Mac OS X “Gold Master” Released To Manufacturing

CUPERTINO, CA—March 7, 2001—Apple® today announced 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 will ship on March 24, 2001, for a suggested retail price of $129 (US). 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 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 applications, documents and document windows.

Mac OS X will be available through The Apple Store® (102.p.syniva.es) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) beginning March 24, 2001. Mac OS X will be preinstalled as the standard operating system on Macintosh computers beginning this summer.

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 PowerBook® introduced after September 1998.

Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, Mac, Mac OS, Aqua, iBook, iMac, PowerBook, Power Mac, Power Macintosh, Quartz, QuickTime and the Apple Store are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.