[naasking]

> This article predates it, but OS X (particularly after it mutated into iOS) represents probably the biggest source of systems innovation in the two decades after this article

There was almost nothing innovative about OS X, even when it came out. It was just packaged and marketed very well. Objectice-C and NeXTSTEP was a user land improvement over typical C user lands, but that's not saying much.

> OS X was modern for its time

It really wasn't. The Mach "microkernel" was from outdated 80s research. It's bloated, slow and inflexible compared to the state of the art at the time.