In many ways OS X wasn't that old when the move to Intel came, and was still working out it's rough edges in 2006. By older Mac OS standards it had been around long enough. The gap between OS7-OS8 was a 6 years, so they could have done it, but Mac OS 10 had apparently been running on Intel test machines since it was first developed, so I guess Steve didn't want to. I recall Steve saying Mac OS 10 had been designed to last 10-15 years, but a lot of under the hood stuff has changed since then. OS9 came along in 1999 with the G4 systems, and late G4 and early G5 systems in 2001 came with OSX. Hard to believe it has been around that long. Nearly 20 years was a long run for OS 10, it was time for a shift in numbers.
RIP Mac OS 10, March 2001-Fall 2020.
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