System 2.0

System 2.0 was released in April 1985. Apple did not update the Macintosh system software until April 1985 -- nearly a full year.

The most significant improvement that came with System 2.0 was speed. Startup time was cut back by means of a 20% acceleration. 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 disk icons no longer had a black shutter; the entire icon is now nearly fully white. (The versions numbers between the Finder and the System were only realigned after three years.)

Menu commands that were removed included Put Back and Close All. New Finder commands included 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, only became practiceable as of System 2.

In list views, icons appeared next files, ending their no-show, leftover from 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.