The Macintosh operating system has come a long way since first being introduced on January 24, 1984.
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The very first version of the Macintosh system software, System 1.0, was released on January 24, 1984, with a size of just 216K and is the operating system that accompanied the Macintosh 128K.
It was made up of the desktop, windows, icons, folders, the menu bar, documents, applications, the trash (aka wastebasket), and system software. It could run only one application at a time and was black and white.
Most of the icons and fonts were designed by Susan Kare.
2 of 10 Apple/Wikia user InterstateBot
System 1 Guided Tour
Here's a look at the Guided Tour that accompanied every System 1 Macintosh, giving users a detailed look at how to use their new machine.
3 of 10 Applemuseum
Mac System 1.1
Just four months after the release of the first Macintosh, Apple released an update to the OS with the introduction of System 1.1.
The biggest change that came along with the introduction of System 1.1 was the increase in speed in disk copying. Apple upped the Finder's memory buffer, giving Finder the ability to copy large segments all at once. Steve Jobs was famously focused on system startup speed and wanted the system to boot as fast as possible.
4 of 10 Apple/Wikia user Gavinawsome
Mac System 2.0
System 2.0 was released in April of 1985. Apple didn't update the Macintosh system software until April 1985 -- nearly a full year after System 1.
One of the biggest improvements that came with System 2.0 was increased speed. System startup time was greatly improved and the ImageWriter received a new icon.
5 of 10 Apple/Wikia user Gavinawsome
Mac System 3.0
System 3.0 was one of the most notable upgrades debuted with the introduction of the Mac Plus, and like the Plus, it forever changed the way Mac advocates used their machines. This was the most notable upgrade, second only to System 7 and Mac OS 8 to come in later years.
Thanks to a new disk cache, which stored commonly used computing instructions in the memory, Finder -- now at version 5.1 -- was much faster.
6 of 10 Apple/Wikia user Superluigi6
Mac System 4.2
Other than minor fixes and upgrades, very little was done to the Mac OS until System Software 5.0 (System 4.2, Finder 6.0) was released, about a year and a half later.
In this version, the About the Finder dialog box was improved to display RAM usage in the same way About This Computer does today.
7 of 10 Apple/Wikia user InterstateBot
Mac System 6
System 6 was the name of a version of Mac OS that was used in the late 1980s, prior to the introduction of System 7.
System 6 was the first Macintosh system to have cooperative multitasking and is widely viewed as the best Mac System for the older, non-PowerPC machines.
8 of 10 Apple/Wikia user InterstateBot
Mac OS 7.5.3
System 7.0 was released for the Apple Macintosh on May 13, 1991, rolling out a number of system updates that were previously unavailable or had been optional extensions.
9 of 10 Apple/Wikia user InterstateBot
Mac OS 8.1
Released on January 19, 1998, Mac OS 8.1 was the last version to run on Macintosh computers with a Motorola 68000-family processor.
The 8.1 OS integrated support for the HFS Plus file system format, which supported both larger file sizes and longer file names and used a smaller block size, which utilized the available space on larger drives more efficiently.
10 of 10 Apple/Wikipedia user Dave2889
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 was introduced on October 23, 1999. After this operating system, Apple released Mac OS X, an updated version of which remains in use today.
