My Collection of Mac OS Screenshots

I bought my first iBook around the turn of the century and have used every version of Mac OS as my daily driver since then. The iBook shipped with both Mac OS X 10.1 and Mac OS 9 preinstalled and I would switch between the two depending on what software I needed and what mood I was in.

At the time, I was still an active member of the online community DeviantArt. It wasn’t uncommon to share screenshots of your desktop there, so I started taking and posting them. Even after I stopped being active in DeviantArt, I continued to take screenshots of my desktop every year before updating to the next major version of Mac OS as a sort of personal archive.

Included in these screenshots is not only the desktop itself, but also a few of the core apps such as Finder, Safari, Mail, iTunes (later Apple Music), and the About This Mac dialog.

That means I have collected quite a few screenshots over the years and since macOS Sequoia (15) is due to arrive this Monday (September 16, 2024), I figured now is an opportune time to share my archive of screenshots here on my blog. In fact, I took the latest batch of macOS Sonoma today.

So, without further ado, here are a few select screenshots that show how my desktop and Mac OS have developed over the years. All of them were taken on the real hardware I owned back when they were my daily driver.

Mac OS 9

I used to dual boot between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.1 on my old iBook. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of Mac OS X 10.1 which I regret, but I was still primarily using Mac OS 9 at the time.

Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

These are the earliest screenshots I have of Mac OS X and show it running on my iBook.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

These screenshots were taken on my second Apple laptop: a 12″ PowerBook G4. As you will see from some of them, I have used Mac OS in English, German and Japanese. You will see a lot of Japanese with Panther and Tiger as I was living in Japan at that time.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Tiger was the last OS I had installed on my PowerBook G4. At this point, I had gotten a large 20″ CRT screen to use with my PowerBook which is why some of the screenshots are so large. I also played around with a program called ShapeShifter which skinned Mac OS X. That phase didn’t last long, however.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I used Mac OS X Leopard on my new aluminum 13″ MacBook. And yes, that’s without the “Pro” moniker. I bought it in 2008 in the window where Apple briefly sold a regular MacBook in an aluminum option before moving it to the “Pro” line and updating the regular line with plastic shells.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so we move on to Lion now. This was the first version of Mac OS X I started consciously taking screenshots of with the purpose of archiving images of my desktop.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Not much changed between Lion and Mountain Lion, but it was one of my favorite releases of Mac OS X all the same.

Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks

When Apple switched to naming releases of Mac OS X after places in California, I started losing track of which release was named what. I always have to look now. Like Mountain Lion, Mavericks was one of my favorites as I actually enjoyed skeuomorphism and was Mavericks was the last version of Mac OS X to feature it.

It also happened to be the OS that came on my new 15″ MacBook Pro that I bought in 2014. It was the first MacBook I owned with a Retina display.

Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite

When Apple first introduced Yosemite, I have to admit that I was severely disappointed by the new design. It was boring compared to the previous designs and reminded me too much of the Windows 8 Metro style which I didn’t like.

Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan

Like Snow Leopard was to Leopard, El Capitan was primarily a stabilization release of Mac OS X. It was also the last release under the “Mac OS X” branding. It was a this time that I got my first 4k monitor as well.

macOS 10.12 Sierra

Not much changed in terms of visuals between Yosemite and Big Sur, but it did introduce the “macOS” branding.

macOS 10.13 High Sierra

High Sierra was another stabilization and maintenance release. I still took screenshots, but there isn’t much new to see here either.

macOS 10.14 Mojave

Mojave brought about the biggest UI change since Yosemite: full dark mode. I was always a fan of dark mode and was very excited for this release because of it. It also included the blue ink wallpaper seen below that I have used on every computer (even Linux and Windows) since.

macOS 10.15 Catalina

This was the last release before another major UI update. Otherwise, not much else to say about it in terms of looks.

macOS 11 Big Sur

There are lots of big changes with this release. Not only was Apple Silicon introduced making Big Sur the first version to support it, but the UI was completely overhauled. Apple also dropped the 10.x version names after nearly 20 years.

macOS 12 Monterey

Monterey marked the end of my ability to update the old 15″ MacBook I had purchased in 2014. I haven’t actually bought a new Mac since as I’ve been able to purchase the MacBooks I’ve used for work for a steep discount for my employers when getting upgrades for work.

These screenshots were taken on the 2019 15″ MacBook Pro I had for work which was the last generation of the 15″ MacBooks with the butterfly keyboards.

macOS 13 Ventura

As far as visuals go, there isn’t a whole lot different about Ventura. Nonetheless, I have some screenshots. The big difference here is that they were taken on a 2019 16″ MacBook Pro (instead of the 15″ model). When I left my company, I purchased one of their used MacBooks for cheap which I still use. It’s the last generation of Intel-based MacBooks.

macOS 14 Sonoma

Now we’ve finally reached the latest version of macOS: Sonoma. These screenshots were taken yesterday (September 14, 2024) on the same 2019 16″ MacBook Pro. And yes, I finally changed the wallpaper.

Conclusion

Well, that wraps up my archive of over 20 years of screenshots of my personal Macs. I am looking forward to the new release of macOS tomorrow and will, of course, eventually take screenshots of it to add to the archive.

I also have a number of screenshots from old Windows PCs, but I will save that for another post.