[P]

OS<10 has a terrible reputation, but it wasn't entirely deserved. There was a limited number of things that really hurt it in a limited period around 7.5, though:

1) The exception handling, where certain errors were captured and caused a crash to desktop rather than a hang, was broken on PPC from the first release (7.1.2, I think) to 7.6.1. This meant that common, relatively benign errors 1, 2 and 3 in particular became the unrecoverable error 11. As the buggy Modern Memory Manager kept throwing these errors, we crashed. A lot.
2) After System 7 made installation of extensions and control panels easier, they flourished as everyone had to modify their system. That was a lot unknown code running around in the system heap, causing crashes.
3) Certain hardware launches, namely the Performa 5200/5300/6200/6300 and the PCI Powermacs, happened before the OS was ready. Updates arrived, but this was before everyone had Internet, so they didn't get out to users.
4) Some common libraries, both Apple and third party, had terrible bugs that didn't get noticed because of the other noise in the system.

This was paired with MS advertising how much better Win 95 was than Win 3.1 and how it had "protected memory" and "preemptive multitasking". It very rarely did, in effect (Win 95 only enabled preemptive multitasking if ONLY Win32 apps were running - as soon as a Win16 app was started, that function was disabled until reboot. In an ironic twist of fate, Win 98 fixed this but MS couldn't advertise the function without admitting their shading of the truth three years earlier) but it got people thinking about how the OS should prevent crashes.

I've said before that my old LC III with System 7.1 was the most stable machine I ever had. That might not be objectively true anymore, as I've yet to see a non-hardware related crash on this machine and it's a year old now, but it certainly felt that way. 8.6 was also a very good OS that really felt like all the pieces came together. 7.5.anything was terrible. 8.0 was OK but had issues with the themes. 8.1 worked fine if you left HFS+ off, but if you turned it on you could no longer boot with the shift key down or the Finder could no longer show filenames with chars outside plain ASCII, a big problem when everything had a ™ or a ƒ or a © in the filename. 8.5 was a really good one (the first release to focus on speed), and 8.6 fixed its bugs. 9.1 was also really good, and then it was OS X for me.

[boy8cookie]

I used 9.2.2 for a long while, in-fact I still have an iMac running it. Never sleeps.

[Lateralus]

In my experience, OS 9 was a perfect little princess so long as you didn't whore up on extensions.

I still love it. It has charms OS X has never been able to replicate. And, to me, Platinum with font smoothing represents the best UI I've ever used.

[sek929]

It certainly was very snappy, snappy freezing and all.

I had learned my mistakes with extensions in the OS8 era, by OS9 I ran a lot of programs but little to no extraneous extensions. Still locked up all the time

I loved the Classic Mac OS back in the day, but I hold no nostalgia for that era of computing. Current uptime of my old G4 sitting upstairs is approaching 90 days running 10.4, I'd be lucky to keep 9 running for 3 days without a restart.

[Don Pickett]

One, because the industry in which I make my money is 99% Mac-based. No reason to run Windows.

Two, because my Macs last forever: I get, at a minimum, five active years out of a purchase. My G5 is still under my desk, next to the new Mac Pro. As a matter of fact, since 1989, I have owned a grand total of five Macs. They just last.

Three, in 25+ years of using computers I've used a frightening number of OSes, from the original Apples, Ataris and TRS-80s through all of the various versions of the Mac OS, NeXTStep, most of the DOSes, Windows since the early 1990s, and various UNIXes and Linuxes. And probably some I've forgotten. And, out of all of those, and out of all the OSes out there today, OS X is the one I find to be, by far, the best combination of power, ease of use and speed.

I am, matter of fact, still a little amazed at what my friends who run Linux or Windows consider to be normal maintenance.

[Andy8]

Because I can™

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Two, because my Macs last forever: I get, at a minimum, five active years out of a purchase. My G5 is still under my desk, next to the new Mac Pro. As a matter of fact, since 1989, I have owned a grand total of five Macs. They just last.

My G3 iBook died after 1 year and a few months. It was out of warranty, but then months later they had the recall. I had complained and complained to no avail prior to that, but Apple stood firm and claimed my problem was very unusual, not any problem due to any defect in the iBook.

My G5 iMac had fried FW port and video in the first year. Then it died in the 3rd year.

My Core Duo MacBook had to get the top case replaced.

And now, I'm taking in my Core i7 iMac because of random spinups of the fan, when I'm just surfing, in a room which is 18 degrees C.

My TiBook did relatively OK, although I had to get the power adapter replaced during the first few months.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Eug 

18 degrees C

Which would be 64.4 degrees F, incase anybody is wondering.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by Eug 

My G3 iBook died after 1 year and a few months. It was out of warranty, but then months later they had the recall. I had complained and complained to no avail prior to that, but Apple stood firm and claimed my problem was very unusual, not any problem due to any defect in the iBook.

My G5 iMac had fried FW port and video in the first year. Then it died in the 3rd year.

My Core Duo MacBook had to get the top case replaced.

And now, I'm taking in my Core i7 iMac because of random spinups of the fan, when I'm just surfing, in a room which is 18 degrees C.

My TiBook did relatively OK, although I had to get the power adapter replaced during the first few months.

Stop buying Macs, it's definitely not meant to be (in your case). I have a friend that sounds a lot like you - he loves Macs, but I've yet to see any of his machines last more than 2 years. They just give up the ghost. And before they do, things stop working - wireless keyboards stop recognizing the host, iPhones stop syncing properly, iTunes loses the library... it's incredible. My sympathies.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

Which would be 64.4 degrees F, incase anybody is wondering.

Look at meeeeeeeeee, I can use a converter program! I'm so fancy and helpful! My name Lateralus and I like DS9! La-dee-da!

But hey, at least you're not osiris

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Look at meeeeeeeeee, I can use a converter program! I'm so fancy and helpful! My name Lateralus and I like DS9! La-dee-da!

But hey, at least you're not osiris

I was just trying to spoon feed the lazy.

[The Final Dakar]

You're only encouraging canadiens to keep using Celsius.

[Lateralus]

I'm still shocked that they have their own money.

[osiris]

They do that just to feel good about themselves.

[Eug]

Water freezes at 0, and boils at 100, and there are 1000 m per km. Fancy that, it actually makes sense.

P.S. Thinking back I was wrong about the G5 iMac. The G5 iMac had a whole bunch of stuck pixels, so they immediately replaced the screen. I think I counted 26 (!) stuck pixels, although some of them were very faint, with only about 4 or 5 really obvious ones. Then it died after three years.

It was my Core 2 Duo iMac that had the Firewire port die and the GPU issues.

I talked to the repair guy (who services both Macs and PCs) and FWIW he seemed to think the failure rate for consumer Macs and PCs are in the same ballpark, but that's the impression of only one guy in the trenches.

BTW, just for interest's sake, this is why my Core i7's fan is spinning up:





P pointed out that the GPU and optical drive share the same fan, but it's actually the GPU temp sensor that seems to be acting up.

I lied about the 18C. It seems to be 19C according to the iMac. That would be 66.2F.

[osiris]

I still think it's a personal issue. What did you do to Apple? Did you speak of Steve in an unkind manner?

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by osiris 

They do that just to feel good about themselves.

We do that be looking at your election results.
We had a Tea Party representative giving an interview on the CBC this morning. These people are for real?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Water freezes at 0, and boils at 100. Fancy that, it actually makes sense.

It's still arbitrary in that it being cold enough to freeze water outside has no real effect on how I dress versus it being 4º or -4º. Personally, I prefer Fahrenheit's finer granularity .

Nothing against the rest of metric, though.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by osiris 

I still think it's a personal issue. What did you do to Apple? Did you speak of Steve in an unkind manner?

He doesn't like the iPad. Automatic death sentence.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

We do that be looking at your election results.
We had a Tea Party representative giving an interview on the CBC this morning. These people are for real?

yeah, our elections. It can be entertaining, I assure you.
+ yes, the Tea Party is for real. Positively speaking, I think they will put some fire under the dems.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by osiris 

yeah, our elections. It can be entertaining, I assure you.
+ yes, the Tea Party is for real. Positively speaking, I think they will put some fire under the dems.

I don't think so. Obama's whole campaign was based on "I'm going to change things and shake them up" just like the Tea Party. A lot of them are newbies. The same thing that happened to Obama will happen to them too. The system is too entrenched to change, in either direction. A far higher number of seats in both chambers than what they got last night is needed to even begin to change things

[osiris]

Originally Posted by Person Man 

I don't think so. Obama's whole campaign was based on "I'm going to change things and shake them up" just like the Tea Party. A lot of them are newbies. The same thing that happened to Obama will happen to them too. The system is too entrenched to change, in either direction. A far higher number of seats in both chambers than what they got last night is needed to even begin to change things

this belongs in the PL. But I agree with you to a point.

[The Final Dakar]

This post is also in silver.

[osiris]

This one is in purple!

[Lateralus]

And I'm pretty in pink!

[The Final Dakar]

/awkward

[P]

Originally Posted by Eug 

P pointed out that the GPU and optical drive share the same fan, but it's actually the GPU temp sensor that seems to be acting up.

That is the one of the two sensors in the graphics card that is flaky, yes. 127C is the highest it can report. Probably the repair guy just needs to replace that MXM card, which is an easy enough operation.

[finboy]

Originally Posted by P 

I've said before that my old LC III with System 7.1 was the most stable machine I ever had.

Come to think of it, that was the system I used the most and longest when I was in grad school - right after someone gave me a couple of paper boxes full of software and a PowerBook 100 with 7.0.1 (as a portable). Stable as hell - even with an accelerator board.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

It's still arbitrary in that it being cold enough to freeze water outside has no real effect on how I dress versus it being 4º or -4º. Personally, I prefer Fahrenheit's finer granularity.

Wimp. 4ºC is still fall weather for me, so I generally dress in fall clothes at that temp if I'm not going to be out too long. However, I do admit I wimp out too at -4ºC and dress more warmly.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Wimp. 4ºC is still fall weather for me, so I generally dress in fall clothes at that temp if I'm not going to be out too long. However, I do admit I wimp out too at -4ºC and dress more warmly.

It's all moot because Fall is retarded season anyway. It's like an infomercial for Winter.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

It's all moot because Fall is retarded season anyway. It's like an infomercial for Winter.

Well said.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

It's all moot because Fall is retarded season anyway. It's like an infomercial for Winter.

Yeah, but Fall is pretty. It's like the Shake Weight of infomercials.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Yeah, but Fall is pretty.

No it's not. Unless you like watching trees litter in ugly colors.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

It's all moot because Fall is retarded season anyway. It's like an infomercial for Winter.

Saying it nicely doesn't make it true.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

It's all moot because Fall is retarded season anyway. It's like an infomercial for Winter.

Booo. Fall is the prettiest season up here in Ontario.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Eug 

My G3 iBook died after 1 year and a few months. It was out of warranty, but then months later they had the recall. I had complained and complained to no avail prior to that, but Apple stood firm and claimed my problem was very unusual, not any problem due to any defect in the iBook.

My G5 iMac had fried FW port and video in the first year. Then it died in the 3rd year.

My Core Duo MacBook had to get the top case replaced.

And now, I'm taking in my Core i7 iMac because of random spinups of the fan, when I'm just surfing, in a room which is 18 degrees C.

My TiBook did relatively OK, although I had to get the power adapter replaced during the first few months.

Eug, how many times do we have to tell you: just because you can surf the web in the shower doesn't mean you should surf the web in the shower.

[Eug]

Yeah, I should really stop taking my 27" iMac into the shower. It takes up too much room.

Maybe I should just get a cheap Win laptop for this purpose.