Installing Mac OS X through macOS 11 shouldn't be a fun watch. But it is!

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Music app on Mac
Music app on Mac (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • You can watch someone install every version of macOS from 2001 on and it's surprisingly fun to do.

Apple's Mac OS X was a big deal way back in 2001 and while it's fair to say that macOS Big Sur is quite different, it's also surprisingly similar in plenty of ways. And now you can see that all of yourself in this time-lapse video of someone installing every version of Mac OS X and macOS to date.

No, that doesn't sound like a fun way to spend five minutes. But if you're old like me and remember some of these installers, you're going to have a whale of a time.

Those of you who don't remember them, take a look anyway. This is how we lived back in the bad old days!

Here's a video of me installing every single macOS from version 10.0 Cheetah to version 11 Big Sur. With the release of macOS Big Sur, it is only fitting to redo this installation project with the newly released OS. This video was achieved using QEMU for the PPC macOS versions (10.0-10.3) and the Intel versions using VMware Fusion (10.4-11).Enjoy this time lapse!

See, told you it was a fun time!

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.