Apple has announced that Mac OS X, their forthcoming, next-generation operating system, has gone Golden Master and will be ready to ship on March 24th. There have been daily builds of the OS circulating around Cupertino, and the Web, but it seems as if Apple has decided on a feature set for the initial release. According to Apple:

Apple today announced that Mac OS X, the next generation Macintosh operating system, is complete and the Ògold masterÓ has been released to manufacturing for production. Mac OS X will ship on March 24, 2001, for a suggested retail price of $129 (US). Mac OS X is the worldÕs most advanced operating system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh.

Mac OS X is built upon an incredibly stable, open source, UNIX based foundation called Darwin and features true memory protection, preemptive multi-tasking and symmetric multiprocessing when running on the dual processor Power Mac G4. Mac OS X includes AppleÕs new Quartz 2D graphics engine (based on the Internet-standard Portable Document Format) for stunning graphics and broad font support; OpenGL for spectacular 3D graphics and gaming; and QuickTime for streaming audio and video. Mac OS X also features an entirely new user interface called Aqua. Aqua combines superior ease of use with amazing new functionality such as the Dock, a breakthrough for organizing applications, documents and document windows.

Mac OS X will be available through The Apple Store and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) beginning March 24, 2001. Mac OS X will be preinstalled as the standard operating system on Macintosh computers beginning this summer.

Mac OS X requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on the following Apple products: iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and PowerBook introduced after September 1998.

You can find more information about Mac OS X at the Apple Web site.