If One Thing Changed Mac OS

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First thing you need to do is to select disk utility, select your Macbook’s hard drive and hit erase – this may seem redundant but I’ll explain in a moment. Now go back into the main repair menu by closing the disk utility. Unless you created a “time machine” backup, you’ll want to pick the reinstall Mac OS X option. OS X still looks like OS X, but Yosemite turns your Mac into more than just a PC. And probably the thing about Yosemite that most changed how I go about my day, is that Messages now lets you.

Since Mac OS X 10.7 versions of the Mac operating system are only licensed to be run in a virtual machine if the host Mac is running the same version. This means that installing an OS X 10.8 VM on. Upgrading to 512MB of DDR RAM is suggested and will get you off to using a Mac on the right foot while an upgrade to 1GB will really unleash some speed. More RAM means you can have more applications open at the same time and decreased boot times. I recommend 1GB for photoshop or other intensive application users.

On January 24, 1984, at the Flint Center on De Anza College’s campus in Cupertino, California, Apple formally announced the Macintosh at its shareholder meeting, in front an audience so packed that large numbers of people who owned Apple stock couldn’t get in at all.

Here’s a video of the entire event, complete with an introduction by then-CEO John Sculley apologizing to the shareholders who were stuck outside:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YShLWK9n2Sk]

Drawing heavily on inspiration from Xerox’s PARC lab and other research that came before it, as well as Apple’s own Lisa — but adding plenty of its own innovations — the Mac was the first successful computer with a graphical user interface, a mouse and the ability to show you what a printed document would look like before you printed it. As the computer turns 30, it’s tempting to celebrate simply by remembering how profoundly its debut changed personal computing.

(PHOTOS:Macintosh at 30: Apple’s Computer Evolution)

But as I think about the anniversary, I’m at least as impressed by two other facts about the Mac:

1) It’s actually existed for 30 years
2) More important, it’s mattered for 30 years

In other categories of products, something being around for decades, continuing to evolve and maintaining its popularity isn’t all that unusual: Consider, for instance, the Toyota Corolla, which has been with us since 1966.

But the Mac is the only personal computer with a 30-year history. Other than Apple itself, the leading computer companies of 1984 included names such as Atari, Commodore, Compaq, Kaypro and Radio Shack — all of which have since either left the PC business or vanished altogether. Even IBM, personified as the evil Big Brother-like overlord in the Mac’s legendary “1984” commercial, bailed on the PC industry in 2004. That the Mac has not only survived but thrived is astonishing.

Technically, the Macs of today are actually based on operating-system software that originated with the computers made by NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after being ousted from Apple in 1985 and then sold to it in 1996. Philosophically, aesthetically and spiritually, though, they’re very much descendants of the original 1984 Mac. The same things Apple cared about then — approachability, integration of software and hardware, a willingness to do fewer things but do them better — it cares about today. It’s always just tried to build the best, most Apple-esque personal computers it could with the technology available to it at the time.

And if you trace the history of the Mac from 1984 to 2014, you keep coming up with ways the platform influenced the rest of the industry — yes, even during the scary period during the mid-1990s when the company flirted with financial disaster.

So for this list, I’m skipping the reasons why the Mac mattered in 1984. Here’s why it’s never stopped being the world’s most influential personal computer.

1. It made icons into art.

The first Mac was the first fully mainstream computer with a graphical user interface, and therefore the first one with icons. They were famously designed by Susan Kare, who later did icons for Microsoft, Facebook and other clients. Today, icons are everywhere — on computers, phones, tablets and the web. And even though today’s designers have more pixels and colors to work with than Kare did back in the day, their work, like hers, involves visualizing concepts in a way that’s immediately understandable, even at a teensy size.

2. Macs have always begged to be networked.

Starting in 1985, when computer networking was still a pricey and exotic rarity, Apple made it easy to connect Macs to each other using a technology called AppleTalk. The original iMac had Ethernet at a time when that was a startlingly advanced feature for a home computer. And when Apple unveiled a laptop with built-in Wi-Fi at Macworld Expo New York in 1999, the notion of being able to use the Internet without any cords was still so startling that Phil Schiller jumped from a great height onto a mattress while clutching an iBook to prove that no strings were attached.

3. HyperCard helped inspire the web.

Bill Atkinson, the genius who did as much as anyone to make the Mac’s interface great, also created 1987’s HyperCard, a Mac application that let anyone create stacks of on-screen cards with text, images and hyperlinks. Widely applauded at the time — and bundled with every Mac — HyperCard never quite changed the world. But it influenced Tim Berners-Lee’s early collaborator Robert Cailliau, who had a hand in inventing the basic technologies of a rather HyperCard-like technology called the World Wide Web.

4. Microsoft Office was born there.

Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office have had such a symbiotic relationship for so long that it’s easy to forget that Office started out on the Mac. Back in 1989, Microsoft bundled up the first version — with Mac editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and an e-mail app — as a limited-time offer. It was a hit, so the bundling became permanent, and a Windows version arrived in 1990.

5. It made pointing portable.

Grizzled tech veterans recall the age when notebook computers didn’t incorporate a pointing device — you either plugged in a mouse, strapped on some sort of ungainly offboard trackball or did without. That changed in 1991 when Apple announced its first PowerBooks, which put a palm-rest area below the keyboard, with a sizable trackball in the middle. Trackballs didn’t last all that long before giving way to touchpads, but the palm rest is still a standard feature on nearly every laptop.

6. QuickTime kickstarted digital video.

If you operate under the theory that Apple didn’t do anything of lasting importance during the 11 years that Steve Jobs was in exile, consider this: QuickTime, which put smooth, high-quality video on a Mac’s screen, was groundbreaking when it debuted in 1991. Its descendants are in every Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the standards it shaped led to the era of YouTube and Netflix.

7. Touchpads took over.

As useful as built-in trackballs were, they had their downsides: They took up a lot of space, required periodic cleaning and were prone to mechanical failure. And their era turned out to be brief. In 1994, Apple shipped the first PowerBooks with touchpads — the company calls them Trackpads — and they soon became the de facto mobile pointing device almost everywhere, with the exception of ThinkPads and a few other machines with tiny pointing sticks.

8. Macs never have trouble saying goodbye.

Part of Apple’s design minimalism involves removing features it’s decided are no longer necessary — and almost always, it errs on the side of removing them too early rather than too late. When 1998’s original iMac ditched the 3 1/2-inch floppy drive — a technology introduced 14 years earlier by the first Mac — it provoked a fair amount of anguish and even conspiracy theories. But within half a decade or so, the floppy was gone everywhere.

9. For logos, it proved upside-down is right.

Bloomberg / Getty Images

Steve Jobs introduces the original MacBook Air in January 2008

These days, nearly all laptops have prominent logos on the back of their screens. From the perspective of the users, they’re upside-down — which means that they’re right side-up when you flip the computer open, allowing them to serve as tiny billboards that display a branding message to everyone else around you. But notebooks didn’t always have those logos, and even Apple machines, at first, had them the other way around. In 2012, former Apple employee Joe Moreno explained how the logos got flipped, a design decision that the rest of the industry ended up following.

10. The Apple Store was originally a Mac store.

When the first two Apple Store locations opened on May 19, 2001 in Tysons Corner, Va. and Glendale, Ca., they weren’t stocked with iPhones or iPads. They didn’t even carry iPods, which didn’t exist until October of that year. No, they offered only computers and related products — which meant that Apple’s revolutionary approach to electronics retailing originated as a way to sell more Macs.

11. Steve Jobs’ media hub vision came true.

Back in the early part of this century, when Apple was busy creating apps such as iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie, Steve Jobs spent a lot of time pitching the idea of the Mac as a media hub — a device you’d use to manage digital music, photos, video and other content you created and consumed using a variety of then-new gizmos. The concept worked. And if it’s less of a given today that you’ll use a computer for those tasks, it’s only because the iPhone and iPad proved that phones and tablets can also be great media hubs.

12. It gave Bluetooth a boost.

In 2002, when phones started adding a wireless technology called Bluetooth, there wasn’t much you could do with it. But you could use it to transfer data between your phone and a Mac — at first using Apple’s Bluetooth adapter and, shortly thereafter, via Bluetooth built into new Macs. The technology never became all that common on Windows PCs, but it continues on as a standard Mac feature to this day.

13. Macs keep proving you can start fresh.

In 2001, Apple dumped Mac OS — the original Mac operating system, which had grown outdated and creaky — and replaced it with the state-of-the-art OS X. If the company hadn’t been willing to do that, it’s unlikely that Macs would exist today. Two other similar shifts — the move from 680×0 processors to PowerPC chips, and then the move from PowerPC chips to Intel ones — were equally daring. Strangely, Apple’s fearlessness about such transitions, successful though they’ve been, is one thing about the company that few of its rivals ever imitate.

14. It let you see your keyboard in the dark.

The 17-inch PowerBook that Apple released in 2003 had the largest screen anybody had put into a notebook up until that time — and it did inspire similarly humongous Windows laptops. But I’m bringing it up here because it was the first portable computer with a backlit keyboard and light sensors, which let it turn on the illumination only when necessary. Plenty of other models have since followed its lead, to the point where lack of illumination is a sign that a laptop suffers from excessive cost-cutting.

15. iTunes built commerce into a computing device.

In 2003, Apple started selling digital music downloads. They were primarily meant to wind up on your iPod, but at first you needed a Mac to buy them, since the transaction happened in iTunes, which ran only on a Mac at the time. I include this development here not because of its impact on the music industry — which was epic — but because it introduced the concept of a digital content store being built into a computing device — something which eventually became standard practice everywhere, for music, video, apps, games and books.

16. The iMac defined the modern all-in-one.

In the earliest days of personal computing, there were machines with the screen and electronic guts built into one case, such as Commodore’s PET 2001. Then the design faded away until Apple revived it with the original Mac. Then it faded away again until 1998’s iMac revived it. When Apple released the iMac G5 in 2004 — with a big flat screen built into a slab-like computer on a pedestal — the rest of the industry gradually copied the design. A decade later, if you’re buying a desktop computer, there’s a good chance it’s an iMac or one of its clones.

17. It made solid-state storage make sense.

Since the 1980s — when NEC released an early notebook called the UltraLite — PC makers had tinkered with the idea of replacing rotating storage devices such as hard disks with reliable, fast, compact, power-efficient solid-state memory. But solid-state only became truly mainstream in 2010, when Apple made it a standard feature on the second-generation MacBook Air. It’s still far pricier and more limited in capacity than a hard disk, but it’s now the only form of storage Apple uses for portable Macs — and, at long last, a commonplace technology in other manufacturers’ laptops.

18. Retina is a great leap forward for the eyeballs.

Since the 1980s, computer displays resolutions have been getting higher — usually in baby steps that made new screens a just little bit better than old screens. But when Apple released the first MacBook Pro with a Retina display in 2012, it quadrupled the pixels of its predecessor, among the most impressive one-fell-swoop advances in PC history.

19. Where would computer design be without it?

Virtually every computer that runs Windows owes something to the Mac, but in some cases — as with certain models in HP’s appropriately-named Envy line — the industrial-design debt is so absolute that it’s embarrassing. A goodly percentage of Ultrabooks — and some Chromebooks — also knock off Apple designs to a degree that, frankly, seems wholly unnecessary.

20. No Macs, no iPhones or iPads.

If Apple hadn’t made Macs, it wouldn’t have had a fraction of the industrial-design chops it needed to pull off the iPhone and iPad. And it wouldn’t have had the necessary software, either, since iOS is based on the Mac’s OS X.

In the “1984” commercial that introduced the Mac, Apple suggested that a world without its new machine would be grim and dystopian. That was a fantasy designed to sell computers, not a statement of fact. But have the last 30 years of life on Planet Earth been meaningfully better because that first Mac — and all the ones that have followed — existed? You bet — and I hope that there’s lots more to come.

Which Mac operating system is the best is a topic of numerous debates among Apple fans.

Since the mission of this blog is to refute myths and legends around Macs, it’s time for me to provide my 2 cents about the issue on hand. While everything below is just my opinion, as a long-time Mac user and veteran software engineer, I hope my opinion worth something.

The best Mac OS version is the one that your Mac is eligible to upgrade to. In 2021 it is macOS Big Sur. However, for users that need to run 32-bit apps on Mac, the best macOS is Mojave. Also, older Macs would benefit if upgraded at least to macOS Sierra for which Apple still releases security patches.

How to Tell Which macOS You Are Running

To find out which macOS is currently running on your Mac, follow these steps:

  1. Click on Apple logo in the top left corner of the menubar
  2. In the dropdown click on the first item: About This Mac
  3. The first line in the Overview tab is the name of the current OS.

What Version of OS Can My Mac Run?

Not all Macs can be upgraded to the latest OS version. For instance, old Macs powered by PowerPC CPUs cannot run OS intended for Intel-based computers. Also, some versions have hardware limitations.

For instance, Mojave cannot be installed on MacBook Pro earlier than Mid 2012 model.

Check below to know exactly what version of OS your Mac can run.

Which OS is Best for my Mac

Anytime someone asks me which OS is best for them I always suggested going with the latest. Things have changed recently, however.

Should I Upgrade to macOS Catalina or Big Sur?

While personally I like macOS Big Sur and have it installed on my MacBook Pro, it comes with serious breaking changes.

The first issue is compatibility.

Big Sur is a transition OS which is designed to help Apple to move from Intel processors to their own chips on ARM.

After I installed Big Sur on my MacBook Pro mid 2020 (pre-Silicon), most of my apps, including Microsoft Office, were working as expected.

However, my VMWare Fusion 11 does not start anymore, so I have to purchase a new license if I want to keep using it (or roll back to Catalina). Luckily, I took a full backup before the upgrade.

The second breaking issue is the lack of 32-bit app support.

macOS Catalina and Big Sur can only run 64-bit apps.

If you wondering whether you should upgrade to macOS Catalina or Big Sur, first verify that you don’t have any 32-bit apps. But first, take a back up, so you can go back in case something breaks after the upgrade.

For instance, I had to remove uTorrent after upgrade. And I didn’t know that uTorrent is 32-bit!

How to Know If App is 32-bit or 64-bit

To find out whether the app on your Mac is 32-bit or 64-bit follow these steps:

  1. Click on Apple logo in the top left corner of the Mac screen
  2. Click on About This Mac option
  3. Click on System Report button in Overview tab (first one)
  4. Scroll down to Software -> Applications
  5. Find the app and check Kind

Which macOS Should I Use

If you have an older Mac which is not eligible to upgrade with some latest software or hardware, I’d suggest upgrading at least to Sierra (or better High Sierra) for the following reasons:

  • Sierra is still supported by Apple, and it gets security updates
  • APFS file system is available
  • It supports Siri
  • Significant security improvements

The most important point when choosing the best OS is the ability to get security updates. While Apple generally does not announce the OS end of life dates, it is possible to know when they stop releasing security updates from this page.

For instance, according to the page, the last security update for OS X Yosemite was released on September 12, 2017. The last update for OS X El Capitan was in July 2018, and Carnegie Mellon University confirmed that El Capitan’s end of life date was August 2018.

Snow Leopard Myth

I know that some users on forums believe that the best OS version for Macs was Snow Leopard. But that is a myth. And I know how such myths get created.

Once I worked in the company, which was selling a 20-year old product. And customers were still using and didn’t want to switch to new versions, because the old one was rock solid.

I then talked to the engineer who worked on the project, and he revealed that the product was a total disaster when it was first deployed. Engineers had to work on-site for almost a year in order to fix all bugs.

After five or so years of polishing the product, it becomes virtually bug-free, and nobody now remembers how bad it was when it was first rolled out. A similar thing happened Snow Leopard, and it was recognized as best mac os version after some time.

How to Update to the Latest Version

There are two ways to update to the latest OS version on Mac:

  • From the Software Update section in System Preferences
  • Use a download link

Using Software Update

This is by far the best option, but it only available if you have Yosemite, or later OS installed already. If you enabled automatic updates, then Mac will inform you that the next macOS is available.

Just open System Preferences, go to Software Update and click on the Upgrade Now button.

This method is also best if wondering how to check if you have the latest version of OS installed on your Mac. Only the version compatible with your hardware will appear here.

For instance, my the latest version for Mac Mini 2012 is Mojave, I can’t install anything newer than that.

If you are having problems with updates or having issues post-upgrade check my post about troubleshooting macOS.

Using download links

For older systems or in case you need to downgrade, you have to download a standalone installer in DMG format. DMG stands for disk image, similar to ISO, just different formats.

After downloading the installer, just double click on it and follow instructions. Again, do not forget to take a backup before the upgrade.

Mac OS Comparisons: Requirements, Features, Compatibility, Download Links

Following is a high-level description of all Mac operating systems as early as Mountain Lion.

You can refer to those descriptions when deciding which operating system is best for your iMac, Mac Pro, Mac mini, or MacBook.

With each OS description, I included a list of Macs supported. However, you can use Mac OS compatibility checker for more detailed information.

macOS 11 Big Sur

macOS v11 (codename Big Sur) is the latest version of the operating system for Apple computers.

Release date: October 13, 2020

Hardware Requirements: RAM requirement 4GB. Big Sur is the first OS to support new Macs using ARM technology (in the future).

Features

  • The biggest design refresh since macOS X.
  • Support for new ARM processors.
  • Safar improved performance and power consumption.
  • Time Machine supports backup to APFS volumes.
  • One-click translation for 7 languages.
  • Redesigned maps

Software Compatibility Issues

Only 64-bit apps are allowed to run on Big Sur.

How to install

There are two ways to install Big Sur: enable automatic updates in System Preferences or download by using the following link.

Or check my post with tips on installing macOS on unsupported devices.

List of Apple computers compatible with macOS Big Sur

  • MacBook (2015 and later)
  • MacBook Air (2013 and later)
  • MacBook Pro (2013 and later)
  • Mac mini (2014 and later)
  • iMac models (2014 and later)
  • iMac Pro (2017 and later)
  • Mac Pro (2013 and later)

macOS 10.15 Catalina

Release date: October 7, 2019

Hardware Requirements: RAM requirement increased from 2GB to 4GB.

Features

  • Introduced Sidecar, which allows for Macs to use an iPad as an external display.
  • iTunes was replaced by separate apps: Music, Podcasts, and TV.
  • Find My Mac and Find My Friends have merged into one app.

Software Compatibility Issues

macOS Catalina is the first Mac operating system that does not support 32-bit applications. Only 64-bit apps are allowed to run on Catalina.

How to install

Mac

There are two ways to install Catalina: enable automatic updates in System Preferences or download by using the following link.

List of Apple computers compatible with macOS Catalina

  • MacBook (Early 2015 or later)
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or later)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or later)
  • Mac mini (Late 2012 or later)
  • iMac models (Late 2012 or later)
  • iMac Pro (All models)
  • Mac Pro (Late 2013)

macOS 10.14 Mojave

Release date: September 24, 2018

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 18.5GB free space on disk

Features

  • The main feature of Mojave is “Dark Mode”
  • FaceTime adds group feature which allows chatting with up to 32 people
  • News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home apps were ported from iOS to Mac.

How to install

If your Mac is eligible to update to Mojave, then the easiest way to install it is by enabling automatic updates. Downloading a standalone Mojave installer could be a little tricky.

List of Apple computers compatible with macOS Mojave

  • MacBook (Early 2015 or later)
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or later)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or later)
  • Mac mini (Late 2012 or later)
  • iMac (Late 2012 or later)
  • iMac Pro (All models)
  • Mac Pro (Late 2013 and 2010-2012 models with upgraded GPU)

macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Release date: September 25, 2017

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 14.3GB free space on disk

Features

  • APFS (Apple File System) becomes the default file system in High Sierra. It’s a significant upgrade from the older HFS+ in terms of speed, size, and security
  • iCloud support of Messages which allows sync messages of the account across multiple devices
  • Mail app uses 35% less storage space due to optimizations

List of Apple computers compatible with macOS High Sierra

  • MacBook (Late 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
  • iMac (Late 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

How to install

Here is a High Sierra download link.

macOS 10.12 Sierra

This is the first macOS version. Previous OS versions for Macs were called OS X (X stands for 10).

Release date: September 20, 2016

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 8GB free space on disk

Features

  • Siri was introduced to Macs
  • Optimized storage with iCloud sync
  • Auto-lock feature allows unlocking MacBook with paired Apple Watch
  • APFS preview available
  • Disk Utility can manage RAID sets again
  • Significant security improvements

How to install

Here is a Sierra download link.

List of Apple computers compatible with macOS Sierra

  • MacBook (Late 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
  • iMac (Late 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

OS X 10.11 El Capitan

Last OS X version.

Release date: September 30, 2015

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 8GB free space on disk

Features

  • System Integrity Protection – a security feature that protects even when the root user executes the process
  • Performance improvements: open PDF files four times faster, Mail is twice faster, launching apps 40% faster
  • Notes app similar to the app in iOS

Macs compatible with OS X El Capitan

same as OS Mountain Lion.

How to install

Here is El Capitan download link.

If One Thing Changed Mac Os X

OS X 10.10 Yosemite

Release date: October 16, 2014

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 8GB free space on disk

Macs compatible with OS X Yosemite

Same as OS Mountain Lion.

Features

  • Major user design overhaul
  • Introduction of Handoff and Continuity features
  • Photos app replaced iPhoto and Aperture

How to install

Here is Yosemite download link.

OS X 10.9 Mavericks

First free Mac OS. Previous OS versions vary from $19.99 to $129.

Release date: October 22, 2013

Hardware Requirements: 2GB RAM and 8GB free space on disk

Features

  • Compressed Memory feature automatically compresses inactive apps when approaching maximum memory capacity
  • Timer coalescing is a feature that reduces CPU usage by up to 72 percent
  • App Nap puts apps that are not currently visible to sleep

Macs compatible with OS X Mavericks

Same as OS Mountain Lion.

How to install

OS X Mavericks installer is not available on Apple Site. Follow instructions here to install Mavericks.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Must be purchased. Fixed many bugs introduced in OS X Lion.

Release date: July 25, 2012

System Requirements: 2GB RAM and 8GB free space on disk

Features

  • New apps: Notification Center, Notes, Messages, Game Center
  • AirPlay mirroring allowed to mirror Mac screen to Apple TV
  • Application updates automatically install from the App Store

List of Apple computers compatible with OS X Mountain Lion

If One Thing Changed Mac Os Version

  • iMac (Mid-2007 or newer)
  • MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)

How to install

Mountain Lion installer is not available on Apple Site. Follow instructions here to install OS X Mountain Lion.

If One Thing Changed Mac Os Operating System

List of older Mac OS Versions

Following Mac OS versions are still running on older Macs, but Apple does not support them anymore, and there is no point to upgrade (or downgrade) to them:

If One Thing Changed Mac Os 11

  • OS X 10.7 Lion
  • OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
  • Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
  • Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
  • Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
  • Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
  • Mac OS X 10.1 Puma
  • Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah