[analogika]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

I cleaned up my son's Blueberry 350Mhz iMac, running OS 9.1, yesterday and stopped to write off a few letters and play with some of the older graphics programs on it such as Illustrator 9. The contrast with my 2.0 Ghz G5 iMac was striking. The older iMac was quick, responsive, direct and uncluttered.

I wouldn't want to be doing massive PhotoShop files or 3D renderings on it but it was no slouch at everything else.

Provided you never do more than a single thing at a time.

God forbid you listen to music AND download a large file off the internet at the same time - I remember my years on OS 9 as years of lots and lots of waiting for operations to complete. File transfers that would slow your machine to a crawl. Printing that would lock up the entire interface until it was done (either that, or the background printing would manage to BOTH slow your computer down to lunchtime AND take about a week to print a document - unless the background driver quit because the document you were trying to print was too large and exceeded the Print Spoolers allocated memory). If you made the mistake of not leaving Internet Exploder the last-launched app (like, say, you decided you wanted to check e-mail after starting the download - Heavens!, the thought!), it would invariably eat into the next-loaded application's memory and cause the system to crash.

And those were just a couple of the things that WEREN'T curable through INIT/cdev futzing/reordering/renaming.

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

After 6-7 years of OSX it is too easy to forget just how much baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

After 6-7 years of OS X it is too easy to forget just how shitty the bathwater had become since the fledgling days.

The downhill trend started sometime after System 7.1.

I was very glad to have the actual Macintosh concept back with OS X, and even happier when they had it full-time feature-complete in 10.3.

[Appleman]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I'm pretty well convinced that if OS 9 had killed a kitten every time it booted up, there would be guys in here complaining about OS X's lack of kitten-killing behavior.

[jmiddel]

Reading analogika's post brought back unfond memories of the bad old days of OS 9. Unlike 8.5 which was relatively stable, 9 would crash about once to twice a week, usually when using Microcrap stuff. Explorer was the main culprit, but even Word could crash the system. And these were never crashes from which I could reboot, nooo, I had to boot from my second HD, run DiskWarrior which always found grave errors that it needed to fix before I could resume working. In fact I was ready to switch to Linux and had started studying it, when Apple announced it was moving to a Unix based system. OS X rocks, it is solid and when say, Safari crashes, it just vanishes, leaving nothing bad in the wake of its demise. So I started using it from 10.1 on. Regarding the dock, I have it at the tiniest level at which I can identify the icons, and it is so helpful to me, I certainly would not dream of murdering it I have it on the right side so it's out of the way, and takes only a quarter inch of monitor real estate. When it's on the bottom, even small, it does iintrude visually, IMO.

[P]

I love OS X. I love the fact that I have a friendly OS on a machine that I can compile and develop on as easily as I can run Word. I love that the underpinnings are so stable and reliable, and yet Apple is not afraid to update them as necessary - watch launchd, that replaces features that date from Sys V if not before. I love that with this OS, Apple can keep improving the OS without making it less stable.

HOWEVER, this does not mean that rubaiyat is wrong. The UI in 10.0 was a huge step backwards compared to 9.2, and it was only with Exposé that the new system was as efficient as the old one. Even now, a modern G5 or Intel-based Mac feels slower in X than my old G3 in OS 9. This was absolutely not required - Mac OS X Server 1.0 (Rhapsody) featured a classic OS 9 interface on top of the (yet immature) OS X kernel and subsystem, so it was doable. Apple went with an interface that looked new and slick as a marketing exercise and took its sweet time filling in the holes.

[sc_markt]

Originally Posted by ApeInTheShell 

I think your reasons for hating the Dock are childish and proof that you have not spent enough time using the Dock. If you have a large display than there is no reason for your complaint. If you are using a small screen 12" or a smaller resolution (800x600) then I think you have a valid argument going.

I disagree. The dock is not really needed and I hate the fact that it takes up screen space. A infinitely better way to switch between apps was a shareware app called taskmenubar. This app put icons of opened apps in the menubar and it highlighted the icon of the current app you were in. In addition, if you clicked on one of the other icons in the menubar, you got that app. If you double-clicked one of the icons, you got that app AND hide all others. All this power with using just one hand and only using a small part of your screen that is already in use.

I wish the maker of taskmenubar would make a version for OS X.

I've also emailed Apple several times and told them the advantages of taskmenubar and that they should make a menubar dock for OS X that lets you navigate between apps (or navigate and hide between apps) with just one hand.

- Mark

[CharlesS]

The problem with menubar-based solutions is that unless you have a really big screen, apps that have a lot of menus can cover up your extra stuff in the menu, rendering it useless.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by sc_markt 

I disagree. The dock is not really needed and I hate the fact that it takes up screen space. A infinitely better way to switch between apps was a shareware app called taskmenubar. This app put icons of opened apps in the menubar and it highlighted the icon of the current app you were in. In addition, if you clicked on one of the other icons in the menubar, you got that app. If you double-clicked one of the icons, you got that app AND hide all others. All this power with using just one hand and only using a small part of your screen that is already in use.

Actually, the easiest way to switch between open apps is to use Option-Tab. You don't even have to take your hands off the keyboard. I don't like solutions like the old App menu from OS 9 and earlier, as it means I have to take my hands off the keyboard, grab the mouse, etc.

[OwlBoy]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Actually, the easiest way to switch between open apps is to use Option-Tab. You don't even have to take your hands off the keyboard. I don't like solutions like the old App menu from OS 9 and earlier, as it means I have to take my hands off the keyboard, grab the mouse, etc.

Command-Tab

[Appleman]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy 

Command-Tab

Apple-Tab?

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy 

Command-Tab

D'oh! That's what I meant. Switching between OS X, Windows and Linux is confusing me. That aside, the Application menu was/is a hack at best.

[P]

The application menu wasn't that bad. Granted, it could have been better (it didn't accept clicks in the extreme corner) but for a space-limited machine, it was a workable solution. Of course it was a hack, but then application switching was a hack on the old Mac OS. Moving from a menu to something where the icons are always visible trades desktop real estate for a more immediate access to the feature - in this case, switching apps.

Overloading the menubar with appswitching seems like a very bad idea. The right-hand side of the menubar is currently used by menuextras - a bit of an odd turn, since people were hacking in system controls in the right corner of the menubar since System 6 - but very useful. Adding clickable icons into the menubar - a place reserved for menus - breaks the metaphor. As an appswitcher, the Dock works. It's when it tries to do other things that it fails.

[Koralatov]

As a relatively new Mac user, I don't know whether I'm fully qualified to comment on this or not, but I'm going to jump in anyway. Having come from a Windows background (from 3.1 right up to XP), I love the Dock.

I've used Windows for years, and whilst the Start Menu was a definite step forward (as was 95 in general), it was still a poor substitute for having your most common applications immediately accessible without opening the Start Menu. Shortcuts on the desktop are a kludge at best, and a nightmare at worst; when you've got several applications/windows open at once, it renders them totally useless.

The Dock solves the problems that I have with the Start Menu/desktop shortcuts set-up: it's visible all the time (the way I have it set), meaning I can get to my most common applications instantly; I can even jump straight to it with CTRL+F3 if I don't want to take my hands off the keyboard.

Obviously, never having used OS9, I can't comment on the Application Menu, but the Dock is a massive improvement on the last version of Mac OS I used way back in school--which was one of the 7.xs if I remember correctly.

From a new Mac user's viewpoint (albeit a computer-literate one), the Dock is a really friendly, simple way of getting at your applications. From a near-computer-illiterate viewpoint, it's a life-saver. My mum visited me recently, and apart from being amazed by the design of the computer--"It looks like a lamp. Where's the computer part of it?"--she was speeding through launching Safari and iTunes in no time flat.

And if that isn't an endorsement of the Dock, I really don't know what is.