by , 9:00 AM EST, March 28th, 2001
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The world's most advanced operating system. Cover copy on box containing OS X |
(MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA) – Saturday, March 24th, 2001: OS X Launch Day. I started my day as one of the sales people that helped open the store at 9 a.m. I'm a sales person. We sell all things related to computers. You may have heard of us.
I spend my weekends there, working in the Mac department, natch. As soon as we opened, two or four people walked in, grabbed an OS X box on the shelf, waved at me enthusiastically, smiled and walked on out.
Very good sign.
The next few hours were Mac nirvana. We had started off with 54 copies of OS X; we sold 33 copies the first day, and the first 25+ of those were in the first three hours (this is very good for a store that has just opened and few people know about). My day was a long string of OS X demos. Many customers had never seen OS X before.
Not bad for an OS that was released with no fanfare, compared to, say, Windows 95.
The good thing about the store I work for is that we get to install software on the computer so that you can truly "try before you buy." I gave customers a truly visual tour of your next OS: I had a G4 466 MHz with 128 MB RAM, loaded with Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 9, plus lots of other apps. I showed them the highly usable "Classic" environment, in response to their desire to run their "old" software. I also installed the Developer tools to show them how relatively easy it was to "hack" the Dock so that it can be moved out of its default location. Many customers were excited about OS X. You wouldn't believe how many PC users I spoke with who said they will be buying a Mac in order to run OS X.
Store traffic was higher than usual.
During the day, I installed OS X on the aforementioned Power Mac G4 (with managers' permission), mainly to show customers how easy it was to run the installer. I also installed my personal copy on my PowerBook G3 "Wall Street." One customer did call back, wanting help with a problem he'd had during his install. He had two hard drives on his Power Mac G4. OS X documentation says that multiple drives are supported, yet he had repeated system freezes while trying to run the installer. I suggested that the second hard drive might be the culprit, but I told him that I wasn't sure about this and that he should contact Apple's help desk. Other than that the day was an unqualified success.
I honestly believe that Apple has a winner on its hands.