Apple has stepped up to the plate and announced that that Mac OS X, the next generation Macintosh operating system, is complete and the ``gold master'' has been released to manufacturing for production. Mac OS X combines ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh with the power and openness of UNIX.
Mac OS X is built upon a stable, open source, UNIX based foundation called Darwin and features true memory protection, preemptive multi-tasking and symmetric multiprocessing when running on the dual processor Power Mac G4. Mac OS X includes Apple's new Quartz 2D graphics engine (based on the Internet-standard Portable Document Format) for sharper graphics and broad font support; OpenGL for superior 3D graphics and gaming; and QuickTime for streaming audio and video. Mac OS X also features an entirely new user interface called Aqua. Aqua combines ease of use with new functionality such as the Dock, a handy tool for organizing applications, documents and document windows.
Mac OS X requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and PowerBook introduced after September 1998.
Mac OS X will ship on March 24, 2001, for a suggested retail price of $129.
