Happy 5th Birthday, Mac OS X! Here's the official Apple press release:

CUPERTINO, California—March 21, 2001—Apple® today announced that beginning this Saturday, March 24, customers can buy Mac® OS X in retail stores around the world. Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh®.

“Mac OS X is the most important software from Apple since the original Macintosh operating system in 1984 that revolutionized the entire industry,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait for Mac users around the globe to experience its stability, power and elegance.”

Over 350 applications for Mac OS X are shipping today, with hundreds more coming by this summer. More than 10,000 developer organizations around the world are working on over 20,000 Mac OS X applications, including 4D, Aladdin Systems, Alias/Wavefront, Avid, Connectix, Dantz, Digidesign, EarthLink, FileMaker, IBM, Macromedia, Microsoft, MYOB, Palm, Sun, Symantec, and Thursby Software Systems.

Apple will also ship Mac OS X versions of its three most popular applications on March 24, available as free downloads at http://www.apple.com: iMovie™ 2, the world’s most popular and easiest-to-use digital video editing software; iTunes, Apple’s wildly popular “jukebox” software that lets users create and manage their own music library; and a preview version of AppleWorks® 6.1, Apple’s award-winning productivity application.

Mac OS X is built upon an incredibly 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 stunning graphics and broad font support; OpenGL for spectacular 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 superior ease of use with amazing new functionality such as the Dock, a breakthrough for organizing, documents and document windows.

In addition, Mac OS X includes hundreds of new features, such as:
• Dynamic memory management, eliminating “out of memory” messages or need to adjust the memory for applications
• Advanced power management, so that PowerBook® and iBook™ systems wake from sleep instantly
• QuickTime 5, shipping for the first time as an integrated feature of Mac OS X
• Automatic networking, allowing users to get on the Internet using any available network connection, without adjusting settings
• A single interface to easily manage all network and Internet connections, including direct support for DSL systems that require PPPoE connectivity
• Full PDF support and PDF integration into the operating system, so that Mac OS X applications can generate standard PDF documents to be shared with any platform
• Direct support for TrueType, Type 1 and OpenType fonts, and an intuitive and flexible interface for managing fonts and groups of fonts
• More than $1,000 of the best fonts available today, including Baskerville, Herman Zapf’s Zapfino, Futura, and Optima; as well as the highest-quality Japanese fonts available, in the largest character set ever on a personal computer
• iTools integration into Mac OS X, for direct access to iDisk free Internet storage in the Finder and Open/Save dialog boxes, and free IMAP mail for Mac.com email accounts
• Built in support for popular HP, Canon, and Epson printers
• Easy to administer multi-user environment, with access privileges to keep documents secure
• Powerful web development tools and technologies such as WebDAV, XML, Apache and QuickTime
• BSD UNIX services including popular shells, Perl and FTP
• Support for symmetric multi-processing, so that on dual-processor Power Mac G4 systems, both processors are used automatically to deliver up to twice the productivity
• File system and network security including support for Kerberos
• Support for Java 2 Standard Edition built directly into Mac OS X, giving customers access to cross platform applications

Apple’s successful Mac OS X Public Beta, which shipped in September 2000, was instrumental in several key enhancements to the operating system. Apple shipped more than 100,000 copies of Mac OS X Public Beta and received more than 75,000 individual user feedback entries from Mac users and developers worldwide.

To help customers migrate to Mac OS X, Apple iServices will offer several new services, including a comprehensive set of Mac OS X training and certification offerings for Mac OS X system administrators.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X will ship with 7 languages—English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch— included on a single CD. In addition, the Mac OS X box will include a full copy of Mac OS 9.1, for running Classic applications, and the Mac OS X Developer Tools CD.

Mac OS X will be available through The Apple Store® (http://www.apple.com) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) beginning March 24, 2001.

Mac OS X requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on the following Apple products: iMac™, iBook, Power Macintosh® G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and any PowerBook introduced after May 1998.

Press release link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/mar/21osxstore.html