Faux Fur
Apple ‘Unleashed’ Jaguar on August 23, 2002.
August 23, 2002: Apple releases Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar at 10:20 PM (coinciding with 10.2 release version). The third release of Mac OS X (following 10.0 Cheetah & 10.1 Puma), Jaguar was the first version of Mac OS X to use its internal code name in its branding, including on the box art, which featured a beautifully shaggy Garamond X adorned in Jaguar print. Apple's cat branding became infamous in Apple OS releases over the years until Apple inevitably ran out of big cats and shifted its naming strategy in 2013 to California-inspired locales.
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar Box Art. Credit: Apple
Jaguar added features like the Address Book, iChat (Apple Branded AOL IM), Rendezvous networking, Sherlock 3, and improvements to graphics compositing, universal access, and finder improvements. The OS retailed for $129 ($199 for a family pack), although those running Mac OS X 10.1 could upgrade for free (plus $20 shipping and handling). Jaguar required a PowerPC G3 or G4 with 128 MB of RAM to install.
But Back to that shaggy X. As a majority shareholder & one of the three founders of Pixar, Jobs had Pixar generate the faux fur used to adorn Mac OS X Jaguar's box art and included a fur wallpaper with the OS. For the 21st anniversary of Jaguar, I tracked down that fur wallpaper, upscaled, sharpened, and resized it for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Enjoy.
