Comment by pavlov
7 years ago
I remember paying $129 for Mac OS X 10.0 and it didn't feel anything like NeXT.
On a supposedly state of the art Mac G4, it ran like a lobotomized sloth mostly because of the heavy new graphics stack. The giant fonts, translucent titlebars, pinstripe patterns and "lickable" candy color buttons were the aesthetic opposite of the 2-bit original NeXT.
While 10.1 did a decent job of patching up more egregious issues, 10.2 Jaguar was the first truly usable iteration of OS X, and it incidentally also brought the first bits of toning down to Aqua.
A lot of folks fondly remember Snow Leopard but for me the golden era for OS X was 10.2 - 10.4. 10.5 and 10.6 were great too, but honestly speaking I wouldn’t be bothered if I had to use a modern version of 10.4 for day to day work.
Agreed, 10.4 Tiger was the high point.
IIRC, Leopard was a bit of a disappointment. It was delayed because they moved engineers to work on the first iPhone... And that's pretty much when Mac stopped being a priority at Apple.