2011 marks Apple’s tenth anniversary of Mac OS X, iPod, Apple Retail
[Via AppleInsider]
As Apple begins 2011 by opening its new Mac App Store and expanding its partnerships with Verizon, later this year the company can look forward to celebrating the tenth anniversary of three of its greatest successes: Mac OS X, the iPod, and the company’s uniquely successful retail initiative.
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Hard to believe it has been 10 years. So much has changed. Apple would not be where it is today without Mac OS X. This is the operating system that brought it into the 21st Century, using a UNIX backbone and a unique graphical interface, Mac OS X allowed Apple to develop the software that runs on almost every digital form factor around while developing hardware that really took advantage of its power.
It is Mac OS X, and its younger sibling, iOS4, that underpins Apple’s dominance. I first noticed this at some of the early bioinformatics conferences I went to around this time.
In the late 90s, most of the computer people ay these meetings were using PCs but maybe only 1 in 10 was actually running Windows (about the same percentage that were using Macs, who were usually biologists not computer guys.). The vast majority, perhaps 80%, were running a version of UNIX on their laptops. This was the OS that allowed them to create the bioinformatics software we were all using. Windows was really just not capable.
Within 2 years after Mac OS X had been released, the numbers had completely changed, at least as far as hardware had changed. Still about 1 in 10 used Windows on a PC but perhaps 50% of them were now using a Mac. They could not only use all the programs they created in UNIX but also could have a really cool laptop. The remainder would have probably moved to Macs if their grants had the money for the change.
From 10% to 50% in a couple of years. All because of Mac OS X.
