OS X Heads Toward Manufacturing

CUPERTINO, CA (Mar. 07, 2001) -- Apple has announced that Mac OS X has gone gold master and is now on its way to manufacturing for release March 24. The company released no new information regarding the new OS except that it will require 128 MB of RAM to run and that it will be compatible with iMacs, iBooks, G3 and G4 desktops, the G4 Cube and PowerBooks released after September 1998.

In case you haven't been paying attention for the last couple of years, Mac OS X is built upon an 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 PDF); OpenGL for 3D graphics and gaming; and QuickTime for audio and video. Mac OS X also features an entirely new user interface called Aqua, the latest version of which was shown at Macworld in San Francisco in January.

Mac OS X will cost $129 and should be available everywhere. Apple will start installing OS X standard on all its machines beginning this summer. For more information, visit apple.com.