What is the worst OS X version you've used?

[ojfd]

OS9 was a hot mess. Crashed several times while I was at school in the lab and lost progress.

If someone ran the Mac like a baboon, maybe it was a mess. For me it was the most stable system at that time. If not the internet requirements, I'd be still running it today.

That thing couldn’t handle Pro Tools and other Pro apps without kernel panicking regularly.

Nonsense! If you knew what you were doing, used correct DAE/DSI combo, observed correct slot order and didn't use illegal versions, it was stable. One has to wonder how music industry managed to produce anything with it or how the whole Mac based publishing industry got anything done.
Also, I haven't seen any kernel panic in OS7-OS9. What are you talking about?

 

[QuarterSwede]

If someone ran the Mac like a baboon, maybe it was a mess. For me it was the most stable system at that time. If not the internet requirements, I'd be still running it today.


Nonsense! If you knew what you were doing, used correct DAE/DSI combo, observed correct slot order and didn't use illegal versions, it was stable. One has to wonder how music industry managed to produce anything with it or how the whole Mac based publishing industry got anything done.
Also, I haven't seen any kernel panic in OS7-OS9. What are you talking about?

These were legit copies in a world class school. Wasn’t my machine.

 

[loby]

Well. Just for the sake of historical accuracy:

While their inspiration for this change might have been iOS, in reality Apple finally made system preferences look like the preferences panel in any other normal app on the Mac. Finally, users can see the list of all panels at all times in the sidebar instead of constantly switching back and forth between individual panels and the main view.

There's nothing iOS-specific in this approach. If anything, iOS acquired this UI from the standard look of the preferences panels of Mac apps, not the other way around.

This change was long overdue, and I submitted requests for this change to Apple way before the iPhone even existed.

Sure as hell System Settings still needs a lot of work. But it was a step in the right direction.

Would have been nice to have an option to go back to the old preference windows during transition like Windows did for years.

 

[Razorpit]

Also, I haven't seen any kernel panic in OS7-OS9. What are you talking about?

Wasn’t the release version of OS 9 terrible? I wasn’t a Mac user like I am now, but I seem to remember it being a hot mess until a few patches later. Never as bad as 10.0, but needed a lot of work to finally get it right.

I first used OS 9 on an automated optical inspector for circuit boards. It was amazing for the time when compared to PC’s, but had a lot of issues during a day of production work. That was over 20 years and two kids ago. My brain is a little foggy on that stuff now. 😄

 

[Macbookey]

My Mac journey began at Panther. Everyone’s experience will vary based on a multitude of factors, but Mavericks and Catalina were the biggest dumpster fires for me personally. Tons of issues that made using the Mac suck.

 

[throAU]

In my experience (started with Leopard) - Lion.

I can see why (and what apple was trying to do), but it was a little ahead of the hardware on sale or in the field at the time - it really needed an SSD; if you were running it on spinning disk, especially with a low amount of RAM such as 2-4 GB which was common at the time, it was a dumpster fire.

Way, way slower than snow leopard on the same hardware, and a lot of the new features (e.g., full screen) were half baked.

Mountain lion was much, much better.

 

[loby]

In my experience (started with Leopard) - Lion.

I can see why (and what apple was trying to do), but it was a little ahead of the hardware on sale or in the field at the time - it really needed an SSD; if you were running it on spinning disk, especially with a low amount of RAM such as 2-4 GB which was common at the time, it was a dumpster fire.

Way, way slower than snow leopard on the same hardware, and a lot of the new features (e.g., full screen) were half baked.

Mountain lion was much, much better.

I totally agree. Once I put in an SSD and up the RAM in my MacBook Pro 2010, OS X Lion ran well and I did not have much problems. Without doing the upgrades, Lion was a problem.