[xi_hyperon]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

I think I have Copland sitting around on a Zip disk someplace. My friend used to worked at Apple and he got me a couple copies of Copland when they were testing it. That was fun loading it on my Performa.

Didn't Copland, in its stage of development (before it was scrapped), require two computers to boot up all the components? That sounds crazy, but I remember reading that somewhere a while back.

[Eug]

What about BeOS?!?

BTW, I installed Be on my PC, and didn't see what the fuss was all about. It looked like ass, and it's not as if you could actually do anything with it.

I couldn't assess stability... because like I said you couldn't actually do anything with it. It's easy to be stable if you're not doing anything.

Originally Posted by sek929 

Yup, or Toast locking up the entire machine as my 2X Lacie USB CD-RW drive burned a CD.

Even with the public beta of X I felt like I was getting more done since many apps could run at once.

I also agree with Dakar that my stability stemmed from being able to almost know what would freeze my Mac and avoiding certain series of steps.

Remember folks, these were the days of installing Win 98 every couple of months when it crashed and then came back with a BSOD. Only the über-nerds were able to get any sort of usability of of their PCs, while the rest were happy with doing one task at a time in OS9.

Hell, for me, would be a choice of two computers. A Dell with ME or a Compaq with 95.

The sad part was that although Windows 98 was not a particularly stable OS, it was way more stable than OS 9, unless you knew EXACTLY what you were doing in OS 9. For the average user though, Windows 98 was way more stable.

P.S. I never had to install Win 98 every few months, so I'm not sure what you're on about there.

P.P.S. And this is completely ignoring Windows NT, which was popular in work settings.

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

Why would you want to get over it.

I have a G4 Cube just to run OS9

I have a G4 Cube, and I'm happy to say I was able to flash update its firmware from OS X for a G4 CPU upgrade. Sweet! No more need for OS 9 pain.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Remember folks, these were the days of installing Win 98 every couple of months when it crashed and then came back with a BSOD. Only the über-nerds were able to get any sort of usability of of their PCs, while the rest were happy with doing one task at a time in OS9.

OS 9 seemed to quit on me every few months actually. Windows 98 might quit sometimes too, but at least it had some sort of protected memory. You could pretty safely force quit stuff on Win98.

[alex_kac]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

I think I have Copland sitting around on a Zip disk someplace. My friend used to worked at Apple and he got me a couple copies of Copland when they were testing it. That was fun loading it on my Performa.

Yeah, I remember when I worked at Apple and we had Copland demonstrated to us. It was awesome. Except that it crashed every 15 minutes. And required two computers to run (one being a hardware debugger).

[ryaxnb]

Well, OS 9 is developmentally stuck in the early nineties. That's what makes it so brilliant. The computer usage hadn't change between '91 and '00 (when 9 came out) to a point that OS 9 couldn't keep up with the best of them. Basically, a typical iMac equipped with OS 9 in '00:
* Could Make Movies (iMovie)
* Could Play Tunes (Audion)
* Could browse the web well (IE 5 for Mac was more standards compliant and easier than IE 5.5 for windows, and Mozilla was not out yet)
* Could Write and Edit Spreadsheets easily (Appleworks 5)
* Would crash frequently (annoying)
* Could use IM (AIM)
* Could use Page Layout (PageMaker)
* Could browse files with incredible ease (Finder)
* Could be easily configured and extended (Control Panel, Extensions, Extensions Manager)
* Had a nice array of Fonts
* Had nice font smoothing
* Had capable unique programs (iMovie, AppleWorks, iCab, AppleScript, QuicKeys, etc.)
* And more.

Compare to Windows 98SE:
* Blatant advertising
* Preference for all MS stuff
* Frequently crashed (annoying; so did OS 9)
* IE 5.01 was less standards-compliant, but was an adequate web browser
* Works makes a really lousy spreadsheet and word processor, so most used Word and Excel, even though it was slow, complex, and expensive.
* Movie Maker? What Movie Maker?
* WMP 7 and Musicmatch were both sucky. Winamp was limited and hard to use.
* Windows Explorer's cumbersome utilities sucked.
* Useless "IE Integration"
* Most expansions added spyware everywhere (gah! get it off!)

The problem with OS 9 is two years after it came out, XP came out and blew it out of the water. XP was still hard to use, but it was better, and it had a Movie Maker and better music player now. Furthermore, it didn't crash! This blew most people away at the time; except a 2000 machine at work, no computer just didn't crash twice a day before! OS 9 did, 98 did, 98SE did, OS 8 did, and 95 did. Me crashed almost every hour (so did OS 9 or 98 on a bad day, with lots of expansions installed, running Netscape.) XP crashed about once a week or less. A month later OS X 10.1 came out and it crashed about once a month, but there was no software for it. Nevertheless, late 2001 was OS 9's swan song. iMovie 2 came out and iTunes 2, and Office 2001. Photoshop 7, etc. After that, starting in late 2002, most development was on OS X, but as early as Janurary 2002, Office and IE 5 ran on OS X, and everything on XP. That meant OS 9 was doomed. By 2005, Nobody developed for OS 9 anymore. This is the state you see it in today - torn, tattered, ripped almost to pieces, but still almost wearable. And it's still some people's favorite shirt.

[ryaxnb]

[please delete this] test

[ryaxnb]

I'm on 9.0 which might explain some of the issues I'm facing, but that still doesn't change the fact that it is a very primitive operating system, even judging it from the standards of the time. I also don't really find it much faster in normal use than OSX. Perhaps my slightly haxx0red install has something to do with it being slow, though.

My guess is it's a very haxx0red install. OS 9 let's you hack it as much as you want; such is the beauty of no memory protection. Windows 98se (which I absolutely love using for comparison, mostly cause I have personal experience with it; I used to run it on my main computer), well, doesn't. A non-hacked OS 9 install crashes twice a day; less if you use IE and Netscape 4 less, More if you constantly are using IE 5 (that thing seems to want to lock up every 30 minutes!)
A Windows 98 install with enough third-party programs to make it usable (Mozilla/Netscape, Word/OpenOffice, Winamp, Photoshop, etc.) crashes about as much as OS 9 with just non-hacking programs (e.g. Word, AppleWorks, Audion, Photoshop, PageMaker, etc.) Add in third-party extensions, and OS 9 crashes every hour practically.
The best web browsers to make OS 9 crash very little are iCab 2.9.9, Mozilla 1.2, WaMCom 1.3, and anything below version 4 of netscape. v. 4 of Netscape crashes all the time, although in its day it crashed less, it just is really finicky with today's web. IE 5 for Mac is also very finicky. IE 4.5 for Mac adds a ton of weird extensions that make everything crash.

Of course, Word 2001, Appleworks 6, PageMaker, and Photoshop, OS 9 Mainstays, crash rarely. If they do, you can sometimes force quit them. You can almost never force quit IE 5; too many shared libraries.

[ryaxnb]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Here's a few things off the top of my head:

1. I have a soft spot in my heart for System 6

2. System 7 is where the OS started getting slower, more bloated, and more crashy

3. System 7 broke tons of existing software

4. System 7 was where we started moving toward software always using installers instead of drag-and-drop installs

5. System 7.5.x was horrible - Type 11 errors all the frigging time, networking often notworking, lots of other weird stuff happening randomly. The second most unstable OS ever made, after Windows ME (7.1 was okay, I'll admit, although 7.0.x was also pretty damn buggy).

6. System 7.5.x was where Apple stopped innovating and started just buying shareware apps, sticking them in the OS, and calling them new features

7. System 7.x is where Apple started realizing they needed to rewrite the OS, and started spending development resources on the doomed projects of Pink and Copland, leaving the classic OS in "just patch it up with duct tape" mode

8. System 7 is the one that got minimally ported to the PowerPC, leaving much of the OS running in emulation and thus performing very poorly considering the hardware it was running on

9. It introduced virtual memory, yes. But that virtual memory scheme was half-assed and tended to slow the machine to a crawl, with the result being that most users turned it off

10. It was during the System 7 era that legions of apparently dissatisfied users switched over to Windows 95.

Virtually all of those things that are valid complaints happened during the era of 7.5, not 7.0. 7.0.1 was fairly stable once you installed the tune-up and such. It did break many programs, but last I recall so did OS X, and Windows 2000, and both those releases are good (at least, 2000 is good for windows :-D ). It also introduced a half-assed virtual memory system, which turned out to be essential on ppc (just set it to a meg above, remember?) and also allowed it to run on 4MB systems ( even if not well). Without VM it wouldn't be capable of running on 4MBs at all. The Windows 95 complaint happened during 7.5, which was a crappy release. System 7 introduced tons of useful features to developers and users alike.

A little 7.5 History:
Originally 7.5.0 was not to be the "shareware bundle" release. It was to be the "Networking and Graphics And Scripting" release, with it's trio of major features, various networking bits, improved printing, and here are the 3 new features:
* AppleScript. This was the one good one, but never got used during 7.5's lifetime.
* PowerTalk. Well, kind of neat, but proprietary. 7.5-specific. And Apple fell in to the trap of promising better things later, that wouldn't be compatible. Oops.
* QuickDraw GX: Again, proprietary, but very handy. Never got used.

It also had a shareware bundle as a bonus. Had all these features been extremely popular, everyone would be using PowerTalk LANS, with MacTCP internet bridges, on AAUI ethernet, sending GX printer files over the network today.It didn't happen (duh) and 7.5 became a useless, buggy mess. 7.5.5 was not buggy, but, aside from Open Transport, was still useless. 7.6.1 was not buggy either, but 7.6 was. And bluets and granola bars caused several system 7.6.1 users to pull their hair out. :-D.

[ryaxnb]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

I remember the pre OS X (or should that be pre-MacIntel) days when Mac users were the dimmest of dimwits and created whole websites and wrote massive articles about how co-operative multitasking was superior to pre-emptive multitasking

Windows 95 had preemptive multitasking -- that broke when any program called a 16-bit part, which was about 1/3rd of the time they ran. Very finicky. Today's Windows 95 systems skewer memory because they always are pure 32-bit. Back in the day, people used DOS Drivers, Win3.1 programs, DOS games, etc. They thrashed their Win95 boxes. Ever tried running 95 with a 16-bit hard disk driver? Did you even know it could? Probably not.

Whenever any DOS Driver, 16-bit game, or Win3.1 program was run, Windows 95 lost portions of its memory protection. On a system running Word 6, with a DOS sound driver and DOS ZIP drive driver, and DOS CDROM driver, and DOS utilities, and running Duke Nukem 2 in a fullscreen DOS session, Windows 95 was basically 16-bit.

By contrast, on a system running Firefox, with all 32-bit drivers, empty config.sys file, empty autoexec.bat file, and no DOS programs running, Windows 95 was pure and very little was 16-bit (GDI mostly).

[ryaxnb]

Originally Posted by goMac 

But extensions were fun. They put pretty pictures on your startup screen.

I'm the extension type. I use APE. I love making modifications. And if my web browser has a save state function (e.g. Omniweb, Firefox) I don't care if I lose my browser window every now and then.

Extensions did fun things. The bad type crashed right and left (After Dark.) The good type merely crashed after you changed extension setup or system version (Quickeys.)

[MacosNerd]

I was never a fan of extensions. I only loaded what I needed to get my job done. I mean at times, I had to figure out that I needed to load extension B before extension C and of I loaded extension A then I couldn't load extension D.

No, I quickly grew tired of playing that game and so I was careful of what was loaded. I was happy to see that apple threw out that whole extension thing with OSX, though they now have KEXTs but I think so far things have not gotten out of hand with them

[Eug]

Originally Posted by ryaxnb 

The problem with OS 9 is two years after it came out, XP came out and blew it out of the water. XP was still hard to use, but it was better, and it had a Movie Maker and better music player now. Furthermore, it didn't crash!

Of course, Windows NT 4 (July '96) came out long before OS 9 (Oct. '99), and Windows 2000 (Feb. 2000) shortly afterwards.

Lots of people had already defected to Windows NT before OS 9 even streeted. However, the problem with NT was that it was kind of inappropriate for home use, so NT was more a workplace OS. Windows 2000 changed all that for many average users, and made OS 9 seem 5 years out of date... which it was. And XP in many ways is just 2000 with a new skin and few upgrades. It's no surprise that Windows XP is version 5.1... with 2000 being 5.0.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ryaxnb 

Virtually all of those things that are valid complaints happened during the era of 7.5, not 7.0.

It's true that some of them refer to 7.5.x... I am taking "System 7" to encompass all of 7.0 through 7.6.1.

7.0.1 was fairly stable once you installed the tune-up and such.

My recollection is that it was buggy until 7.1.

It did break many programs, but last I recall so did OS X, and Windows 2000, and both those releases are good (at least, 2000 is good for windows :-D ).

And those two piss me off as well, although OS X has enough good things about it for me to begrudgingly accept that I have to have a fleet of old Mac emulators set up in order to do anything (something that wasn't even possible back in the System 7 era).

It also introduced a half-assed virtual memory system, which turned out to be essential on ppc (just set it to a meg above, remember?) and also allowed it to run on 4MB systems ( even if not well). Without VM it wouldn't be capable of running on 4MBs at all.

I remember seeing this all the time:

"My Mac is running really slowly! What can I do?"

"Have you tried turning virtual memory off?"

"Hey, that fixed it!"

* AppleScript. This was the one good one, but never got used during 7.5's lifetime.

I'm pretty sure I remember using AppleScript on System 7.1. It was actually originally a feature of System 7 Pro (not 7.5), but it must have been released in extension form or something, because I do remember it getting on my 7.1 system somehow or other. Probably some third-party app installed the extension (might have been HyperCard or something). I just know I had it.

edit: here we go. According to this page, what you needed to get started with AppleScript was "System 7.1 or later with the AppleScript Runtime Kit installed."

AppleScript: Introduction

* PowerTalk. Well, kind of neat, but proprietary. 7.5-specific. And Apple fell in to the trap of promising better things later, that wouldn't be compatible. Oops.

PowerTalk was a feature of System 7 Pro, not 7.5. And did one person ever use it?

* QuickDraw GX: Again, proprietary, but very handy. Never got used.

This one might legitimately be a 7.5 feature... but again, it was useless. The only effect I remember GX ever having was causing novice users to scratch their heads at why their printer driver wouldn't show up in the Chooser, causing them not to be able to print. The reason was that QuickDraw GX was in the Extensions folder, and their printer driver wasn't GX. Trashing QDGX and restarting allowed them to print.

7.5.5 was not buggy

Yes, it was.

7.6.1 was not buggy either, but 7.6 was.

The thing about 7.6/7.6.1 was that it was basically a bug-fix release... and they charged you for it! 7.6.1 was indeed less buggy than 7.5.5, but what new features did it have to justify the price? A new UI for the Extensions Manager... and a more streamlined installer for the OS. The sad thing was that 7.5.5 was so crap that the 7.6.1 upgrade was actually kind of worth it, just to get a system that wasn't bombing every 5 minutes.

[ryaxnb]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Of course, Windows NT 4 (July '96) came out long before OS 9 (Oct. '99), and Windows 2000 (Feb. 2000) shortly afterwards.

Lots of people had already defected to Windows NT before OS 9 even streeted. However, the problem with NT was that it was kind of inappropriate for home use, so NT was more a workplace OS. Windows 2000 changed all that for many average users, and made OS 9 seem 5 years out of date... which it was. And XP in many ways is just 2000 with a new skin and few upgrades. It's no surprise that Windows XP is version 5.1... with 2000 being 5.0.

I know. 2000 is often quoted as being just a minor ways back from XP; but to a consumer, what's new in XP is major:

* Costs less ($99 upgrade, not $199-299.)
* Compatibility with way more old devices - new devices generally have drivers for 2000, but to John Doe in 2001, his 1998 printer, 1997 scanner, and 1999 graphics card just had to be supported
* Compatibility with many older programs - 2000's compatibility with anything written for 3.1 was poor, but it's compatibility with programs written expressly for 95/98 (i.e. not also even considering NT 4) was perhaps worse. Many Games and weird utilities worked better in XP, with a complex compatibility mode. (the little box is actually just the beginning - MS programmed hundreds of compatibility settings into XP.)
* Time: Utilities in the 98 land were being replaced with utilities for the 2000 land by the time XP came out. When 2000 came out utilities for it were scant, as were drivers. XP could use any utility or driver (practically) written for 2000, so that was easy, as folks were just finished writing 2000 software.
* Game compatibility: 2000 added DirectX, XP made it work with the majority of games out there. Note: DirectX 5 was in NT 4.
*

[Eug]

IMO, Win 2000 was viable for lots of average users by 2001... except for the higher cost. However, for those getting new machines in early 2001 with a free copy of Windows, I most definitely recommended Win 2000. And it was almost mandatory for many professional users getting new machines.

Mind you, XP came out just a few months later, near the end of 2001.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by xi_hyperon 

Didn't Copland, in its stage of development (before it was scrapped), require two computers to boot up all the components? That sounds crazy, but I remember reading that somewhere a while back.

Originally Posted by alex_kac 

Yeah, I remember when I worked at Apple and we had Copland demonstrated to us. It was awesome. Except that it crashed every 15 minutes. And required two computers to run (one being a hardware debugger).

If you ran the debugger, yeah, but you didn't need to. If you read the documentation for the demo it actually tells you to restart it every 10 minutes because it gets corrupted, then you have to recopy over 2 system files (forgot which) to get it to load again. I found the best way to do it was to install it on a 2nd hard drive (if you had one), put any apps you wanted on it, burn it to a CD, then boot from the CD. That way all you had to do was reboot after 10 minutes, zap the PRAM, then boot it up gain.

I'll see if I can find it, stick it and stick it on my LC. I'll take screenshots.

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by Eug 

What about BeOS?!?

BTW, I installed Be on my PC, and didn't see what the fuss was all about. It looked like ass, and it's not as if you could actually do anything with it.

I couldn't assess stability... because like I said you couldn't actually do anything with it. It's easy to be stable if you're not doing anything.

I remember when I was a sophomore in High School, I had a friend who was running Be On his 7600. While there wasn't a lot to do, he pointed out a couple of really cool features on it. Jean-Louise Gasse was the guy who ended up taking over the Mac around the time Steve was ousted from Apple. After leaving Apple himself, he started Be (and Steve started NeXT).

It had good multiprocessing. When it was first demoed, They had it playing 8 mpeg files simultaneously without dropping any frames. Be was a pretty good product, but suffered the same fate as many new companies in the computer world. They didn't have developers, and they ended up being beaten to death by Microsoft.

[ryaxnb]

My recollection is that it was buggy until 7.1.

You may not have installed the tune-up. Then again, I may be wrong.

And those two piss me off as well, although OS X has enough good things about it for me to begrudgingly accept that I have to have a fleet of old Mac emulators set up in order to do anything (something that wasn't even possible back in the System 7 era).

Yeah well it's part of life.

I remember seeing this all the time:
"My Mac is running really slowly! What can I do?"
"Have you tried turning virtual memory off?"
"Hey, that fixed it!"

I agree that virtual memory was one of the most non-intuitive ideas ever, but I don't really agree with you. Lack of familiarity with virtual memory leads to many errors:
* Using too much. Many added as much as the little slider would give - bad idea. Use only 1.5-1.75x the amount in your machine. In desperate times, use 2x. NEVER EVER go above 2x!!!
* Using a really big program. One reason turning it off would fix problems is that programs would no longer try to open in recommended size. Instead, they'd open in minimum size or not open at all. The general idiom with OS 9 VM is - don't run a program bigger than your memory minus the size of the System (in OS 9, probably about 20-30MB.)
Basically, it's only useful for saving memory on PPC machines, and using 3 or 4 small programs when you could normally only fit 2.

I'm pretty sure I remember using AppleScript on System 7.1. It was actually originally a feature of System 7 Pro (not 7.5), but it must have been released in extension form or something, because I do remember it getting on my 7.1 system somehow or other. Probably some third-party app installed the extension (might have been HyperCard or something). I just know I had it.

Yes, but it was introduced with 7 Pro. And 7.5 was basically a 7 Pro for the masses, with spit and polish
Actually, I think I remember an early version being in 7.1 as a download (before 7 Pro came out,) but 7 Pro was the intended carrier for it. And 7.5 was to bring it to the non-modem-using masses.

[PowerTalk was a feature of System 7 Pro, not 7.5. And did one person ever use it?

.Yes - people in Apple itself. :-). They're the ideal company for PowerTalk - made up almost entirely of Macs. Obviously, PowerTalk was stupid. But this is just Apple's (really stupid) marketing perspective on 7.5, so there you go.

This one might legitimately be a 7.5 feature... but again, it was useless. The only effect I remember GX ever having was causing novice users to scratch their heads at why their printer driver wouldn't show up in the Chooser, causing them not to be able to print. The reason was that QuickDraw GX was in the Extensions folder, and their printer driver wasn't GX. Trashing QDGX and restarting allowed them to print.

Oh brother. Talk about non-intuitive. QDGX did lead to ATSUI Text. And desktop printers. Also, it was popular among some LaserWriter users.

Yes, it was.

Really? Now I'd say 7.5.5 was one of the least-buggy releases of the Mac OS. Here are the releases of the Mac OS I hold in high regard for stability, sorted in order of least to most bugs (keep in mind I haven't even used all of these!)::
OS 8.6
OS 7.1
OS 7.6.1
OS 9.2
OS 7.5.5

So certainly not at the top of the heap, but come on there are tons of releases it was less buggy than (probably 8.0, for example.)

The thing about 7.6/7.6.1 was that it was basically a bug-fix release... and they charged you for it! 7.6.1 was indeed less buggy than 7.5.5, but what new features did it have to justify the price? A new UI for the Extensions Manager... and a more streamlined installer for the OS. The sad thing was that 7.5.5 was so crap that the 7.6.1 upgrade was actually kind of worth it, just to get a system that wasn't bombing every 5 minutes.

7.6.1 was nice. 7.5.5 was not crap once you updated it with every single patch on the Internet, updated the drivers, deleted all third-party extensions, did a clean install (no upgrading), and purged all the unnecessary buggy features (QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, PowerTalk, maybe AppleScript, etc.) from the extensions folder. It took a lot of work though.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ryaxnb 

You may not have installed the tune-up. Then again, I may be wrong.

It's been to long for me to remember.

Yes, but it was introduced with 7 Pro. And 7.5 was basically a 7 Pro for the masses, with spit and polish

Disagree with you there. System 7 Pro was 7.1.1. There was a 7.1.2 that the masses had access to before 7.5, as it was the one that shipped with the first Power Macs. 7.5 was more of a unification, combining the regular and the Performa branches of the Mac OS into one release, and adding a bunch of "shareware bundle" features.

Actually, I think I remember an early version being in 7.1 as a download (before 7 Pro came out,) but 7 Pro was the intended carrier for it. And 7.5 was to bring it to the non-modem-using masses.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I definitely used it on 7.1 back in the day.

Really? Now I'd say 7.5.5 was one of the least-buggy releases of the Mac OS.

In our experience, we found that updating 7.5.3 to 7.5.5 actually made it crash more frequently. IIRC, we may have ended up reverting it to 7.5.3 until 7.6.1 came along. I'd think that if 7.5.5 were all that stable, the 7.6 upgrade would have consisted of something other than bug fixes, wouldn't you? Course, we skipped 7.6 and went straight to 7.6.1, so I can't comment on 7.6 much, but 7.6.1 was definitely far more stable than 7.5.5. Wikipedia claims this:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

MacOS 7.6.1 finally introduced proper error handling for PowerPC code, so that errors in PowerPC code did not always force an immediate reboot.

If this is true, that could definitely explain it - if the previous Mac OS versions crashed even when they encountered harmless errors that could be recovered from, that would explain our experience.

Here are the releases of the Mac OS I hold in high regard for stability, sorted in order of least to most bugs (keep in mind I haven't even used all of these!)::
OS 8.6
OS 7.1
OS 7.6.1
OS 9.2
OS 7.5.5

Wow. 8.6 at the top? That is completely opposite my experience - I found that one not to be stable at all. 7.1 and 7.6.1 were sort of almost decent - the rest of those were not. You clearly must not have used System 6.0.5 - it blew all those you listed out of the water in terms of stability.

[alex_kac]

Having worked at Apple during the time of System 7 - 8 let me tell you that within Apple, 7.6.1 was considered the best System 7 release. 8.6 was pretty good as well when it was out, but I loathed all the 9 versions. I left Mac OS during 9. Came back when Jaguar hit 10.2.8.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by alex_kac 

Having worked at Apple during the time of System 7 - 8 let me tell you that within Apple, 7.6.1 was considered the best System 7 release.

I can definitely see that. I'm not sure about better than 7.1, but 7.6.1 was definitely better than any of the other System 7 versions, especially 7.5.x.

8.6 was pretty good as well when it was out, but I loathed all the 9 versions. I left Mac OS during 9. Came back when Jaguar hit 10.2.8.

Myself, I didn't like any of them from 8.5 on up.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by goMac 

OS 9 seemed to quit on me every few months actually. Windows 98 might quit sometimes too, but at least it had some sort of protected memory. You could pretty safely force quit stuff on Win98.

Having never actually owned any PCs I've been able to use them only at other people's houses.

Maybe they couldn't keep their systems clean, but some of those Compaqs or Gateway 2000s had serious problems. I would go back home and render some Bryce work on my hand-me-down 7200. Yes, it crashed now and then, but I'd always see the Happy Mac face after restarting. Seeing a BSOD that won't go away no matter what you do kept me using Macs all these years.

Win 98 SE is another matter, as is 2000. My über-nerd PC friend used 2000 and his machine was always spotless. He had the time for that jazz, though.

In the days of XP I pirated it for a just cause. I couldn't stand seeing my friends suffer as the garbage PCs their parents had bought for them before college started to crap out. Of course, ME was the culprit. Installing XP on some of the PCs took several tries before finally ousting that grab bag of crap.

7.6.1 rocked on the 120mhz PPC
8.5 was aight on my iMac
9 SUCKED on my iMac
9 was solid on my G4

By the G4 I was in total Mac nerd phase...so maybe that's why I was able to keep 9 in check.

Now I don't care enough. Tiger doesn't hiccup anyways, not even a tremor

[finboy]

Longest I ran anything was 7.6.1 on my 5300 and then 1400, as well as my desk backup machines (Quadras usually). With Speeddoubler, it was rock solid on PPC. OS 8.6 was pretty reliable too. Come to think of it, I ran 7.01 on my Powerbook 100 for about two years before I upgraded, and backed up to a processor-enhanced LCIII. That was a solid configuration too.

My Powerbook 100 was an alternative to using Windows 95.

Again, what I hate about X is the black-box nature. If I had an extension conflict in 9, it was a matter of juggling a dozen or maybe 2 dozen items to get a stable boot. With X, there's too much going on under the hood.

[CharlesS]

Not really. Apart from the extension mechanism, the rest of OS 9's internal were pretty much a black box too, apart from the things that are also in OS X - i.e. preference files, shared libraries, etc. OS X just doesn't have anything analogous to the extensions in OS 9, which is a good thing since it means you don't have any extension conflicts to troubleshoot in the first place.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by finboy 

Again, what I hate about X is the black-box nature. If I had an extension conflict in 9, it was a matter of juggling a dozen or maybe 2 dozen items to get a stable boot. With X, there's too much going on under the hood.

It's actually the complete opposite.

You just had plenty of experience placating the OS 9 voodoo gods with what little surface meddling you could do with absurd things like renaming extensions...

[ryaxnb]

Wow. 8.6 at the top? That is completely opposite my experience - I found that one not to be stable at all. 7.1 and 7.6.1 were sort of almost decent - the rest of those were not. You clearly must not have used System 6.0.5 - it blew all those you listed out of the water in terms of stability.

I didn't count anything below 7. The below 7 list would probably be:
6.0.8L
3.3
1.1

[voodoo]

System 7 was very stable - I used 7.1 and it was a rock. Never used Mac OS 7.6. Then I swore by 8.1 and 8.6 but OS 9.0 to OS 9.2.1 were nothing great. Mac OS and the internets never were the best of friends, but OS 9.2.2 was fine.

[analogika]

^ ditto, except that 9.2.2 didn't really come close to the earlier versions you mentioned IME (probably due to the changed needs and increased dependency upon all sorts of networking etc. extensions).

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogika 

^ ditto, except that 9.2.2 didn't really come close to the earlier versions you mentioned IME (probably due to the changed needs and increased dependency upon all sorts of networking etc. extensions).

Agreed

[finboy]

Originally Posted by analogika 

It's actually the complete opposite.

You just had plenty of experience placating the OS 9 voodoo gods with what little surface meddling you could do with absurd things like renaming extensions...

I remember reinstalling Jaguar three times within a week of buying my G3 ibook, and I still have permissions troubles about every other backup. DiskWarrior was never necessary under OS 9-, although some secondary boot ability was handy. I imagine if we looked hard enough, there are a couple of hundred files that would keep OS X from running should any one of them be corrupted and/or lost to the disk gods. That's what I mean by "black box."

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by finboy 

I remember reinstalling Jaguar three times within a week of buying my G3 ibook, and I still have permissions troubles about every other backup.

"Permissions troubles" being defined as?

DiskWarrior was never necessary under OS 9-, although some secondary boot ability was handy.

I don't know about you, but I've encountered far more instances where the HD needed to be repaired on OS 9 than on OS X.

I imagine if we looked hard enough, there are a couple of hundred files that would keep OS X from running should any one of them be corrupted and/or lost to the disk gods. That's what I mean by "black box."

Not only did OS 9 have plenty of files that would mess the OS up if they were corrupted, it was also a lot more likely to happen since there were no permissions and certain files (such as the System file itself! ) were constantly getting modified.

[timmerk]

System 7 is God. Mac OS 9 is Jesus.

Mac OS X is a little bit of both.

xi_hyperon: you're a fool if you think OS 9 sucked. What did you do.. install anti-virus extensions?

[sek929]

Originally Posted by finboy 

I remember reinstalling Jaguar three times within a week of buying my G3 ibook, and I still have permissions troubles about every other backup. DiskWarrior was never necessary under OS 9-, although some secondary boot ability was handy. I imagine if we looked hard enough, there are a couple of hundred files that would keep OS X from running should any one of them be corrupted and/or lost to the disk gods. That's what I mean by "black box."

Weird, I haven't had to do anything besides turn the computer on since 10.1.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Weird, I haven't had to do anything besides turn the computer on since 10.1.

2nded. It just works.

[Full-Auto]

Way before my Mac days... I was a basher back then.

[Full-Auto]

There was a HUGE difference between 7 and 7.6.1:

[Apemanblues]

As long as I was careful about extensions I never really had a problem with it. It used to be really snappy too.

Not a patch on OSX of course, but it was awesome in it's day.

[JKT]

The thing I hate most about the Classic OSs when I look back now is that the system could be (relatively) stable on one machine, but the exact same set up on another was a crashy POS with less up time than Paris Hilton.

However, the response to the OP is that OS 9 did suck donkey's balls as an OS, but (at the time) it was a great UI in comparison to the competition. Windows didn't really improve very much between 95 and 2000 in terms of its usability (and even XP is god awful, imo) and this is what kept a lot of people using the classic Mac OS even though it wasn't very stable and lacked proper multi-tasking.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

2nded. It just works.

In fact, let me rephrase that.

I don't turn it on very much because I don't have to turn it off.

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by JKT 

but (at the time) it was a great UI in comparison to the competition. Windows didn't really improve very much between 95 and 2000 in terms of its usability (and even XP is god awful, imo) and this is what kept a lot of people using the classic Mac OS even though it wasn't very stable and lacked proper multi-tasking.

Whatever the shortcomings of OS9 the interface is still better than windows. Last week I went to the trouble of making a windows partition on my MacBook Pro and installing Windows XP.

After the shock of the install screens compared to even how OS9 looked installing I finally fired up XP, and deleted the partition the next day. I'm not having anything that fugly on my mac, ever. I'd happily run an OS9 partition though. It was a nice clean interface, infact apart from Leopard, which I consider a huge leap forward from Tiger in terms of interface design (mostly) the OS9 interface was lovely. Simple.

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

System 7 was very stable - I used 7.1 and it was a rock. Never used Mac OS 7.6. Then I swore by 8.1 and 8.6 but OS 9.0 to OS 9.2.1 were nothing great. Mac OS and the internets never were the best of friends, but OS 9.2.2 was fine.

I seem to remember that System 7 even had a little hidden graphic of a piece of granite with the words "System 7 - Rock Steady" etched into it.

[Kenneth]

I want my CyberDog.