Mac OS X Due in 2001 (or, 2001: A Pace Odyssey)

In a move that surprised virtually no one, Steve Jobs announced during his keynote address at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) that Mac OS X won’t be released until January 2001. Mac OS X was originally slated for release in mid-2000; Apple now plans to release a public beta of Mac OS X mid-year and began distributing Mac OS X Preview 4 to developers at WWDC. Mac OS X Preview 4 contains enhanced versions of the Finder, the Dock, and the Aqua interface originally unveiled last January at Macworld San Francisco (see "A Quick Dip into Aqua, the Mac OS X Interface" in TidBITS 513). Preview 4 also includes a version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac OS X and support for the Java 2 platform. Apple says Mac OS X will run on any Mac originally equipped with a G3 or G4 processor that has at least 64 MB of RAM; Jobs also said systems will be "available for pre-install" on Macintosh computers starting in January.