From System 7’s Control Panels, through Mac OS X’s System Prefs, then System Preferences. And what happened in Ventura.
Mac OS X
From their origin with an email engine in 1993, to the addition of the more secure Data Protection keychain supporting passkeys and much more.
From the resource forks of Classic apps, to versioned and new-style bundles in 2001, document packages, then the incorporation of signatures and notarization tickets.
Introduced with Mac OS X, logs became a good way to diagnose a Mac’s problems, using Console. Then in 2016 it all changed, and not for the benefit of administrators or users.
From the original Desktop databases linking files to distinctive icons, to the sophistication of QuickLook, how display of thumbnails for files has changed in Mac OS.
Classic Mac OS stored a great deal of structured data in the resource forks of its files. Those were edited using ResEdit, an essential tool for every advanced user.
Although viruses native to the Mac arrived slightly later, by the end of the 1990s there were at least 35. Here’s a brief look at the tools available then.
Managing memory and its problems was an important part of running Classic Mac OS, but everything changed in Mac OS X. Do we still need apps to do that?
Extensions or INITs in Classic Mac OS required Conflict Catcher for their management. But they remain a vulnerability, and can’t be used with full boot security any more.
As Apple was getting its first PowerPC Macs working, two engineers wrote the first native app for them. But in Mac OS X it was replaced with an inferior app.
The Eclectic Light Company 