I find it amusing that many former Mac users here, now running OS X, pretend that the performance issue with X and its questionable if attractive interface is the inevitable result of going with a stable UNIX, foundation. If this were true, one would expect that Linux systems would be slower on Macs than MacOS 9.x, but this is hardly the case. MacOS 9.x is not really a lean, mean OS---it is fairly inefficient. Many Linux installations on fairly old hardware (604-based) actually run Linux quite a bit faster than MacOS 9.x while conveying the same level of stability and multitasking as X. The fact that X is much slower than 9.x is a travesty by comparison, stemming from Apple's obstinate refusal to even consider a monolithic (non-Mach) kernel to (far more substantially) creating such a horrifically slow user interface as Aqua, on the sluggish and overengineered Quartz foundation.
Granted, while Linux shows that preemptive multitasking and stability do not come at the Great Cost to performance that Apple pretends, the usability of Linux isn't so hot. Quite true; this is why I'd pick a Mac over lean, mean and fast Linux box anyday. But by the same measure, the glitzy Aqua interface really isn't in the same league in terms of usability as the original Mac interface either, and despite self-accolades (unproven of course) that X is better for novices (for only the most rudimentary tasks of course), the original Mac interface is far more polished and consistent than Aqua, if less PrEtTy.
This doesn't stem from the much ballyhooed "fear of change" that some imagine (unproven again) but from a central change in how Apple designs its interfaces. Apple USED to employ human factors professionals to test every aspect of its interface, from abstract theory to concrete implementation. What isn't well known is that Apple fired their world famous human factors people back in the mid-90s (under Amelio). The Second Comings of Jobs brought back leading edge industrial design of the boxes and some talent marketing/graphics people, but He made no effort to restore any of the talent that was lost when Apple was going under. Frankly, the Mac interface has gone down hill since MacOS 8.6, and as attractive as the new industrial design was, it was sometimes seriously lacking in usability as well, such as the infamous hockey puck mouse. The new Apple doesn't test with users anymore, not in creating the initial constructs behind the interface (very instrumental in the first days of the Mac) nor in testing even a single idea out on real users before it ships. (It is *much* harder, sometimes impossible economically, to change something after it has shipped or even been coded). Apple does public "beta testing"; that is about it, which is virtually worthless in enhancing the usability of a system: it is too sporadic, utilizes self-selected (techie loudmouths, for example) users, and inconsistent in demonstrating the real need for a given improvement (a "feedback" form is just opinion and you can't really rank the seriousness of an issue except by frequency count; a usability test provides objective error data, but since Apple doesn't do these, they collect *nothing* objective).
Why is everyone so obsessed with booting 9? Don't they know it is unstable and ancient to the core? Yes, sadly they do; but the interface is X is a tough sell to those used to cutting edge usability, where a polished interface is more important than anything else. We have lost metadata, relative pathnames, the ability to create bootdisks through drag and drop, a simple and elegant implementation of the Desktop metaphor that actually remembered where you put your icons, etc. We got greater stability but now also have forced file extensions, a thorny command line that wants to get fsck'd way too often for my taste, a Dock with a confusing jumble of icons which doesn't even comply to Fitt's Law, destructive and constructive icon-less window widgets all mixed together, a broken Desktop where you are forced to use a bookmark/channel model because user files are so deeply buried, a UI where you can't scratch your ass without getting permission, and a countless other inconsistently implemented UI elements that JUST PLAIN WORKED on the original MacOS. What a waste; this is the cost of Apple marketing, not of increased stability, folks.
I have been waiting for a modern OS version of the MacOS for over a decade. What we GOT is NOT it. There was never any GOOD reason to go with the untested Aqua interface except marketing, pure and simple, and that is a very bad basis for building a user interface. Ironically, Apple has already spent more time working on X and its interface longer than they had in dreaming up the original Mac interface and refining it into the elegant MacOS 6.x GUI, despite having only scanty details on what a GUI should be like from the Xerox PARC work (did you know Xerox didn't even have dropdown menus? Or icons that mapped to actual files? Or could even overlap windows!? Apple created all of that for the first time in such a small amount of time. They had the right people for the job back then). Despite having had as much time to create Aqua as the entire original Mac GUI----and working from two *complete* GUIs to base it off of, the NeXT and the Mac GUIs---as well as a completely working code base for the OS that has had decades of enhancements and improvements, Apple managed to release a GUI so utterly lacking in the small details that made the original Mac interface so absolutely amazing. We could have had both top notch usability AND stability/preemptive multitasking; we got only the later. But hey, isn't it pretty?
So yes, some of us care very much about what happens to MacOS 9.x and want to keep our options open for booting it. X has promise but it is NOT the Mac. Let me boot 9.x for work and play with X as a toy until Apple figures out (again) that what made the Mac great in the first place was cutting edge science, not pretty (slow) icons and gumball graphics.
