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I don't think today's Apple understands what made the early OSX so great and people fall in love with it.

And I am reminded every time I see a portion of the screen visible underneath the new dock design. It's unbelievably sloppy, its only raison d'être being parity with iOS.
I agree. It lacks the uniform polish of older versions. It all started with Yosemite. Mavericks was last version of
Mac OS X, but Snow Leopard was the best visually. I mean come on...What I would do to see Snow Leopard on a 5k Retina display!

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I remember this. It was early high school and these Mac-obsessed weirdos in my video media class had been freaking out about this for a while. They upgraded the few PowerMac G4’s we had in the studio and we’re showing me all these fancy animations and effects. Well, it was those two fanboys that ended up turning me to Macs and I learned how to do basic editing in Final Cut Pro, using video pulled over FireWire from our MiniDV camcorders. Later on I continued using Macs in labs in college but it wasn’t until I was a few years in college that I could afford to buy myself a MacBook Pro. It was my first Mac, and the main reason I waited was because Apple had switched to Intel and I could bootcamp Windows if I needed it, which I actually did need it several times for stupid proprietary software in college. Now I just bootcamp for games, and had actually planned to build myself a gaming PC last year for the first time since high school, but the chip shortages have kept that from happening.
 
Got on board with Panther & my first mac, an eMac G4. Coming from XP and its never ending security problems and refusal to stay configured the way I wanted it beyond the next Windows Update, OSX was the “like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell".


Lost count of how many times I must have watched this promo piece before marching down to PC World (UK’s equivalent of Best Buy at the time), asking for the eMac G4 and the black, boxed copy of OSX Panther on the shelf.

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18 years later and I’m still in with the Mac/iOS/iPadOS eco-system with no desire or inclination to leave.

Happy Birthday OSX! I still loves ya.
 
Like many of the designers and engineers I work with now they've lost a key ability... their solutions to new features and challenges is additive... add more components, more code, etc... because there's "no cost today" to add more (and it's good job security)... however, you see the impact... more complexity (inside and out), less stability. This is true @ AAP, GOOG, MS, FB, AMZ, NF... basically everywhere

Big Sur (with some issues) feels like it's reversing the trend... I think a breather needs to be taken and a reductionist, de-complexing, stability mentality needs to dominate the tech community (kind of like the way folks though when they were resource constrained).
 
I remember, I paid £14 for the DVD and nine "rights to copy". Basically, you could order the DVD for £14 and had the right to install it on one machine. If you wanted to install on two to ten machines, you added 1 to 9 "rights to copy" to your order. Cost the exact same £14. And the DVD was exactly the same. I suppose if you had more than ten Macs, you would have wanted a spare DVD anyway, in case the first one breaks. And I suppose Apple's lawyers figured out a reason why they had to do this.
 
you know, the best thing in macos is the consistency. the main concept of the UI did not change throughout the years. so if i would timetravel with an mac back to the 80s, and choose a random macos classic user, je/she would not have any issues to get around in macos11.
yes, i loved the water droplets and i still miss the nextstep styled spinning disk, but the consistency is amazing.
That consistency is something only Apple can envision and do. Truly timeless products in any time and situation. Just like how the Apple Watch looks great at grand dinner ball, at the gym, at a construction site, and at a office. Apple products are just designed for any situation and context. My deepest respects
 
Tiger to Snow Leopard, was the best period for me. Could easily run on machines that were 10 years old. The UI design was pretty consistant throughout. None of the added bloat that is sadly present in recent releases.

Would be great if during installation you could really customise the process and have the option to remove all gimmicks and fluff. Taking it back to be a fast and speedy system that actually aids productivity.
 
It was a climb up and up until 2011. Then it was ebb and flow. Now we are at a low point, in my opinion. Maybe someday a design that's meant to guide the user while not getting in the way will return. It's the little things that make the difference and many of those are botched in the current system.
 
I remember installing the Public Beta on my iMac, OSX ran incredibly slowly but it was very futuristic. Its a shame some of the shine has gone though i do like OS11's doubling down on round rectangles for everything, such a core part of MacOS UI since the earliest of days.
 
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