The change was pretty much evident if one took a look at pictures of WWDC banners from 2006 and 2007

and compared them to the new 2008 ones featuring both the Mac and iPhone operating systems

This was clearly done to unify the branding since the OS was now running on a wide gamut of devices that included not only desktops and portables but also mobiles and the Apple TV set-top.

The change was also evident in a press release in May referring to the Developers’ Conference.

Altough the title “Apple Executives to Showcase Mac OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone Development Platforms at WWDC 2008 Keynote” still featured a distinction in the following text one could read

This year’s WWDC will showcase two revolutionary development platforms, the ground-breaking innovations of OS X Leopard® and OS X iPhone™, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.

and also

WWDC 2008 will offer over 150 information-rich sessions and labs where Apple engineers will go in-depth on the innovative technologies that power OS X iPhone and OS X Leopard.

On the other hand the footer stating that:

Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications.

had been already Mac-less at least since the 7th July of 2004.

Mac OS 9 had multiple users, Voiceprint password, Keychain, automatic updating, encryption, Internet File Sharing, Internet AppleScript, and Network Browser. Many of these were direct equivalents of Mac OS X features which were concurrently developed or even backported.

The reason was of course to make the Mac OS more powerful and more modern but also to ease the transition to OS X, which at the time was believed to start in less than an year

Image taken from Toastytech.com

The last boxed edition of the “classic” Mac OS line carried a retail price of 99 USD (with a 20USD rebate for customers who owned Mac OS 8.5 or 8.6) and featured new Internet tools such as Sherlock 2, which was lauded by CEO Steve Jobs in the press release.

The updated version of Apple’s search tool was explicitly modified with a plugin system so that the new Sherlock could access search engines, websites, services and even follow auctions, helping the users with information retrieval but also shopping and online commerce.

To launch the operating system Apple Authorized Resellers (among which were chains such as CompUsa, Sears and Fry’s) held throughout the following weekend special Mac OS 9 “Midnight Madness” events, Apple Demo Days and in-store promotions.

It is a good and praiseworthy idea but unfortunately, in the description there are a couple of major inaccuracies which undermine the effort.

In the post it is stated that

On October 17, 1998 Apple released Mac OS 8.5, the first operating system that ran solely on Macintoshes with PowerPC processors. As far as system software upgrades go, this was the end of the line for any Mac built before the Power Macintosh 6100, introduced in March 1994. Earlier Macs ran on some variation of 680×0 processors and were supported mostly via emulation in a PowerPC environment. Emulation works, but it also slows things down. By 1998, Apple decided it just couldn’t support 680X0 emulation for a number of reasons, but chiefly among them was speed.

The Mac OS 8.5 was surely the end of Mac based on the 68k family of processors, but Apple kept on making and selling machines based on this hardware platform long after the release of the Power Mac 6100 in March 1994.

Macs such as the PowerBook 280 and the Quadra/LC 630 were launched during 1994 and even the following year, in the April and August of 1995 Cupertino introduced non-PowerPC models such as The Performa 580 and the PowerBook 190cs.

And those Macs were not “supported mostly via emulation in a PowerPC environment”. It was the way around: Macintoshes based on the PowerPC chips had to use emulation to be compatible with the (operating) System (which was later called Mac OS), which was still full of 68×000 code.

During the late Nineties Apple kept on slowly cleaning up the Mac OS code by “a PowerPC native, multi-threaded Finder” (does this ring a bell?) in Mac OS 8.0 and transitioning away from the old CISC CPUs by first limiting support to 68040 Macs with release 8.1.

Image taken from www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~schaelss/vintage/index.htm

In may of that year a promotional video was released in which Steve Jobs showed off the first Apple Store: in the last part the camera pans on the aisles and we can take a look at the main software offerings from Apple, still a mix of classic product lines and solutions coming from the NeXT acquisition.

From left to right you can see boxes of Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS 9, AppleWorks 6, Final Cut (Pro) 1.2.5, AppleShare IP, AppleCare while in the lower part are Apple Media (blank) CDs and WebObjects 5.

To make the point more clear here are more examples, taken from a very wide spectrum of Apple products, strategies and eras.

How come, you ask? Well, for nearly a decade Hoddie has played a crucial role in defining, building and promoting Infinite Loop’s multimedia QuickTime technology. He has held the position of “Distinguished Engineer and Senior QuickTime Architect”, leading the technical and strategic developments of Apple’s multimedia software and also helping to establish several industry standards including ISO’s MPEG-4.

A small but significant clue of his involvemente in Quick Time development can be seen on the content provided on old Macintosh System software. Hoddie, who holds six U.S. Patents in the area of digital media, in the Nineties also transcribed the Bach, Beethoven and Mozart compositions included as midi files (and playable with QuickTime instruments) on the Mac OS 7.5 CD.