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OS9 Is Just Really, Really Awful (Page 2)
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sek929
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Jan 27, 2008, 04:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by PaperNotes View Post
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.
If you liked Windows 95 that much than you've come to the wrong place to talk about it. W95 sucked ass more than any version of 9. Sure it had multitasking, and OS9 was a little crash prone, but that still wasn't enough for me to use the BSOD-friendly, unituitive W95 interface.

Originally Posted by PaperNotes View Post
That their Power PC processors really were as fast as Apple's charts showed
Maybe not AS fast as steve showed, but I can still use my 733 G4 for everything while people with 1.8 GHZ Dells have long since sh!tcanned them. Plus, ME was on every new machine I saw during the days of my Mac being new....and no processor would ever be able to help that steaming pile of trash.


Originally Posted by PaperNotes View Post
and that gaming was being revived on Macs because of Microsoft's use of Power PC in the 360.
What does this have to do with your argument? Panther was out by the time of the 360. Not to mention, Bunige being bought by M$ before the original xbox launch was pretty much the end of mac games as we knew it.
     
besson3c
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Jan 27, 2008, 04:18 PM
 
the classic Mac OS competed decently with Windows 95 and 98, but when Windows 2000 came out it was extremely difficult to make a compelling argument about OS 9 being a robust platform, as it also was in comparison to OS/2, BeOS, and AmigaOS/Workbench before then. This was probably around the same time that Intel processors started to really take off and surpass PowerPC.

The warm spot I have in my heart is for the highly optimized code found in these OSes. It is absolutely pathetic that Word 5.1 is probably about as snappy as modern versions of Word are. The performance that OSes, games, applications, and pretty much everything got in such minimal resources was amazing! We can learn a lot about improving what we put out now by looking into the past, I think.
     
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Jan 27, 2008, 04:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by sek929 View Post
Panther was out by the time of the 360.
Tiger was released a month before the 360 was unveiled.

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Jan 27, 2008, 06:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Yes it was. In fact, OS 9 was the number one reason I didn't own a Mac at that time.

Also remember, by the time OS 9 was actually out, it was competing with Win 98 and Win NT 4, and eventually Win 2000.
Since we have Mac OS X to compare with, I found Mac OS 9 handled well on G3 Macs.

I started out with System 7.5 to the current OS, I only missed out the Mac OS 7.6 release.
     
sek929
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Jan 27, 2008, 06:16 PM
 
The days of the G3 were good times to be a Mac user. The G4 stagnated but still held it's own against the P4.
     
goMac
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Jan 27, 2008, 06:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by sek929 View Post
The days of the G3 were good times to be a Mac user. The G4 stagnated but still held it's own against the P4.
The G4 never really held it's own against the P4. The G4 was great against the P3, but the P4 ate the G4 for lunch. Things might have been different had Motorola kept up with production and R&D.
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Jan 27, 2008, 09:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
Things might have been different had Motorola kept up with production and R&D.
I suspect the major problem was the fact was that limited number of customers that want the powerpc, at least compared to the intel cpu. If memory serves me, I believe the powerpc had a nice niche in the device sector, but only apple wanted the cpus for their computers.

I'm sure there were other reasons that caused moto not to develop the G4 as well as they could have.

As an aside, i read somewhere that Jobs was going to go to intel in the early 2000s but IBM convinced them that their G5 could do what apple wanted. That as we know wasn't the case, they never achieved the 3GHz speed as promised, supply problems, and no laptop cpu appeared.
     
goMac
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Jan 27, 2008, 09:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacosNerd View Post
As an aside, i read somewhere that Jobs was going to go to intel in the early 2000s but IBM convinced them that their G5 could do what apple wanted. That as we know wasn't the case, they never achieved the 3GHz speed as promised, supply problems, and no laptop cpu appeared.
Yeah, I believe IBM themselves said Apple tried to go Intel in the early 2000's.

Personally, I think Apple was about to go Intel until IBM gave them the G3.
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CharlesS
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Jan 27, 2008, 10:05 PM
 
The G3 was well before 2000. I doubt Apple would have switched to Intel around the time the G3 came out, because OS 9 would have been really hard to get working on Intel, and because the PowerPC was actually still looking really good back then. Even the older 604e was a great chip and was outpacing Intel's processors in performance and even clock speed.

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goMac
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Jan 27, 2008, 10:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
The G3 was well before 2000. I doubt Apple would have switched to Intel around the time the G3 came out, because OS 9 would have been really hard to get working on Intel, and because the PowerPC was actually still looking really good back then. Even the older 604e was a great chip and was outpacing Intel's processors in performance and even clock speed.
Well, I wasn't talking about OS 9, I was talking about Rhapsody.
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Tyre MacAdmin
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Jan 27, 2008, 10:30 PM
 
Come on people! How am I going to get over having to use OS 9 when you people keep bringing it up? It like opening an old cut and pouring salt in to it!
     
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Jan 27, 2008, 10:34 PM
 
Why would you want to get over it.

I have a G4 Cube just to run OS9
     
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Jan 27, 2008, 10:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post

The warm spot I have in my heart is for the highly optimized code found in these OSes. It is absolutely pathetic that Word 5.1 is probably about as snappy as modern versions of Word are. The performance that OSes, games, applications, and pretty much everything got in such minimal resources was amazing! We can learn a lot about improving what we put out now by looking into the past, I think.
No matter how fast they make the buggers, software bloat seems to always outpace processor speed. It drives me nuts when iterations of applications get slower instead of faster, even on modern hardware.

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Jan 27, 2008, 11:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacosNerd View Post
Why would you want to get over it.

I have a G4 Cube just to run OS9
Well it did make good for frequent coffee breaks! "OS 9 crash again?" - "Yeap. You guessed it! Pass the cream, thanks!"
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 12:36 AM
 
I thought the BR/HDDVD thread was the true revealer of a person's personality... how wrong I was.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 12:57 AM
 
Extensions.

Say it with me now....

Extensions.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 01:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
The use of present tense in this thread is deceptive.
Agreed.
     
goMac
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Jan 28, 2008, 01:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by rickey939 View Post
Extensions.
But extensions were fun. They put pretty pictures on your startup screen.
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Andrew Stephens
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Jan 28, 2008, 03:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
But extensions were fun. They put pretty pictures on your startup screen.
Yes. I liked the picture of the bomb best.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 03:34 AM
 
TENTENENT:

I have quit applications, but Leopoard is just busy, and the temptation is always there to open them. I found that I am not alone. Sitting at the library watching people do math problems on a piece of paper while talking to their buddies on MSN. I am SO GLAD that computers were not like this when I was in school, because my productivity would have went down the tubes. It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between increased drop out rates (college) with the internet. This is, of course, assuming that there are increased drop out rates.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 04:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by sek929 View Post
If you liked Windows 95 that much than you've come to the wrong place to talk about it.
There was something called NT which did extremely well in SGI Irix and Novell's traditional markets and damaged Mac sales badly.

And this is you when you were responding......

     
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Jan 28, 2008, 08:40 AM
 
Originally Posted by Tyler McAdams View Post
Well it did make good for frequent coffee breaks! "OS 9 crash again?" - "Yeap. You guessed it! Pass the cream, thanks!"
Maybe its the hardware but I can say OS9 hardly crashes. I've never been one to load a ton of extensions, and even before OSX hit the fan and I used OS9 100% of my time it was very stable.

I use it now for a number of applications and for kicks and giggles, I've fired up PS 5 on it, and I'm surprised at how snappy© even that is. I figured a G4 cannot compete with a MBP (I know it cannot), but I think this shows how much bloat has gotten into today's applications. I'm also not using PS5 for any heavy lifting, basic image editing
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 08:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by PaperNotes View Post
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, that their Power PC processors really were as fast as Apple's charts showed and that gaming was being revived on Macs because of Microsoft's use of Power PC in the 360. Still lots of dimbos around but getting better.
and yet you joining our ranks has caused the collective IQ to drop - go figure
     
sek929
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Jan 28, 2008, 09:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by PaperNotes View Post
There was something called NT which did extremely well in SGI Irix and Novell's traditional markets and damaged Mac sales badly
What is this NT you speak of? I've never used a computer before, please help me you obnoxious twit.

Edit: Hey, look what asshat got banned!
( Last edited by sek929; Jan 28, 2008 at 09:31 PM. )
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 09:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by boots View Post
I was serious. System 7 (specifically, 7.5) was the pinnacle of pre-Darwin Mac OS. After that, they overloaded the extensions with crap that I, for one, never really needed. Of course, I'm also in the camp that Word 5 was the pinnacle of that particular entity. The only thing it has for me in the new versions that weren't in 5 is bloat.

Obviously I don't do a lot of specialty stuff in Word.

I stayed with Mac because of the Unix underpinnings of OS X. Seriously.
Me too. I still use OS 9 almost every day (because it still runs stuff that OS X won't). The only downside to OS X is the Unix understructure -- too many files, too much to go wrong. OS 9 was a cludge, but it didn't require 30K files to install. Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 09:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacosNerd View Post
Maybe its the hardware but I can say OS9 hardly crashes. I've never been one to load a ton of extensions,

That must be it. I had every extension under the sun with OS 9 and I tried to use it for heavy multitasking... this did not work out so well. It would take all of 15min at best before the system crashed. I started to develop a sense for when thing's were about to crash and I was constantly saving my work because of it. This eventually dragged me over to win98 and 2000.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 10:49 PM
 
In my experience, OSes 8.6, 9.1 and 9.2.2 were solid as a rock for the most part. The only times I had issues were when I loaded a stupid amount of worthless extensions and when IE decided to fart.

8.6 is probably my favorite Mac OS of all time, BTW. 10.3 runs a close second.
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Jan 28, 2008, 10:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by finboy View Post
Me too. I still use OS 9 almost every day (because it still runs stuff that OS X won't). The only downside to OS X is the Unix understructure -- too many files, too much to go wrong. OS 9 was a cludge, but it didn't require 30K files to install. Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.
OS 9 was small, but it was very much a fly by the seat of your pants operation. If one thing went wrong, the entire system became corrupt in memory and you had to restart. Mac OS 9 relied on everyone's code being perfect, which isn't exactly real world.

A Ford Fiesta has a lot less between you and the road than a BMW, but that doesn't meant the Ford Fiesta is a nicer car.

(For the record, I was a big fan of classic Mac OS until Win2k came out. Win2k > Mac OS 9.)
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Cipher13
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Jan 28, 2008, 10:56 PM
 
OS9 was, and is, awesome. It's a little past its usefulness nowadays, especially since OS X came into its own (10.2), but that doesn't change the fact that it was a great OS.

I think the thing that separates my experience with OS9 (and the experiences of many here) from that of most users is that when treated well, OS9 was pretty much unbreakable. I knew it like the back of my hand, kept the system clean, and it was supreme.

There are still some things OS9 does better than any other OS out there.
     
besson3c
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Jan 28, 2008, 11:05 PM
 
Cipher: I think it's pretty hard to use OS 9 and "unbreakable" in the same sentence. What does OS 9 do better than any other OS, just out of curiosity?
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 11:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cipher13 View Post
OS9 was pretty much unbreakable.
Sorry, but that's just wishful thinking. It broke often, and without apparent reasons. We had systems as clean as you could keep them and yet we had to put up with the bomb of death far more often than was reasonable.
     
Cipher13
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Jan 28, 2008, 11:13 PM
 
Well, apparently they *weren't* as clean as you could keep them, or ran some shitty software. I make no claims about OS9's ability (or lack thereof) to deal with poorly written programs or bad situations, but when run predictably I never had any problems. I had an OS9 gateway machine with IPNR and WebSTAR running for a long time, and it'd reach uptimes of 60+ days, and only to that point when I decided to move it or do some network rearranging.

besson3c: the interface and navigation. Okay, so there's only one thing I can think of off the top of my head (without resorting to the "security" thing), but still. Platinum rocked.
     
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Jan 28, 2008, 11:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cipher13 View Post
OS9 was, and is, awesome. It's a little past its usefulness nowadays, especially since OS X came into its own (10.2), but that doesn't change the fact that it was a great OS.

I think the thing that separates my experience with OS9 (and the experiences of many here) from that of most users is that when treated well, OS9 was pretty much unbreakable. I knew it like the back of my hand, kept the system clean, and it was supreme.

There are still some things OS9 does better than any other OS out there.


My exact same experience. I knew what I was installing, I knew how to keep OS 9 rock solid.

Then there were computers at the university with OS 9 that dozens of people used and installed all sorts of manure on - these were as stable as a house of cards and very frustrating to use.

People who pushed OS 9 beyond what it was designed for probably found it crashy, but they were asking for it.

The same people could get the same experience out of OS X by running it as root all the time. That was basically what you were doing in OS 9 so you damn well better had to know what you were doing.

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Jan 29, 2008, 12:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cipher13 View Post
Well, apparently they *weren't* as clean as you could keep them, or ran some shitty software.
No matter how clean you kept your Extensions folder, the first time one app made a mistake, boom, down went the system. Rather than avoiding "shitty" software, you actually had to avoid running non-perfect software, which encompasses every real-world application ever written that is more complex than Hello World. This was particularly noticeable with web browsers - both Netscape and IE had this nasty tendency to eventually end every browsing session with a system crash. One version of IE actually managed to crash the OS in such a way that my disk directories would show damage on the next scan - repeatedly.

And then there's the fact that it never was possible to avoid extensions - critical OS features were often implemented as extensions, particularly once we got to System 7.5 and they started throwing all those third-party extensions in as "new features." Starting with the Shift key down made you lose networking, hierarchical menus, and a bunch of other basic stuff.

Finally, the System file was constantly getting written to, and consequently it got corrupted frequently. I had a system that would freeze every startup, even if you held the Shift key down. I can't tell you how many times I clean-reinstalled OS 9, both for myself and for other people who were asking me to fix their systems.

Calling OS 9 rock solid is just silly. It was nothing of the sort.

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Jan 29, 2008, 05:18 AM
 
I don't know... When I bought my G3 Powerbook, it had OS 9 on it. I never really did anything out of the ordinary except the web, email, and Office crap on it. Played some games, but otherwise just simple stuff. It never crashed on me at all.
     
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Jan 29, 2008, 07:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cipher13 View Post
Well, apparently they *weren't* as clean as you could keep them, or ran some shitty software.
Oh boy.

Those machines were run in a graphic design studio, with only the necessities installed, maintained by a studio manager who knew his stuff. And still we got the bomb with alarming frequency. Your own anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, OS 9 was unstable and prone to crashes.

One very easy way to crash the system was to save a large PhotoShop file over a network. Not every time of course, but so frequently that we implemented a policy where you had to save to your desktop first, then to the server. At the time neither Apple nor Adobe could come up with a better solution.
     
chris v
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Jan 29, 2008, 08:37 AM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
But extensions were fun. They put pretty pictures on your startup screen.
And you could easily tell what was the matter with your system by where it locked up during the "march of the extensions!" Simple -- just turn that one off, then see which one locked up next! Of course, by the time you got your system to boot, you couldn't network or use fonts, since you'd had to turn off those extensions in order to make it to the desktop, but what a rousing round of manly troubleshooting it had been. Anyone remember "Conflict Causer?"

8.1 was the last solid OS before 10. I had a Power Center 150 that would routinely run 30-50 days between restarts -- it was always the printer extension that went south in the end each time, casing me to restart if I needed to actually print.
( Last edited by chris v; Jan 29, 2008 at 08:45 AM. )

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Jan 29, 2008, 11:27 AM
 
This thread caused me to figure out how to load 9 on my system just to play Rescue! What a great game.

Here's what I recall. I remember that OS 8.6 was a sweetspot for me. Had everything and did everything I wanted it to. 9 felt like Apple was just trying to sell you one more thing before OS X came out. I was always weary of Mac OS 9 because it felt like 8.6 with a bunch of extra stuff taped, glued, or tied to it. It never felt like a true upgrade to me.
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Jan 29, 2008, 11:58 AM
 
Funny Mac story.

Way back in college this guy in my class started a business with his brother and bought a Mac. They couldn't figure out why their brand new Mac had only 1MB left on the hard drive. To make a long story short, they had VM cranked so high that it ate their hard drive. I throttled it down and that fixed their problem.

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Jan 29, 2008, 11:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by Mastrap View Post
OS 9 was unstable and prone to crashes.
Not in my experience, either at home or in various studios. The only time I saw a lot of problems was when someone installed something they shouldn't have. AIM was a big, big problem causer.

One very easy way to crash the system was to save a large PhotoShop file over a network. Not every time of course, but so frequently that we implemented a policy where you had to save to your desktop first, then to the server. At the time neither Apple nor Adobe could come up with a better solution.
Never saw this problem, either. Sounds like the issue was where you were working and not a general one. In fact, I in my experience Adobe products were much more stable under OS9 than OS X: Photoshop 6, in particular, was a pretty rock solid release. I have only run into two programs which can lock up OS X so hard I need to reboot the machine. One is Google Earth, and the other is Illustrator.

That said, I found OS9-9.2.2 to be very stable and solid. My laptop rarely ever got restarted. The only serious issue I ever had with it was the driver which came with my mouse. One I ditched them things were fine.
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sek929
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Jan 29, 2008, 12:54 PM
 
Yeah, can't say I agree with all the "9 crashed all the time" anecdotes.

I had two rows of extensions load at startup and my machine rarely froze. I can see networking locking it up but in the days of 9 on my G4 (my iMac froze plenty) I could go weeks without a restart.

Usually it only froze when I tried to play some stupid game that came on a MacAddict disc.
     
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Jan 29, 2008, 12:59 PM
 
I have to say, I didn't have many issues with OS 8.6 through 9.2.2. The only big issue I ran into was having to buy a new hard drive once on the iMac I had owned for a couple of years. The rest of the time, it ran well. Sure I'd have an occasional crash here and there, but no worse than any Windows install I've ever had.

The Pismo I owned was equally as solid. I loved that thing, and if I hadn't needed the cash more than the Pismo at that particular time, I'd still own it.

So, chalk me up to another positive nostalgia-bearing-pre-OSX guy. Don't get me wrong, I have really, really enjoyed my time with OSX, and look forward to using Leopard as my main OS, but I do hold a special spot for pre-OSX memories.

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Jan 29, 2008, 01:00 PM
 
My problem with OS 9 was it crashed so predictably -- it became irritating that if I backed out of the wrong application at the wrong time I was guaranteed to lose info and restart.

'Course, I had my fill the day it gave me some error that ate all the info on my new computer. Ordered OS X the next day.
     
goMac
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by sek929 View Post
Yeah, can't say I agree with all the "9 crashed all the time" anecdotes.
I think for me the bigger issue was lack of true multitasking. Nothing like having Internet Explorer monopolize your entire machine while it thought about loading a web page...
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Kenneth
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:03 PM
 
     
peeb
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:07 PM
 
I played with an old iMac with OS9 a few months ago, and I have to agree - OS9 sucked donkey balls. Not metaphorically, but actually applied oral suction to a donkey's testicles. So glad to have X.
     
harbinger75
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:10 PM
 
I played with an old iMac with OS9 a few months ago, and I have to agree - OS9 sucked donkey balls. Not metaphorically, but actually applied oral suction to a donkey's testicles. So glad to have X.
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olePigeon
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:11 PM
 
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.
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Lateralus
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:22 PM
 
Copland or Rhapsody?
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sek929
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Jan 29, 2008, 01:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
I think for me the bigger issue was lack of true multitasking. Nothing like having Internet Explorer monopolize your entire machine while it thought about loading a web page...
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.
     
 
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