I was an intern at Apple while Mac OS X was in beta. It was <i>so</i> slow at the time they had contests on who could introduce the biggest speed ups. Winner would get a top of the line Mac to develop on.<p>I think it wasn’t until 10.3 where pre-linking was introduced, dramatically speeding everything up.
I have fond memories of waiting in line for this and 10.2. I think I had one of the black powerbooks at the time, but can't remember.<p>Blast from the past!
It's become quaint to see an OS sold in stores at all, but it's especially odd coming from Apple. I just assumed Apple had always taken the "the OS is there to sell the hardware" approach.