Written by
Jenny ZengReleased on March 24, 2001, Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah is the first major official release of the modern Mac operating system for Power PCs. It featured a completely redesigned user interface called Aqua and a new Unix-based architecture. Compared with classic Mac OS 9, it has a more modern design and introduced a few new built-in applications, including Mail, TextEdit, Sherlock, and PDF support.

Despite its age, you may still want to run Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah due to nostalgia or technical research. If you have an original bootable CD of Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah, use it to boot your PowerPC. If not, download the Mac OS X 10.0 ISO or DMG file and then burn the file to a CD to make a bootable CD installer.
Mac OS X 10.0 ISO download
Apple doesn't provide direct downloads for Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah through its official channels, but there are copies uploaded by Mac users or third-party websites. Here are the links to download Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah ISO:
Mac OS X 10.0.3 Cheetah ISO Download (archive.org)
Mac OS X 10.0 ISO Download (macintoshgarden.org)
Mac OS X 10.0.3 ISO Download (macintoshgarden.org)
Note: To download from macintoshgarden.org, open the links in Safari.
You can also get the .toast version:
Mac OS X 10.0.3.toast (macintoshrepository.org)
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Mac OS X 10.0 DMG download
If you need a Mac OS X 10.0 DMG file, you can get it from the following links:
Mac OS X 10.0 DMG Download (macintoshgarden.org)
Mac OS X 10.0 DMG Download (archive.org)
Burn Mac OS X to a CD
With the Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah ISO file, you can burn the installer to a CD using the dd command-line tool.
- Open Terminal.
- Run the command below to check the disk number of your CD.
diskutil list external - Unmount the CD. (e.g., sudo umount /dev/disk2)
sudo umount /dev/disk_number - Create a copy of the Cheetah installer.
dd if=/dev/disk_number of=mydisk.isoReplace disk_number with your CD's disk number and mydisk with the name of the ISO file. If the name has multiple words, use double quotes. For example, dd if=/dev/disk2 of="Mac OS X.iso"
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