I was using since 10.3 and my, 10.5 introduced Quick Look, Time Machine, Boot Camp, Spaces and folder popup in dock which made me feel it has become totally good enough for daily use. Then 10.6 optimized the entire OS when I was surprised that a new OS release actually required less disk space to install and more performant on a same hardware.
I agree some of those security features are good to have but it's like they forgot about adding anything worthy from users' perspective.
Then 10.6 optimized the entire OS when I was surprised that a new OS release actually required less disk space to install and more performant on a same hardware.
This was nice, though it has to be said that the disk space reduction was not because of real optimizations. They removed support for PowerPC in 10.6, so the included applications are not fat/universal binaries anymore. They also removed printer drivers and Rosetta (binary PPC emulation) from the default install (which became an add-on).
Of course, still nice nonetheless if you didn't have a PPC Mac or didn't use PPC applications.
Given that Apple released separate OS install discs and update packages for PPC vs Intel, why were they installing fat binaries of built-in software anyway?
For 3rd party apps universal binaries made complete sense as a way of simplifying app distribution, but that doesn’t extend to the OS.
Heck, do Intel Windows 10 installs include ARM copies of every binary now? I hope not...
I agree some of those security features are good to have but it's like they forgot about adding anything worthy from users' perspective.