I got an email from a friend today, a relatively recent convert to Macintosh computers and the Mac OS X operating system. Here’s what his subject-less email said:

Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:22:59 -0800
From: (name hidden)
To: Steve Hackstadt
Subject:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/osx-fiveyears.ars

(What can I say, he’s not a longwinded fellow!) If you follow that link, you can read a nice perspective piece on Mac OS X — where it came from and what it has become. Why would you want to do that, you ask? Because it turns out that Apple’s Mac OS X is five years old today. And in those five years it has become, in my opinion, the most usable and user-friendly operating system ever created. Over the years, I’ve gently encouraged numerous friends and family members to switch. Not one has turned back. On a daily basis, I use several of the major operating systems out there — Windows, Linux, Solaris, and OS X. Generally speaking, the first three work OK and we get along the best we can. But OS X is the only one of the lot that I truly look forward to using, that I actually enjoy using each and every day. This is such a foreign concept to people stuck in the Windows world.

For 15 years I’ve been a Mac user, which is about half the time that Apple Computer has existed as a company. (They’re celebrating they’re 30th birthday on April 1, 2006!) I went through the transition from Motorola 68000 CPUs to PowerPCs, through the migration from “classic” Mac OS 9 to “next generation” Mac OS X, and I’m here today as the company transitions from PowerPC to Intel CPUs. The company has certainly had its ups and downs, but their commitment to providing “insanely great” products is more alive and focused than ever. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be in another five years.

Happy 5th Birthday, Mac OS X!

This entry was posted by Steve on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Celebrate, Computers, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.