server that came with its own version of OS X. It was nothing like what we know as OS X. It would only run the server apps that came with the OS and no other Mac software, especially our QuarkXPress license software and dongle. We wound up purchasing OS 9 Server to run on it until the "real" OS X Server OS was released.

[@thackerybrown2860]

I love those little ide drives! Never saw those before

[@SonicTopaz]

Cool! I love PowerPC

[@LoganAussie]

This is like the best macos X video on KZbin

[@scottgfx]

The Blue and White G3 was my first Apple Mac… after having owned a Power Computing PowerWave 604|120. I had a Zip drive kit with the Bondi Blue bezel. I think Power Computing did some shenanigans with the clock timing of their systems to get more speed. That came at the cost of compatibility. The Blue G3 was a lot more compatible with the PCI cards I had.

[@RoarMcRipHelmet]

Wasn't there a version of Aqua in the Developer Previews that instead of the Red/Yellow/Green Close/Minimize/Maximize buttons, one of the buttons was a PURPLE "single window" feature? I could swear that was a feature that was demonstrated but removed at some point…

[@pedropassamani]

Yes, there was. It's on DP3 and DP4. That button on the right side of the windows is "single window mode". When clicked it turns purple and activates the feature.

[@HenryBloggit]

The first time Steve Jobs showed off the Aqua interface on stage, it had that weird Dock like DP3 with the different-textured tiles behind each one.

[@lmanders2]

I've still got my old blue & white G3 tower. This video makes me want to get it out and install these developer previews.

[@krazykat64]

Interesting video. Never played with the developer previews back in the day, but I did run the public beta on my at the time spanky new indigo iMac. Those were exciting times.

[@RWBHere]

Well, that was an interesting -hysterical- historical journey! Thanks, Sean. 🙂👍

[@charlesjmouse]

Always interesting, thank you. I've never been a Mac user but out of curiosity I installed VMWare Workstation Player 17 + Unlocker 2.01 (to get macOS to work!!!) Then Ventura installed as a Mac VM with 4 CPU's and 6gb RAM + VMWare Tools - what an enormous command-line PITA getting a bootable .iso of Ventura was!!! In spite of the far, far, more powerful hardware the point I wanted to make is how much slower Ventura feels than Cheetah on a PPC - progress..?

[@slob5041]

Aqua felt like peak Apple skeumorphism because it was real enough to look good but vague enough to not have to make sense

[@Fostext]

I had a G4 that was a floor model at a Best Buy (so we got a discount). It dual booted to OS9 and X. But I almost exclusively used 9 until the computer died, so this limited what I could do, haha. All of my friends ripped CDs to iTunes and there was almost 2 weeks worth of music before the Mac crashed.

[@intrinia]

Would have been nice to also see the last version of NexT Step.

[@georgesenda1952]

I love your videos because I love retro stuff. I hope you can answer a question. I want to be able to run Diablo 2, Civilization 3 Complete, Command & Conquer on a Mac and still have it boot into OS 9. Could you recommend what kind of Imac I could buy to be able to do both ? I do not want a slot cd drive on an Imac G3 because they die too often. I've had those, an Imac DV and the lamp Imac as well but all had issues with the cd/rw drives. I miss my clamshell Ibook. I wish there were a version of it today. The G3's and lamp Imac were incredibly cool.

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

Ciao, my first Powermac was a PM 7200, and much later a blue-white G3 with OS X 10.4, i loved the Aqua UI..AS for today i'm using Debian Linux 12, many greetings from Brunswick in Germany and please stay safe 🙂

[@ipodsandmacs]

15:16 that was included in the Xcode examples folder up until 10.6 when it was removed.

[@ActionRetro]

Oh neat!

[@gumse666]

I attended Mac World Expo in Paris 2000 when Jobs presented Mac OS X Public Beta . After the keynote all interested could pick up a copy att the Expo.

[@kirishima638]

As a long time Mac user (going back to System 5), I was not impressed by OSX on release. It was pretty, but slow and very crashy. It didn’t switch from OS9 until Panther came out, which fixed the major issues.

[@nil0bject]

can you show off project builder in each version?

[@DanaDoesStuff]

Sean, I don’t think you’re smacking that mouse button hard enough! 😛

[@legomasteranimations4765]

Its cool to think that apple thought of a shiny new theme for mac os before Microsoft even had the consepts for longhorn

[@pianokeyjoe]

I loved the DP1, 2 and 3 versions! Especially DP1 and 2 since they use the classic Mac OS interface with NeXTSTEP elements. I never liked the candy interface of OS-X. The newest versions of Mac OS use a more Linuxy Gnome/Mate/Cinnamon style interface which is nice too but that classic OG Mac/NeXT interface is where it's at!

[@2j4ez]

you should of tried running software from dp4 on dp1 etc

[@rickkarrer8370]

Can you copy the demos out of DP4 and upload them (guess I should google if someone already did lol)? I wonder how far into OS X they'll still run? I feel like they'd run in at great 10.1 or 10.2. My Power Mac Quicksilver has every macOS from 9, to 10.1 through Sorbet Leopard.

[@sideburn]

I remember every one of them. I remember having mixed feelings about this new “OS X” while apple was dying 😆

[@drewzero1]

Yep, I really loved Mac OS 8 and 9, was not initially excited for OS X. I finally came around for Tiger when they started to tone down the eye candy a bit.

[@kkolakowski]

About icons in DP4 - icons on macOS never was (and are) vector graphics, they were always raster ones, but with very high (for the time) resolution - I think even 15 years ago it was 512x512. Fun fact: first SVG specification was barely released roughly in time of Mac OS X 10.0

[@charliekahn4205]

Explains why they went with the PDF spec instead of SVG, but I'm kinda surprised they didn't at least try to make icons PDF sub-documents. Maybe it was too hard on the system to have that many objects, or maybe they just didn't want to remake all the icons.

[@itstheweirdguy]

I have a MAC at work that we recycled in that looks like this it's a G4 Power Mac seperate tower/monitor. It dual boots OS 9 and OSX!!! It's so cool! Seeing the classic mac os makes me feel like i'm in 2nd grade playing mouse practice on an even older macintosh. I even reloaded OS 9 from a CD to get it cleaner (took me 5 minutes to figure out how to wipe the os 9 partition but I got it), as far as OSX it's not the newest version it can be, but I'm leaving it, I just deleted the customer's user and files and made my own! Quite a trip down memory lane! I've got instructions to boot it from USB and put a newer OSX on, but I'm not bothering it works fine already. To get the files off for the customer, since the USB ports are so slow, I had remove the HDD to DD the hard drive with linux, then plug what I cloned to into my newer work imac then I read everything fine.

[@icanrunat3200mhz]

4:15 “Deedee! Get out of my laboratory!”

[@jperih]

What you’re missing, are the Developer Tools (separate disk on some, an optional install on others). The Developer Tools (Xcode, Interface Builder, others) changed about as much, if not more, than the interface itself.

[@MaddTheSane]

Xcode wasn't introduced until 10.3. It was Project Builder before that.

[@bubbles581]

I remember using rhapsody when it came out on my x86 was interesting 😅

[@andrewarmstrong5266]

I started with 10.0 with my first computer being a g3 iMac and have followed the os releases right up to today, with the gradual changes over the years I forgot how much I enjoyed the aqua design back in the day making me happy to not be using windows me or xp

[@CRaDISHOfficial]

0:01 Apple released the Mac OS from the depths of old Cartoon Network

[@drzeissler]

DP1 is very interesting!

[@scottrunge4077]

I had DP4 and the PB both installed on my iMac DV SE

[@miniroll32]

Why did DP 1 and 2 use the OS 9 interface rather than just going straight to Aqua?

[@jeffyp2483]

8.6 makes perfect sense. most (if not all) the 9.x.x versions were made with 'classic-in-osx' in mind.

[@buildingtents]

I wonder if DP1 had a beta version of some changes to the file system, thus the weird characters and failing to work on the premade partition.

[@LabCat]

The UI elements between these systems are so different, and yet the installers change remarkably little. (For stability's sake that's probably good.) I miss the days of skeuomorphism and when operating system developers took the time to make their OSes look unique. Way too much similarity among OS UI development these days. (Don't get me wrong - I will still take MacOS in Dark Mode over Windows 1x in Dark Mode, but I still want an iLamp G4 with Aqua...)

[@leonidasburtoncoolcreates_1234]

Blast app did make it to the final release of mac os X in fact I have an iMac g5 running 10.4 tiger and it has blast app

[@RetroGamerBB]

You got a copy of panther for x86?

[@adamsavard535]

Does the software that comes in the previews work on the release version of OS X? For that matter, would binaries for nextstep work since they share a common base? I'm assuming no to both those questions, but still am curious!

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I had a B&W G3 that had every Apple OS it was capable of booting on separate partitions for a while until the hard drive died, and I never put the effort into redoing it.

[@andresbravo2003]

well, you are so right to be prepared for OS X Rhapsody...

[@jeffyp2483]

i cant believe you called the menu bar the 'taskbar'

[@jeffyp2483]

i had a cheetah disc and a 9.2.1 disc. both were given to me by a guy who i had a class with. we were talking about computer stuff and mac stuff in particukar. i mentioned my g3 install became unbootable. he said had some discs and hed just give them to me. and he did! it was a nice thing to do. wish i had all that stuff still

[@PaulMiller-mn3me]

I kind of prefer the old Platinum look!

[@halfsourlizard9319]

100% Mac stopped looking like Mac when it got all the childish candy-looking OSX 'Aqua' nonsense.

[@grants5036]

Thanks for this

[@raskolnikov9067]

I still have screenshots i took from the public beta. It is normal to keep screenshots for decades, right?

[@mcal27]

Do the FW Ports work? When these were new I was building pro Audio systems with them and then the early graphite that used pretty much the same hardware and the FW ports were terrible! So unreliable compared to the AGP Graphite’s

[@MaleRainbowAction]

I like the dock more without the background.

[@xnonsuchx]

I’m gonna send Sean some duster spray cans. :-)

[@douglasjacobs3803]

i cannot get os X to boot from my imac ive downloaed the dmg file for el capatan several times and it will not read the thumb drive only thing i can think of is getting a dvd and see if that works,im very frustrated. im a microsoft use but tryingto learn something new any suggestions?

[@MaxOakland]

Try the CD. Even burn one

[@monkeyman767]

Depending on the age of the iMac, el Capitan just simply might not be (officially) supported and won't work the way you'd expect

[@datboi-ux2yb]

Great video again but please... go easy on the ads slider

[@anthonykoller4459]

I remember this operating system on my Mac G4 Cube and I left Windows and I stuck with Apple ever since

[@slob5041]

They had clouds on the mail app in the beta, meaning they remembered it for the iPhone

[@AKATenn]

they run so slowly, is it the machine, or is the software running on some kind of legacy mode?

[@mycophobia]

early OS X releases ran really badly from what ive heard. people mostly stuck with 9 until ~10.2 or 3

[@blu_subwoofer6714]

On a quadruple booting Power Mac g3?

[@flaggerify]

There was an Easter egg with one of these previews that featured quotes from the then contemporary The Matrix.