Cool! Started using Macs when Mac OS 7 was the latest OS. From there it went downhill in stability until OS X came along.
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Here's What Your Favorite Mac Apps Would Have Looked Like in 1999
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The old mc os's were so much more user customisable than now , I had almost as much fun making the os look crazy as doing stuff on it
We can hope, but an entire generation is being raised to believe artificial digital scarcity is somehow real. Loot crates, monthly subscriptions for software, NFTs, the Metaverse… the only reason there hasn’t been a big consumer push into AR yet is because someone hasn’t figured out how to addict people to buying useless meta-world versions of real-world things.
Why are falsehoods worth noting? It’s not symmetric multiprocessing like modern machines, but the second processor was not sitting there doing nothing.
Amen. Apps like the Mail app on Monterrey are just plain awful to use. Too much monochromatic flat design, everything blends together and to me takes more work to navigate and take things in. Aside from heavy skeumorphic elements like Rolodex contacts and stitched leather that I could keep or leave, the overall interface designs in iOS and OS had a near-perfect, well-balanced combination of intuitiveness, simplicity, and artistic flair just before the introduction of iOS7 and flat design that blew function to hell for the sake of new forms.
OS 8 through Skeumorphism were the best Mac OS UIs. I’ve liked a lot of Ive hardware designs but his flat UI push hurt Mac and iOS a lot.
You mean System 7?
I started with 7.5.3. Miss bombs and sad Macs, rose tinted glasses for sure.
I believe 7.6 was officially named Mac OS 7.6. The 'Pedia says 7.5.1 had "Mac OS" on the boot screen, but I haven't been able to verify due to owning exclusively New World machines.You mean System 7?
I started with 7.5.3. Miss bombs and sad Macs, rose tinted glasses for sure.
Look at that browser! Dedicated always visible back, forward, reload and bookmarks buttons. That always stayed in the same location.
I would give my right foot for that!
I would give my right foot for that!
It’s the only browser I have been using for years. Try updating to the latest versions and you’ll see what I mean. No more fixed back and forward buttons, no refresh button on the iPad, no bookmarks accessible with one tab, even the address/search bar doesn’t have a fixed location anymore. It’s all « dynamic ».
Basically my entire comment was targeted at Safari.
Something like 7.5.1 or so removed “Macintosh” from the boot screen, and 7.6 then added the newer, bigger splash screen.
The change to Mac OS was in part due to clones — you weren’t necessarily running this OS on a “Macintosh”.
You’re all quite correct about the shockingly bad instability of the old 8 & 9 os’s , I recall having to do a hard restart every day! Often many times a day ?
X is so ridiculously rock solid we’re spoiled …oh you young ‘uns ? in my day …etc
The last crash I had was about 2 years ago and it was all my fault , not the macs
X is so ridiculously rock solid we’re spoiled …oh you young ‘uns ? in my day …etc
The last crash I had was about 2 years ago and it was all my fault , not the macs
It's... beautiful.
Sometimes we forget just how incredibly awful GUIs have become today.
"Hey, how about we take out all the visual cues people use to know what they can click on, just hide them until the user happens to mouse over it?" "Great! And while we're at it, let's make everything translucent, so people won't even be able to pick up on the minimal ones that are still there!" "Perfect! Any other way we can **** on our users?" "Oh, I've got LOTS of ideas!"
Sometimes we forget just how incredibly awful GUIs have become today.
"Hey, how about we take out all the visual cues people use to know what they can click on, just hide them until the user happens to mouse over it?" "Great! And while we're at it, let's make everything translucent, so people won't even be able to pick up on the minimal ones that are still there!" "Perfect! Any other way we can **** on our users?" "Oh, I've got LOTS of ideas!"
Try Firefox. You can make it do what you want. It's been my primary browser for years because of that.
Hint: Customize the toolbar in the View menu > Toolbars > Customize Toolbar... And remove all "flexible space".
You might want to do that. I’m still trying to adapt to the new ”let’s merge every controller into one place philosophy” There is an option to revert the tabs back to the old non-compact style though. But on the iPad, the refresh button is still gone, so is the bookmarks button. Very annoying.
update: I just discovered that iPadOS 15.2 fixes the annoying thing that you have to navigate out of the bookmarks subfolders every time you wish to hide the sidebar. Great! Still, a bit weird that the show/hide button switches places to the left and right side of the sidebar. Guess they really want to keep things dynamic and surprising.
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I'm going to sound very out of group here but even though I love my Mac Mini M1 running Monterey OS, watching this experiment made me realized how badly I really want back Mac OS 9 in my life. It's like a revelation. Now I can understand a friend of mine that said to me, he needed Windows XP in his life and I start laughing. I regret that laugh now… I require Mac OS 9 now. It was so focused on working and less focused on aesthetics. And with the broadband speed of today, it will be so flawlessly good working with it! I remember how I loved to work with the system extensions and theme customizations. Oh, man… Good old days… Now I'm 47 and believe it or not I'm thinking of my PowerMac 6100 as if it was one of my kids.
How ironic is the fact that iOS and even OSX is additionally tasked with offering so much more actions than 10 years ago, yet...the interface is flatter and simpler (i.e., more vague and less intuitively obvious) than 10 years ago?
The reason the operating systems offer so much more is because...app and OS designers have to design and can't just sit around not inventing and trying to innovate. Just like beavers have to build dams and ditch diggers need to dig ditches to survive. Then, sadly and unfortunately, the reason so much of our interfaces have been unnecessarily toyed, toggled, and massaged is because...interface designers have to design.