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Do you miss Mac OS 9? (Page 4)
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mAxximo
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Sep 4, 2005, 04:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by lurkerdude
I miss OS 9 a hell of a lot more than I miss 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. Really, people talk a lot of crap about the pre-X Macintosh, but Panther was the first decent version of OS X. There have been more crappy revs of OS X than there have been good revs. Super unresponsive pinstriped GUIs, beachballs of death, screen saver kernel panics? Adding old OS 9 features and touting them as reasons to upgrade? No thanks, the genie effect wasn't worth all that.

OS 9 was good at what it did, and trashing it for things it didnt even try to do is weird. I'll take OS 9 any day over Puma or Jaguar. Panther and Tiger made me miss OS 9 less though.

I only wish I had the opportunity to miss the Dock.
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 4, 2005, 05:24 PM
 
I concur with lurkerdude as well

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
mAxximo
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Sep 4, 2005, 05:47 PM
 
Guys,
Thanks for your willing to help in my situation.

The thing is, I LOVE the multiuser concept in OS X. I know my life would be a lot easier if we had just one account instead of two but I'd rather deal with the permissions and privileges nightmare than having my girlfriend move my Photoshop and Illustrator palettes from the precise locations I have put them in.
That and her different icon size and Dock preferences, her Jewel songs I don't want to see populating my iTunes library, her messy Desktop and her FontBook organisation. I could go on for hours...

The using of our other box as a file server is not a bad idea at all, although things may get somewhat slower when opening and saving large files in Photoshop and really slower when working in After Effects projects that make constant calls to the linked media files being used...

I still think the security scheme could be modified to serve a wider range of user scenarios instead of just favouring those setting up their machines with just one account and the paranoid types. I don't think it would be that difficult to add a preference to FUS saying “Don't ask for passwords when switching between Account X and Account Y”, for example. Both users would be required to fill in their passwords at that moment and never bothered again until someone decides to change it. That in itself is a brilliant idea and I'm not even trying too hard. It's just a matter of Apple giving a **** about usability for a change....

Same with folders. Much like the Privacy tab in Spotlight I should be able to drag any folders which I don't want privileges applied to to some “Security” preference pane that any user could customise to his liking. That would include the Desktop for example, now that OS X treats it as a regular folder. Why can't I just access any other account's Desktop to grab something from it if its account holder does not have any problem with it? The computer should give people in that situation a way of overriding those instances when security really gets in our way.

The current scheme is the equivalent of making an 85 year old white woman carrying no bags take off her clothes at the airport because they are looking for bin Laden. It's just overkill for many of us simply trying to use our computers as a design tool while keeping separate accounts. It's way too intrusive, distracting and bossy. Something creative types normally hate with a passion. It has to change, at least while we are still a huge part of Apple's userbase.
( Last edited by mAxximo; Sep 4, 2005 at 05:53 PM. )
     
Geobunny
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Sep 4, 2005, 05:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
The current scheme is the equivalent of making an 85 year old white woman carrying no bags take off her clothes at the airport because they are looking for bin Laden.
You have to be joking. When was the last time you saw an 85 year old woman without at least a handbag?! Without them, where would she keep her money, mints, hankies and 3 spare pairs of glasses? I say an 85 year old woman without a bag would be a prime suspect!
ClamXav - the free virus scanner for Mac OS X | Geobunny learns to fly
     
cla
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Sep 4, 2005, 06:41 PM
 
He's right man - you're in way over your head :>
     
revco
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Sep 5, 2005, 12:11 AM
 
We still use OS9 everyday in my studio. I can't recall the last time it crashed. Our systems are quite stable.

No, I don't like OSX. Maybe in a year or two when it matures a bit I'll change my mind. Right now I find the whole OSX thing quite uninspiring. Particularly the apps upgraded to work with it. ie Illustrator CS, QXP 6.5, etc.

OSX by itself is neither here nor there. It's just a back end for apps to run off. With the required OSX upgraded apps the whole OSX experience is mostly dissapointing.
     
reader50
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Sep 5, 2005, 01:16 AM
 
Originally Posted by I was David B.
Hi reader50,
how do you hack the finder to make popup folders appear?
Apple installed some checks to prevent the OS9 Finder from launching in Classic. They wanted you to use the OSX Finder only. As of Jaguar, I wasn't able to make it start up anymore. But under Tiger, those checks seem to have been partially lost.

Copy the OS9 Finder, and give the copy a different name. I used Fndr. Then use ResEdit (or other utility) to change the copy's Type and Creator - Apple was checking both to stop the Finder from launching.

Change the Type from "FNDR" to "APPL". Change the Creator from "MACS" to "CWIE". The icon will change to a generic application. And it will launch again in Classic - your existing tabbed folders will appear along the screen bottom. Note - this doesn't work well unless you put the Dock on a side of the screen, like I do. Or put the tabbed folders on a 2nd monitor's bottom, while the Dock stays on the primary monitor.

The OS9 Finder was stable in Classic under 10.0, but it was locking up Classic under Tiger when I dragged windows around. Turning off Quartz Extreme seems to fix this, but I didn't want my tabbed folders bad enough to leave QE off. On the other hand, I just turned QE back on, and Classic hasn't locked yet. Not sure what's different this time.

Note: you can turn QE on/off in Quartz Debug.
     
__^^__
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Sep 5, 2005, 12:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by revco
No, I don't like OSX. Maybe in a year or two when it matures a bit I'll change my mind. Right now I find the whole OSX thing quite uninspiring. Particularly the apps upgraded to work with it. ie Illustrator CS, QXP 6.5, etc.
Wait til it matures? We are already on the 4th generation of OSX.
     
fisherKing
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Sep 5, 2005, 12:52 PM
 
what i really want to know is... does os9 miss me??
"At first, there was Nothing. Then Nothing inverted itself and became Something.
And that is what you all are: inverted Nothings...with potential" (Sun Ra)
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 5, 2005, 01:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by __^^__
Wait til it matures? We are already on the 4th generation of OSX.
5th actually. (10.0 to 10.4)

and only now in this version can I say: This is finally mature enough to be usable as a primary OS. It is far from perfect but it is usable now. I am glad, but I realize there is a long way to go yet. I have not lost hope but I suspect the Intel switch will slow the OS development a bit while it is happening.

I don't think 10.5 will live up to the Mac OS 9 legacy but 10.6 or 10.7 could be pretty close given the same rate of improvement we are seeing today. Hope springs eternal!

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
__^^__
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Sep 5, 2005, 02:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
5th actually. (10.0 to 10.4)
It could be six if you count the public beta.
     
Cadaver
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Sep 5, 2005, 05:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
and only now in this version can I say: This is finally mature enough to be usable as a primary OS. It is far from perfect but it is usable now. I am glad, but I realize there is a long way to go yet. I have not lost hope but I suspect the Intel switch will slow the OS development a bit while it is happening.

I don't think 10.5 will live up to the Mac OS 9 legacy but 10.6 or 10.7 could be pretty close given the same rate of improvement we are seeing today. Hope springs eternal!

cheers

W-Y
OS X is light years from OS 9. Perhaps there are UI quirks in OS X, but OS 9 was held together with spit and rubber bands.
     
mAxximo
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Sep 5, 2005, 05:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cadaver
OS X is light years from OS 9. Perhaps there are UI quirks in OS X, but OS 9 was held together with spit and rubber bands.
It doesn't matter what was holding it together. It just worked. And for us non-geek users that's the only thing that counts.
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 5, 2005, 06:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
It doesn't matter what was holding it together. It just worked. And for us non-geek users that's the only thing that counts.
@Cadaver

I agree with the quoted comment. I don't care what holds an OS together, that is for the people who design it to worry about. Now Apple decided it needed a new OS (agreeing with your assessment of spit and rubber bands holding the thing together) and that is fine. But Apple had the best UI in the world and pretty much threw it away for *this*!

OS X may be technologically advanced and may have been from the start, but only in its *fifth* major release is the UI starting to look like something from Apple. Quite amazing because they didn't really have to work much on the UI, that they had done for the last 20 years and applied it on that spit and rubberband system called Mac OS 9.

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
Detrius
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Sep 5, 2005, 06:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by __^^__
It could be six if you count the public beta.
What about Mac OS X Server 1.0 and 1.1? Those were out in the days of OS 8.5.
ACSA 10.4/10.3, ACTC 10.3, ACHDS 10.3
     
revco
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Sep 5, 2005, 08:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by __^^__
Wait til it matures? We are already on the 4th generation of OSX.
Actually, I think we're on the first generation with four rounds of tweaking. OSX is still v1 software and it feels like it.
     
mAxximo
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Sep 6, 2005, 12:52 AM
 
Originally Posted by revco
Actually, I think we're on the first generation with four rounds of tweaking. OSX is still v1 software and it feels like it.
Couldn't agree more. Tiger is what 10.0 should have been. Bugs and inherent usability problems aside OS X feels “release” for the first time.
     
goMac
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Sep 6, 2005, 01:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
It doesn't matter what was holding it together. It just worked. And for us non-geek users that's the only thing that counts.
Dunno about you but it didn't work for me. I was about ready to switch to Win2k. It was much nicer.

Mac OS 9 only worked if you never installed anything on it. Otherwise, you started running into system crashes, which with OS X, have become unacceptable.

Tiger could never have been 10.0. These transitions take time. Mac OS X was already gaining new features beyond Mac OS 9 at the Jaguar level. I think what makes the difference is 3rd party support for OS X is just now starting to be done right. Sadly, many of the older software that was designed for Mac OS 9 just doesn't hold up well in Carbon form, but those programs are being pushed aside by new companies on the scene.
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Once you wanted revolution, now you're the institution, how's it feel to be the man?
     
leperkuhn
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Sep 6, 2005, 01:34 AM
 
It's nice installing the OS and having apache, PHP, mysql and all the unix tools available. I care about what's underneath.
     
smithz4096
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by fisherKing
what i really want to know is... does os9 miss me??
Oh, Yes! And it needs a hug, too.
OS 9 really feels bad and lonely because it was stabbed in the back by an egocentrical maniac.
I do what i can do make it feel happy again, but the more the better
     
Gavin
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:36 AM
 
I miss the ... not gonna say it .. how about "sproingyness". I had to boot an iMac into OS9 not too long ago and damn those menus just fly! It really is still noticeable even compared to tiger on the same box. And when I click the volume control it comes right up, no waiting for the VM to page in.

Even with that, I kissed it goodbye when I got my copy of the beta..

The location manager was nice but I don't think you need it with OSX, printers and things sort of handle themselves without multiple configurations. I even leave my laptop's network on the default Automatic location.

I was going to mention the fact that, for me anyway OS9, almost always got the file owner/type right, and without a suffix. I don't think that the comparison is fair when you consider the Internet. Back in the 7 & 8 days all files on your system were mac files which had type and creator codes, so of course it worked. Nowadays you get files from many different OSs which sticks you with the least common denominator/ hybrid solution. Mime types and magic numbers don't quite cut it either. That was true by the OS9 days, scrolling through 8 million mime types in internet config was not fun.

I think apple is on the right track with Uniform Type Identifiers. This is what apple does best, take lessons learned from various current implementations and then write a new way of doing it all from scratch. UTI covers not just files but should identify any kind of data, files, clipboard, stream, whatever. That will be useful and powerful as hell when it gets used widely. The only trick is to get other unix OSes to use it. The unix world is conservative but they will switch to a better mousetrap when it comes along (ipchains, elf), so who knows?

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/11

The main downside, as any woman will tell you, is the unfortunate acromyn.
UTI = Urinary Tract Infection.
( Last edited by Gavin; Sep 6, 2005 at 03:55 AM. )
You can take the dude out of So Cal, but you can't take the dude outta the dude, dude!
     
I was David B.
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Sep 6, 2005, 05:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by reader50
...
Copy the OS9 Finder, and give the copy a different name. I used Fndr. Then use ResEdit (or other utility) to change the copy's Type and Creator - Apple was checking both to stop the Finder from launching.

Change the Type from "FNDR" to "APPL". Change the Creator from "MACS" to "CWIE"....
Thank you, this worked very well.

I still use 10.3.9 and it did not lock up. The classic environment in 10.4 on the other hand, crashes indeed very quickly with this hack.

Originally Posted by mAxximo
... Tiger is what 10.0 should have been. Bugs and inherent usability problems aside OS X feels “release” for the first time.
It really depends on what you do with the OS.
I might be a geek user. I write java programs and use the unix tools of Mac OS 10.x a lot. It is not the case that I don't care about usability. Of course I want a stable system and a well done Finder.

But the first time that I had the impression of something great was after I installed 10.2 on my Pismo. It was not as fast as OS 9 (which was the first MacOS that I used for serious work), but it was damn powerful because of the unbelivably rich amount of unix software that was available over night. It made me throw away windows within months. For my work it can even replace linux (easily!).

I really don't care if something does not work as before as long as there is an acceptable way to do it at all. What is acceptable depends of course on your personality. I never had a problem with OS X (starting from 10.2) that I could not solve quickly. The only thing I had to buy was a new printer (due to the lack of an OS X driver for my old printer). I rarely HAD to update the software because the old versions still worked well with classic (even Toast). Where software was not updated quickly enough (CodeWarrior), I replaced the software with unix tools or open source software (Eclipse, javac and shellscript wrappers).

But I understand the other side. My ex is a graphic designer. She does not understand her computer very well and that is a handycap. If you depend on your machine as a necessary tool for your income you should make yourself familiar at least with minimum troubleshooting. She had a lot of trouble with printers, scanners, not available programs or large investments for OS X compatible software (problems that I had to solve, mostly). This is hard if you don't make a lot of money.

But before OS X has been really accepted by the typical Mac users we will have a new transition to intel processors. What will happen is the same situation as with the OS 9/OS 10 transition, that power pc software will not run, drivers for printers/scanners will not work anymore etc. This time the old stuff will not fly like in classic, it will be slow due to the emulation with rosetta. At least the user interface will not change.

I really hope that this is not a decision that breaks apples neck.
     
OtisWild
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Sep 6, 2005, 11:38 AM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
LOL, the geek aristocracy making fun of the Mac in their constant intent to re-write history...oh dear. Name of the application should better be “How Unix geeks would like Us to remember the Mac”.
OS 9 was clunky, platinum was ugly compared to Aqua (then again, what isn't?), the system would freeze when I burned a CD, and I would have to reboot periodically to clean out instabilities related to extensions and whatnot. I had to _pre-allocate_ memory for applications: what kind of 1980s ******** is that?

OS X is far and above superior. I can burn discs, import video, have 20 browsers open, email, IM, etc. On the MINI with $100 of RAM. OS 9, even if it could run on the mini, would have crashed with any two of those things together.

RIP OS 9, and good riddance.
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 6, 2005, 01:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by OtisWild
OS 9 was clunky, platinum was ugly compared to Aqua (then again, what isn't?), the system would freeze when I burned a CD, and I would have to reboot periodically to clean out instabilities related to extensions and whatnot. I had to _pre-allocate_ memory for applications: what kind of 1980s ******** is that?

OS X is far and above superior. I can burn discs, import video, have 20 browsers open, email, IM, etc. On the MINI with $100 of RAM. OS 9, even if it could run on the mini, would have crashed with any two of those things together.

RIP OS 9, and good riddance.
Whatever are you talking about?? I have used the Macintosh since System 7 and Mac OS 9 was darn stable as were most pre clone and post clone Mac OSs. The system crashed when running certain shareware apps like MacAMP but allowed me to quit and save all open apps before restarting. Games could crash the system too, but the professional apps - the ones that made one money like Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator etc never brought my system down. I used to work with OS 8 and 9 with a combination of Photoshop 5, Quark 4 and ATM deluxe for printing for weeks without ever restarting the machine (a PowerMac G3 - beige tower).

Pre-allocating memory was not a typical thing for a user. Every app came with memory pre-allocated but you could increase that IF you needed. That could happen to Photoshop but not any other IIRC on any regular basis. Photoshop could choke on a big picture when applying effects on it.

OS 9 multi-tasked just fine, most apps were written well and didn't try any stunts with multitasking, but it was co-operative not pre-empetive so it worked differently. It didn't crash apps as in your world, but prevented app A from doing anything while app B was in the foreground.

You must have been doing something seriously wrong with your Mac back then, are lying or never use OS 9 (and are lying therefore).

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
Tyre MacAdmin
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Sep 6, 2005, 02:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
Whatever are you talking about?? I have used the Macintosh since System 7 and Mac OS 9 was darn stable as were most pre clone and post clone Mac OSs.
pfft... You're kidding... right?
     
OtisWild
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
The system crashed when running certain shareware apps like MacAMP but allowed me to quit and save all open apps before restarting.
And other shareware apps like, say, Word for Mac? Toast? App crashing and taking down the system was a big problem for normal people in pre-OSX/Win2k/Linux days. Not saying of those antediluvian OSes were much better or worse than each other in that aspect, but they were all pretty bad.

Don't forget: Pre OSX Macs had Finder viruses that would infest as soon as people inserted a 3.5" floppy. Wonder why teh Steeve got rid of those?

Games could crash the system too, but the professional apps - the ones that made one money like Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator etc never brought my system down. I used to work with OS 8 and 9 with a combination of Photoshop 5, Quark 4 and ATM deluxe for printing for weeks without ever restarting the machine (a PowerMac G3 - beige tower).
Wowee, all I was doing was using the Mac for what it was originally envisioned to be: A Computer For The Rest Of Us. That started with office apps (MS Office, yes), then grew to burning discs, web browsing, email, etc. etc.

Pre-allocating memory was not a typical thing for a user.
It sure was when you didn't have enough.

OS 9 multi-tasked just fine, most apps were written well and didn't try any stunts with multitasking, but it was co-operative not pre-empetive so it worked differently. It didn't crash apps as in your world, but prevented app A from doing anything while app B was in the foreground.
In other words, it was unacceptable. And if a system took too much CPU or memory time, it would crash, which when in the middle of a file backup burn, was inconvenient. Trying to burn and scan at the same time before OS X? Coaster city! Unacceptable!!

You must have been doing something seriously wrong with your Mac back then, are lying or never use OS 9 (and are lying therefore).
Let the dick size war commence!

My dick: I ran a campus computing lab in the early 1990s, featuring Mac si, cx, ci, and eventually LCs. My desk had a II, then a IIfx. I also helped folks with MS-DOS, Windows 3.0, then 3.1 with winsock, then 3.11. Those Macs ran all sorts of edumucational licensed copies of stuff including Metrowerks Pascal, Canvas, Hypercard, MS Office, Photoshop, Director (before the existence of Flash!), as well as Bolo. I installed the first officially-supported web browser, NCSA Mosaic, on those boxes, and ran Eudora the day POP was enabled on the campus mailsystem. Fetch was officially supported on-campus, and I did IRC using Homer. I migrated over 50 systems to System 7 (and backgraded them) before I left. And that doesn't even touch on the Unix and VAX stuff I ended up doing (I had to install Mosaic in my lab's SPARC LX /tmp partitions because it wasn't yet supported and I didn't have enough space to put it elsewhere after installing Netrek).

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, genius.

ps: My current box is a mini, pending the stoppage of Apple GPU suckage. My most recent macs, a Powerbook 667 that lasted for awhile but eventually died honorably, and a G4 Cube that isn't mint enough to restore, and which came with OS9, which I chucked as soon as OS X.0 came out.
( Last edited by OtisWild; Sep 6, 2005 at 03:12 PM. Reason: My current systems)
     
cla
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
Mac OS 9 was darn stable as were most pre clone and post clone Mac OSs. /.../ Illustrator etc never brought my system down./.../OS 9 multi-tasked just fine/.../It didn't crash apps as in your world/.../You must have been doing something seriously wrong with your Mac back then, are lying or never use OS 9 (and are lying therefore).
I think your history with OS 9 is one of the few with happy endings. Nevertheless, OS X is more stable, has better multitasking and better memory management.

I used to develop under OS 9 — a pure nightmare if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Restarting once a minute during a debug session wasn't unusual.

I think under the hood, OS 9 could be really embarrasing.
     
goMac
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by cla
I used to develop under OS 9 — a pure nightmare if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Restarting once a minute during a debug session wasn't unusual.
Not to mention if you miscoded and got stuck in an infinite loop in Mac OS 9... Mac OS X it's a simple issue to deal with. Mac OS 9, it's restart time!
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Once you wanted revolution, now you're the institution, how's it feel to be the man?
     
mAxximo
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Sep 6, 2005, 03:25 PM
 
pfft... You're kidding... right?
I had the same exact experience.

Weeks of uptime were normal to me in OS 9. And when I say “uptime” I'm talking about having the *same responsiveness* during the fourth week as during the first minute after a fresh restart. That was OS 9. One could feel most of the time when it was time to save everything and restart just before things got to the point of no return. Every 3-4 weeks I did it even if things were still working perfectly right.

Doing what I do with my computer, by the fourth week OS X can't even open a new Safari page without beachballing, and the HD is shooting sparks accessing VM for even the simplest of things like opening the Calculator. After Effects, Cinema4D, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, Flash, Dreamwever, Reason, Motion 2, DVD Studio Pro, etc. are all memory intensive applications that really put the machine to the test. After some time of intensive work on a project involving some of those, OS X becomes so unresponsive that I really stop caring about how much technically advanced it is compared to OS 9 and all that. In Panther I need a fresh restart almost daily to make it through the day, and I have 2GB RAM in that machine. Tiger maybe lasts two or three days before needing a reboot.

So in the end, for those of us whose Mac experience was as good as it gets, stability was neither a big selling point nor an excuse to let OS X's big usability and philosophical problems slip off the radar.
( Last edited by mAxximo; Sep 6, 2005 at 03:32 PM. )
     
Tyre MacAdmin
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Sep 6, 2005, 04:20 PM
 
I would say that OS 9 was the reason that I switched to Windows running the same apps without crashing... so I could get work done. OS X at the Tiger level is the reason I have moved back to the Mac for a majority of my workflow. OS 9 was unusable and crash prone every 30min the way I used it.
     
teknopimp
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Sep 6, 2005, 04:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS
Do you miss OS 9, with its quirks and strange little things that it did?
heck no. but i have to run 9 on my clamshell as it works very poorly with Panther. navigation in 9 in a pain in the azz.


acquiring Quark 6 running natively in X and upgrading to Panther were among the best things i've done to make life easier at work.

MacBook 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo | Clamshell iBook G3 366MHz | 22" Cinema Display | iPod Mini | iPod shuffle | AirPort Express | Mighty Mouse
     
__^^__
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Sep 6, 2005, 05:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac
Not to mention if you miscoded and got stuck in an infinite loop in Mac OS 9... Mac OS X it's a simple issue to deal with. Mac OS 9, it's restart time!
Oh and that quasi shell called MPW. Those were painful days...
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 6, 2005, 05:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by cla
I think your history with OS 9 is one of the few with happy endings. Nevertheless, OS X is more stable, has better multitasking and better memory management.

I used to develop under OS 9 — a pure nightmare if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Restarting once a minute during a debug session wasn't unusual.

I think under the hood, OS 9 could be really embarrasing.
Yeah I think it was and I'm glad. I enjoyed it and didn't feel like tearing my hear out when I used it like some people (I suppose)

@OtisWild

Nah, I think I'll just have a cigarette and a screwdriver and relax.

This isn't a dick contest, I never administered more than one Mac in the OS 9 days and I was pretty much the only user of it. Two others sometimes used it.

I do remember the machines in my local art college and used them on occation (although I preferred mine!) and they were hell. It seemed that when you let enough people use perfectly fine machines they'd just screw them up faster than you could say bananacake!

They ran OS 9 and they were a crash prone nightmare! I gave up using them on occation and remember using some colorful language at them. I was a big advocate for getting OS X on these machines ASAP. Today all is well at that college, running OS X Macs.

That doesn't mean that for me, and the way I administered my Mac OS 9 that it wasn't damn stable and ran well. It was and it did. For multiple users and security OS X is a godsend, of that there is no doubt and it has damn good multitasking.

However I traded a similarly powerful OS (for *my* needs as a singlu user who knows exactly how to administer a machine) for a UI nightmare and inconistency hell. I miss OS 9 because it worked for me better than OS X works for me.

Granted all the underpinnings and technology of OS X are far better than OS 9 and I appreciate that, but that doesn't mean that for a user OS 9 was significantly worse.

Come to think of it, if Apple had maintained a similarly powerful and high quality UI in OS X as it did in OS 9 I wouldn't have any major complaints about OS X at all. But it doesn't. That's why many of us miss OS 9.

For a person for whom that system worked very well and had a UI more sophisticated than anything before or since (IMO) the end of OS 9 was a loss. I became a Mac user *because* of the OS. And that OS was System 7. Today I'd have chosen Tiger, but next year Vista may just be the thing. The lines are blurring and the difference beteen Windows and Macintosh are diminishing. Asides from security and viruses Vista looks like a fine OS. It will run everything because everything is made for Windows and is an advanced OS architecture. OS X runs all the important apps, is secure and virus free, but is obscure and has a dubious UI. Not any better than Windows Vista anyway and marginally better than XP. Both Apple and MS have ditched spaciality. Computers are no fun anymore anyway. Just boring tools.

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
fisherKing
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Sep 6, 2005, 06:27 PM
 
a thought...
anyone who's ever done troubleshooting on mac os...
osx is a pleasure to work with, as opposed to 9.

extensions, control panels, the *shudder* chooser.
networking.
problem solving...conflict catcher anyone? (a great app, btw).

osx is so much more logical, obvious.
available...


for me, 9.2.2 was a peak experience....now blown away but 10.4 (which is still not perfect)
"At first, there was Nothing. Then Nothing inverted itself and became Something.
And that is what you all are: inverted Nothings...with potential" (Sun Ra)
     
goMac
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Sep 6, 2005, 06:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by __^^__
Oh and that quasi shell called MPW. Those were painful days...
Well, even excluding C/C++ (which was pretty gawd awful in OS 9), if I was coding in RealBasic or HyperTalk and I got caught in a loop, it was still restart time, even though those were interperated languages. That was a nice thing even about moving to Classic in OS X. If OS 9 "froze" you could just kill it without restarting.
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Once you wanted revolution, now you're the institution, how's it feel to be the man?
     
JLL
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Sep 7, 2005, 04:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
Whatever are you talking about?? I have used the Macintosh since System 7 and Mac OS 9 was darn stable as were most pre clone and post clone Mac OSs. The system crashed when running certain shareware apps like MacAMP but allowed me to quit and save all open apps before restarting. Games could crash the system too, but the professional apps - the ones that made one money like Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator etc never brought my system down. I used to work with OS 8 and 9 with a combination of Photoshop 5, Quark 4 and ATM deluxe for printing for weeks without ever restarting the machine (a PowerMac G3 - beige tower).
You must have been using the Bizarro versions.
JLL

- My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
     
JLL
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Sep 7, 2005, 04:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
I had the same exact experience.
I find it hard to believe that someone that experience so many problems with Mac OS X experienced so few problems with Mac OS 9.
JLL

- My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
     
Weyland-Yutani
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Sep 7, 2005, 08:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by JLL
You must have been using the Bizarro versions.
No I just used the official versions and not something I downloaded cracked off the internet.

cheers

W-Y

“Building Better Worlds”
     
SMacTech
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Sep 7, 2005, 08:52 AM
 
Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani
OS 9 multi-tasked just fine
This made me laugh. You mean it multi-tasked just fine when you clicked the mouse on a menu and held it down, and everything stopped? Or a modal dialog popped up ? I will stop there.
     
__^^__
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Sep 7, 2005, 10:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by JLL
I find it hard to believe that someone that experience so many problems with Mac OS X experienced so few problems with Mac OS 9.
I think they are afraid of letting go of the past.
     
Millennium
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Sep 7, 2005, 10:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by cla
Applying constant authentication to the computer domain could for instance mean a fingerprint mouse.
That only works until you life your finger off the mouse, though; then the connection is broken.

But let's look at the bank vault again, with the blind employee. Let us suppose that after he verifies your ID, he gives each of you a piece of string. He holds onto the other end of the strings and tugs them slightly; just enough to keep them taut, but not enough to impede your movement. As long as they're taut, the employee knows you're still there, but if they ever go limp (for example, if someone cuts them) then he knows something has happened and needs to ask if everything's all right. Basically, the idea is to key authentication to a physical token.

Let's try and translate this into computer terms, say with a small USB token. The token has an encryption key on it which ties it to the machine; you might be able to tie a key to multiple machines, but only keys which you've tied to a machine will work for that machine. Before you put in your password to log on, you insert the token into the machine (this is where front-mounted USB ports can be helpful). The machine takes your password and looks for the token. If it doesn't find a token than things work as they do now. If it does find the token, then it notes the token's presence, perhaps by writing a "ticket" to the key.

From that point on, as long as the token (or "key") has not been removed, then the machine can consult it whenever it needs to authenticate. It should still throw up a dialog when an app wants to take an action which would require authentication, to make sure the user wants it to happen, but this would be a simple OK/Cancel dialog; no password would be needed.

If the key is ever removed, then the constant authentication is broken: it's assumed that somebody left the keyboard and took the key with them. At that point, all of the tickets on that key expire, and so users need to enter their passwords when authentication is needed. We might also make the tickets expire after some long period of time (eight hours, perhaps) to guard against the situation where a key is left in accidentally. Most people aren't on their computers for longer than eight hours a day, and even fewer for more than sixteen, so this has people entering their passwords at most twice a day unless they keep pulling the key. That's not unreasonable. The expiration time might be set lower if a user wants, but I don't think setting it any higher would be a good idea.

If a key is put into the machine when users are already logged in, they may bind their sessions to the key, but they must enter their password to do so. Once they've done that, the key works for them as it does for someone who used it for logging into the machine. This can also be used to re-bind sessions to the key if it's pulled accidentally.

What I've described here is extremely similar to Kerberos, a style of Unix authentication which OSX already supports (Windows has embraced and extended it as well, in typical Microsoft fashion). In fact, I took "ticket" concept and the eight-hour time limit from that system. Kerberos was initially provide single sign-on for networks, and it's pretty popular in that context. I've never seen it applied to single machines with USB keys before, nor have I seen it used for this "constant authentication", but at least in theory it seems reasonably sound. Can anyone else here weigh in on possible problems with this?

Assuming it works, let's consider this in light of a possible range of settings...
  • Good - The token is optional. If it's not in when you log in, then authentication works as it does now. If you pull the key the tickets expire, so you'll have to enter your password next time the machine needs to authenticate. This is basically the state I described above.
  • Better - As Good, but if you log in with a key and the key is pulled, you're logged out automatically (as is everyone else bound to that key). Alternatively, their sessions might be "frozen" in a state where its processes are saved but don't run; to get back into the sessions they have to enter their passwords again. I don't know the technical feasibility of freezing a session off the top of my head, though.
  • Best - As with Better, but the key is mandatory; everyone must have one in order to log in.
How does this sound? It still brings up a dialog for sensitive actions, but reduces it to a simple OK/Cancel. This much is still needed so that the user can deny sensitive actions that he doesn't want to happen, but it removes most of the password requirements by providing an alternate means of authentication.
You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
     
Millennium
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Sep 7, 2005, 10:59 AM
 
By the way, going back to the original topic, do I miss OS9? I suppose I do sometimes, but it's like missing an ex-girlfriend. I had some good times with OS9; many good times, in fact. Of course I'm going to miss them a bit from time to time, because they are good memories. But just as with ex-girlfriends, OS9 wasn't perfect, and so not all of the memories are good ones. In any case, I've found a new love and moved on. I still value the good memories from the old relationship, but I don't want to go back; that relationship is over and it ended for good reasons.
You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
     
mAxximo
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Sep 7, 2005, 11:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by JLL
I find it hard to believe that someone that experience so many problems with Mac OS X experienced so few problems with Mac OS 9.
It's only logical. All of my problems with OS X are related to its shoddy craftmanship, stupid decisions, dumb GUI, sub-par usability and anti-Mac philosophy.

Stuff you didn't find in OS 9.

What's so hard to believe.
     
mAxximo
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Sep 7, 2005, 11:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
How does this sound? It still brings up a dialog for sensitive actions, but reduces it to a simple OK/Cancel. This much is still needed so that the user can deny sensitive actions that he doesn't want to happen, but it removes most of the password requirements by providing an alternate means of authentication.
LOVED IT.
Give me the key, where is it?????
     
goMac
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Sep 7, 2005, 11:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
How does this sound? It still brings up a dialog for sensitive actions, but reduces it to a simple OK/Cancel. This much is still needed so that the user can deny sensitive actions that he doesn't want to happen, but it removes most of the password requirements by providing an alternate means of authentication.
Isn't that the security of Windows?
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Once you wanted revolution, now you're the institution, how's it feel to be the man?
     
Millennium
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Sep 7, 2005, 12:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac
Isn't that the security of Windows?
It is a step back in some ways, but it doesn't reach Windows-level security, because Windows lets you even remove the dialog. Once the dialog goes away, sensitive actions can happen with no user intervention at all, and that's how the worms can do their work.

After a little more thought, I realized that the proposed system needs one other refinement: users cannot automatically do something which would require authentication as a different user. This should make sense, but it has repercussions in a few areas which you may not like. The most common case where this pops up would be that a non-admin user would have to provide an administrator's name and password when trying to modify /Applications or /Library. However, it also affects things like Fast User Switching.

Once you switch away from a user, under normal situations and even the key system I mentioned before, you can't assume that the user hasn't left, and that's true even with the key situation as it currently stands. In fact, it's pretty safe to assume that the user has left; after all, now another user wants to do stuff. Therefore, if we have multiple people authenticating to the same key, we'd have to expire the ticket for any user who switched away via FUS, and you'd need a password to switch back. Otherwise, it's as though the blind bank employee gave you just one string and expected you both to hold it; one of you could let go and he wouldn't know about it.

You could remedy this by requiring that each user have their own key (one string for each of you). If you switch away from your account but you don't pull your key, then the computer assumes you're still there. The disadvantage to this is that each user needs their own key, and each key takes up a USB port, so it's easy to see where a family might need to stick a multiport hub in front of their computer.

In any case, mAxximo, the system we've worked out does not yet exist. The parts are pretty much there, but they still have to be put together, and right now that's a task beyond my abilities.
You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
     
SMacTech
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Sep 7, 2005, 12:37 PM
 
All of my problems with OS X is related to my shoddy, stupid, dumb, sub-par anti-Mac philosophies.
FTFY
     
mAxximo
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Sep 7, 2005, 12:56 PM
 
Every village has its idiot, right SMacTech? Keep it up.
     
OreoCookie
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Sep 7, 2005, 01:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by mAxximo
LOVED IT.
Give me the key, where is it?????
Go to a Windows machine, preferably up to and including 2k. Fire up IE. Visit various pages with certificates, ssl connections and such.

Really annoying and does zit about security.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
__^^__
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Sep 7, 2005, 01:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
Let's try and translate this into computer terms, say with a small USB token. The token has an encryption key on it which ties it to the machine; you might be able to tie a key to multiple machines, but only keys which you've tied to a machine will work for that machine. Before you put in your password to log on, you insert the token into the machine (this is where front-mounted USB ports can be helpful). The machine takes your password and looks for the token. If it doesn't find a token than things work as they do now. If it does find the token, then it notes the token's presence, perhaps by writing a "ticket" to the key.
Very impractical. Each machine needs it's own token. Why not use Kerberos?
     
 
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