System 2.0

System 2.0 was released during April 1985, leaving Apple without a Macintosh system software update for nearly a full year since the previous release.

The most significant improvement that came with System 2.0 was speed. Startup time was reduced by 20%. Also, the ImageWriter received a new icon.

Much of the work was done in the Finder; this was evidenced by a leap in the version number from 1.1 to 4.1 (the versions numbers between the Finder and the System were only realigned three years later). The disk icons lost the black shutter in favour of a nearly fully white look.

Finder menu commands that were removed include Put Back and Close All. New Finder commands include New Folder (which finally ended the Empty Folder saga), Print Catalogue, Use MiniFinder and Shut Down.

Dragging a disk icon to the Trash (Wastebasket) to remove it, a long-standing Mac practice, was first implemented in System 2.

In list views, file icons were added next to the text, unlike in the System 1 era.

However, a problem still remained with rebuilding the Desktop. Because HFS was not yet introduced, a desktop rebuild meant that all folders were removed; MFS (which was the filing system used then) did not support nested folders. The result was that all files ended up directly inside the root of the disk.