The first day we printed something in Mac OS X

Background

Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released the day I was interviewed at Apple and played a substantial role in me accepting the offer. The same day, the Developer Preview also shipped and I started at Apple about 17 months before the debut of Public Beta.

A few months before Public Beta shipped, I joined the Mail team. Everyone in Software Engineering (then called Platform Technologies) was encouraged (and volunteered) to test all parts of the system, particularly those that were in the worst shape.

Public Beta

In Public Beta, printing effectively didn’t work at all. It always amazed me that people actually paid $30 for Public Beta, but Apple needed all the $$$ it could get at that time. Platform Technologies was a small group of about 200 engineers, so those funds could hire at least a handful of sorely needed engineers.

First release

For the 1.0 release of Mac OS X was codenamed Cheetah, so it at least sounded like it might be fast! I remember timing a cold launch of Mail on a middle-of-…