Mac OS 8 - Mac OS 8.0

Mac OS 8.0

Developed under the codename "Tempo", Mac OS 8.0 was released on July 26, 1997. Initially, the early beta releases of the product which were circulated to developers and Apple internal audiences, were branded as Mac OS 7.7 (superseding the current release, Mac OS 7.6). Afterwards, the software was later renamed to Mac OS 8 before the final release.

Major improvements in this version included the Platinum theme, a PowerPC native, multi-threaded Finder and greater customization of the user interface.

Other features introduced in Mac OS 8.0 include:

  • Customization of system fonts and accent colors.
  • Contextual pop-up menus. (accessed via ctrl-click with a single-button mouse)
  • Pop-up (or tabbed) windows in the Finder.
  • Spring-loaded folders.
  • Live scrolling.
  • WindowShade widget in window titlebars.
  • Multithreaded Finder — file copy operations run in a separate thread and don't block the Finder UI.
  • Revamped color picker.
  • Desktop Pictures control panel, allowing photographs to be set as the desktop background. (not just tiled patterns)
  • Simple Finder, an option which reduces Finder menus to basic operations, in order to avoid overwhelming new users.
  • Creation of the 'Help' menu and a faster Apple Guide, featuring HTML help pages.
  • Native support of AFP over IP.
  • Performance improvements to virtual memory, AppleScript execution and system startup times.
  • Faster desktop rebuilding.

Read more about this topic:  Mac OS 8