Which is the Best MAC OS X till date?

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Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah

Mac OS X version 10.0, code named “Cheetah”, was the first major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. Mac OS X v10.0 was released on March 24, 2001 for a price of US$129. It superseded the Mac OS X Public Beta and preceded Mac OS X v10.1.

Mac OS X v10.0 was a radical departure from the previous “classic” Macintosh operating system and was Apple’s long awaited answer to the call for a next generation Macintosh operating system. It introduced a brand new code base completely separate from Mac OS 9's, as well as all previous Apple operating systems. Mac OS X introduced the new Darwin Unix-like core and a totally new system of memory management. It proved to be a rocky start to the Mac OS X line, plagued with missing features and performance issues, although it was praised for being a good start to an operating system still in its infancy, in terms of completeness and overall operating system stability

Mac OS X 10.1 Puma

Mac OS X version 10.1, code named “Puma”, was the second major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.0 and preceded Mac OS X v10.2. Version 10.1 was released on September 25, 2001 as a 'free update' to version 10.0. Starting with version 10.1.2, Apple made Mac OS X the default operating system on new Macs.

The operating system was handed out for no charge by Apple employees after Steve Jobs' keynote speech at the Seybold publishing conference in San Francisco. It was subsequently distributed to Macintosh users on October 25, 2001 at Apple Stores and other retail stores that carried Apple products. The operating system was better received than Mac OS X version 10.0, although critics claimed that the operating system was still lacking features and was plagued with bugs.

Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

Mac OS X version 10.2 “Jaguar” was the third major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.1 code name Puma and preceded Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther”. The operating system was initially available on 23 August 2002 for a price of US$79, or at a price of US$119 dollars for Apple’s new 'family pack', which allowed five installations on separate computers in one household. The operating system was generally well received by Macintosh users as a large step forward in the areas of stability, general speed enhancements, and the lineup of both graphical and command line applications available; however, many critics still claimed that significant user interface speed issues existed and that the operating system was still immature and awkward to use. Jaguar was the first Mac OS X release to publicly use its code name in marketing and advertisements. Today Mac OS X products continue the tradition, and Apple officially refers to their operating systems by their code names

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” was the fourth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X v10.2 “Jaguar” and preceded Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger”. Apple released Panther on October 24, 2003. The cost from Apple was US$99 for a single-user license and US$129 for a Family Pack (5-computer, 1-household) license.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” was the fifth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Tiger was released to the public on 29 April 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther”, which was released 18 months earlier. Tiger was superseded by Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” on 26 October 2007, after 30 months, making Mac OS X v10.4 the longest running version of Mac OS X. Some of the new features include a fast searching system called Spotlight, a new version of the Safari web browser, Dashboard, a new ‘Unified’ theme, and improved support for 64-bit addressing on Power Mac G5s.

Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” was included with all new Macintosh computers, and was also available as an upgrade for existing Mac OS X users, or users of supported pre-Mac OS X systems. The server edition, Mac OS X Server 10.4, was also available for some Macintosh product lines. Tiger is also the first version of any released Apple operating system to work on Apple-Intel architecture machines (Apple machines using x86 processors). The Apple TV, as released in March 2007, ships with a customized version of Mac OS X v10.4 branded "Apple TV OS" that replaces the usual graphical user interface with an updated version of Front Row.

Six weeks after its official release, Apple had delivered 2 million copies of Tiger, representing 16 % of all Mac OS X users. Apple claimed that Tiger was the most successful Apple OS release in the company’s history. At the World Wide Developers Conference on June 11, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that out of the 22 million Mac OS X users, more than 67 % were using Tiger. Tiger was supported until November 2007 because of the release of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 , after which only security-related updates to Tiger were produced.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Mac OS X version 10.5 "Leopard" is the sixth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers, and the successor to Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger". Leopard was released on 26 October 2007, and is available in two variants: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a server version, Mac OS X Server. Apple offers a reduced-cost upgrade to people who purchased new Apple computers after 1 October 2007 that do not already have Mac OS X v10.5 pre-installed or a Leopard upgrade DVD included. Steve Jobs stated at Macworld 2008 that over 20% of Macs use Leopard as their operating system. Leopard will be superseded by Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard".

According to Apple, Leopard contains over 300 changes and enhancements, covering core operating system components as well as included applications and developer tools. Leopard introduces a significantly revised desktop, with a redesigned Dock, Stacks, a semitransparent menu bar, and an updated Finder that incorporates the Cover Flow visual navigation interface first seen in iTunes. Other notable features include support for writing 64-bit graphical user interface applications, an automated backup utility called Time Machine, support for Spotlight searches across multiple machines, and the inclusion of Front Row and Photo Booth, which were previously included with only some Mac models.

Apple missed Mac OS X v10.5’s release time frame as originally announced by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs. When first discussed in June 2005, Jobs had stated that Apple intended to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to Spring 2007; however on 12 April 2007, Apple issued a statement that its release would be delayed until October 2007 because of the development of the iPhone.

Leopard ships with two firewall engines: the original BSD IPFW, which was present in earlier releases of Mac OS X, and the new Leopard Application Layer Firewall. Unlike IPFW, which intercepts and filters IP datagrams before the kernel performs significant processing, the Application Layer Firewall operates at the socket layer, bound to individual processes. The Application Layer Firewall can therefore make filtering decisions on a per-application basis. Of the two-firewall engines, only the Application Layer Firewall is fully exposed in the Leopard user interface. The new firewall offers less control over individual packet decisions (users can decide to allow or deny connections system wide or to individual applications, but must use IPFW to set fine-grained TCP/IP header level policies). It also makes several policy exceptions for system processes: neither mDNSResponder nor programs running with superuser privileges are filtered