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Anyone else miss OS 9 (or 8 for that matter)?

kwajo.com

kwajo.com

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2002
895
0
Bay of Fundy
I know I do. I love OS X, don't get me wrong, but I loved the look of the Classic system, and I had zero problems with reliability on them. There was something that seemed very comfortable about the old OS, and everything was super-fast in UI responsiveness. Not to mention the fact that the GUI was neutral in colour so it was easy to focus on your work and to see colours more precisely. I know you can get skins for OS X to make it look similar, but it just isn't the same (like trying to make windows look like a mac).

I don't know, maybe I'm alone in my OS preferences (for example I adored BeOS, which didn't turn out to be very popular), but I figure there must be some other people that are willing to voice their love for the old Mac systems.
 

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OS 9 was before my time, but from what I've used of it, I miss it a little. I want to be able to play sim city natively in OS X. :p

I felt clumsy when I was using OS 9, though.. probably because I know 0 about it. :eek:
 
I have to use OS8 at work and I do not miss it at all when I get home.

OS9 is cute and retro but, ultimately, useless to me.
 
Yeah, I miss app crashes that take down the OS and so need a restart...;)

I do miss the Extension Manager and other System controls like that.
 
I miss the logical file structure: the revolutionary concept that you could only have one file in one place at one time. Sort of vaguely similar to Reality, really. Always made sense to me.
 
bartelby said:
Yeah, I miss app crashes that take down the OS and so need a restart...;)
Click to expand...


I hear that a lot, and I must have been lucky because OS 9 never crashed on me, so I never had to do restarts or anything. You're right though, protected memory is a brilliant thing.
 
kwajo.com said:
I hear that a lot, and I must have been lucky because OS 9 never crashed on me, so I never had to do restarts or anything. You're right though, protected memory is a brilliant thing.
Click to expand...

OS 9 was pretty stable. 8 wasn't though. I used to run Digidesign's Session on 7.6 and that bugger crashed a lot!!!!
 
Maybe I'm missing something here... no one is stopping anyone from using Mac OS 8/9, so if you want to use it, use it.

I use Mac OS 8.6 all the time. Why? Because I can get software for it for next to nothing compared to the price of the same software for Mac OS X. As part of my work is to be versed in many different types of software, trying to have current copies of all the titles I need for Mac OS X would be prohibitively expensive.

As for stability issues... I don't have any on my systems. I don't recall the last time I had either of my main Mac OS 8.6 systems crash, and thanks to Rhapsody taking over memory management for 8.6 in Blue Box, that installation is rock solid. I also don't have issues with any of the apps I use in Classic on the two systems that I have Classic installed on.

Frankly, as a service provider for Apple systems, I won't tolerate crashing or flakiness on any of my own systems. The last thing I want when I'm on my systems is to troubleshoot a problem (of any type).

For those who think there isn't anything you can do on an old Mac OS 8/9 system, I've been using my old PowerBook 3400c (running 8.6) to learn 3D modeling...

1017-collection.jpg

I'd say that Mac OS 8.6 (and all the apps that run on it) still has some life left in it. Generally, the people who propagate the idea that non-current software is obsolete are the people who make money selling new software (and hardware for that matter). Old software and hardware is just as able to perform the same tasks today that they did when they were new and cost thousands of dollars... the only difference is that you can now get that stuff for a few dollars these days. :D
 
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Oh I agree, no-one is stopping me from using OS 9 or 8, but I miss being able to boot it on newer machines. I still own a couple older ones that will run them just fine, but I really enjoyed the early 2000s when I could choose between booting OS X and OS 9 on the same system, To me that was the ideal, one machines for both systems, rather than needing to operate two all the time.
 
kwajo.com said:
I know I do. I love OS X, don't get me wrong, but I loved the look of the Classic system, and I had zero problems with reliability on them. ...
Click to expand...
Looks and stability aside, the test is functionality. One area in which MacOS X apps severely lag MacOS 9/8/7 apps is the integration of text and graphics. This is the thing that attracted users to the first Mac. Up through MacOS 9, it pretty much "just worked." Now, you have to futz with graphics that are inserted into documents. In some cases, it is now a real pain.
 
No, don't miss it anymore.

The only thing I missed what that on my old iMac G3 I had installed a Voodoo 2 graphics card that wasn't supported in OSX, so I couldn't use it for games anymore.
 
Yeah, I miss OS 9. in fact, I have one of my computers (iBook 500mhz) right now set up to use it. I really love that greyscale mode and I can work in documents in black and white so it's easier to read in direct sunlight (color is lousy here).

On the other hand, I love OS X too but I need OS 9 often esp. doing PROMT MT (Russian-English machine translation).
 
I do miss Starship Titanic too!

Hmmmmmmmm...

*runs upstairs and reinstalls OS 9 on Quicksilver*
 
Well since i have found a plugin for starcraft to run in OSX it has become completely obbsolete, so much that i removed it from my iBook. So NO
 
Alright... I admit I kinda do miss it a little. I was always using it in elementary school and my dad had a beige G3 PowerMac that ran OS 9. But if I remember correctly, OS 9 wasn't nearly as easy to use as OS X. No comparison there. But the nostalgia... :eek:
 
I miss Mac OS 9 only for some of the wacky games that were made for it - most of which were abandoned by the developers and never ported to Mac OS X. :(

However, I don't miss the instability issues all Mac OS releases prior to Mac OS X had. Some of the Classic apps I ran on my iMac G5 were particularly crashy, and took the whole Classic Environment down with them when they crashed.
 
The only thing I miss, is the unbelievably simple ease of use it had... i.e. just copy the System Folder onto another disk, make sure it is blessed and reboot off that other disk!!
Oh, and I do miss the old 3D games.... especially 3Dfx.... I loved my Voodoo 5500 :)
 
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