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Which Mac OS version did you enjoy the most?

  • 1-5

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • System 6

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • System 7

    Votes: 9 6.0%
  • Mac OS 8

    Votes: 5 3.3%
  • Mac OS 9

    Votes: 5 3.3%
  • Cheetah

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Puma

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Jaguar

    Votes: 4 2.7%
  • Panther

    Votes: 10 6.7%
  • Tiger

    Votes: 42 28.0%
  • Leopard

    Votes: 73 48.7%

  • Total voters
    150
Tiger for me.

The original Mac OS was (in my opinion) complete and total gash and was instrumental in me concluding back in the day that Macs were little more than toys. Clunky multitasking (when it had it), no ability to really delve into the OS to fix anything - as an IT professional it drove me round the twist. I speak as someone who had to support a Mac colony in our organisation; the day I finally able to ethnically cleanse them was a great day.

Then many years on I was issued with a dual boot original MBP with Windows 2003 Server and Tiger. I had every intention of never using the OSX partition but increasingly found myself booting into it to "do something quickly" (i.e. read email, browse t'interweb). Gradually the "do something quickly" suite of apps got bigger and bigger and eventually I found I'd been converted without actually ever realising it!

Who knows, maybe earlier versions of OSX would have seen the same response from me - but Tiger was what we got for the Intel transition and without that I would never have had a Mac in the first place, so Tiger is my "favourite" OS.
 
The original Mac OS was (in my opinion) complete and total gash and was instrumental in me concluding back in the day that Macs were little more than toys.
I knew when I saw the Macintosh 128K that the world of computers would never be the same. What Apple did with 128KB of RAM was incredible.

The Mac was not intended to operate in your IT world. It was meant to be an appliance. Apple clearly didn't get everything right. But saying the early Macintosh OS was a "complete and total gash" is akin to saying the Wright Flyer I was a "complete and total gash".

S-
 
The first Mac that I used was a 1986 Macintosh Plus ~ with Word and Excel but no internet :) 10" black & white screen, I loved using that Mac and the dot matrix printer that worked so well with it. Perforated paper sheets and all.
Probably System 7 but I'm not sure. The instruction manuals took up more space than the Mac and printer combined.

I voted for Panther because after many years with Windows it was a breath of fresh air. Tiger was very enjoyable and Leopard is great.
 
I voted for Tiger because of Spotlight which changed the way I work and of course for the flawlessness (never had a problem with tiger)
Panther was great because of expose which is such a great and simple feature of the os!
 
Tiger for me.

The original Mac OS was (in my opinion) complete and total gash and was instrumental in me concluding back in the day that Macs were little more than toys. Clunky multitasking (when it had it), no ability to really delve into the OS to fix anything - as an IT professional it drove me round the twist. I speak as someone who had to support a Mac colony in our organisation; the day I finally able to ethnically cleanse them was a great day.

well thats fair enough i guess, if you hate it you hate it. thats just how it works. i guess i can somewhat being to understand how hard it would be to use from a work environment point of view. i grew up using Finder 4 through until now. my most precious "memories" and moments are using either Mac OS 7, 8, or 9 so i am VERY accustomed to using them intensly. i cant quite understand how you could find them hard to use and monitor but i guess nothing is perfect.

what do you mean by 'delving' into the OS? please verify.

Then many years on I was issued with a dual boot original MBP with Windows 2003 Server and Tiger. I had every intention of never using the OSX partition but increasingly found myself booting into it to "do something quickly" (i.e. read email, browse t'interweb). Gradually the "do something quickly" suite of apps got bigger and bigger and eventually I found I'd been converted without actually ever realising it!

what a random machine to be given, especially if your working in a mainly Windoze environment! i guess you wouldnt notice using OSX that much, especially when it integrates so perfectly into everything. ive said it before, but one of the main reasons why i think OSX (including the Finder, the default applications and the System) as a whole is so good is mainly because you hardly even realise your using it. your never waiting for the system to respond, or for windows to open. it just seems to be so snappy etc. but yea...

Who knows, maybe earlier versions of OSX would have seen the same response from me - but Tiger was what we got for the Intel transition and without that I would never have had a Mac in the first place, so Tiger is my "favourite" OS.

the original OSX was quite buggy, but very pleasing. the second was slowly moving along. the third was terrific and when tiger was released it was just heaven. its amazing to see the transition from "just another OS" to something that is perfect. (IMO).

:)
 
OS 8, great upgrade from 7.5.5

Then 10.3 Panther for Expose, and sidebar. Could run OS 9 apps.

Now 10.5 for it's UI, Time Machine and small but convenient changes/improvements made around the place.
But mainly support for all modern apps that need at least 10.4 to run.
 
That came out on 10.3 :D

Son of a... you're right! Yes, I meant Panther, then. I still remember upgrading my mom's iBook from Jaguar to it (even though Leopard was out), and Expose just blowing her mind. It's the single best OS X feature ever, in my opinion.
 
Panther: it had the Finder sidebar, and Exposé...and was the ultimate in lightweight OSX for me. Also, it was the last one to have a "rounded" Apple logo in the Apple Menu :p Totally usable on a 350mhz Sawtooth G4 tower, and flew on a Dual G5 :)
 
Leopard

I've owned Macs since Mac OS 8, but I think the "classic" OS was terrible and PowerPC's were the problem.

What do you base that assumption on? PowerPC CPUs were actually very good for their time. Anyway, the assumption that PowerPCs were to blame completely ignores the fact that PowerPC computers are still running the latest version of Mac OS X today.
 
Pardon me, but nothing was fast enough to use on a G3.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I do know OS 9 was a great, fast OS for the G3's.

Anyway, Tiger is my favorite. It's the OS that came with my first brand new Mac, and the OS I still use today. Everything fits together, especially in the graphics area. More stable then Leopard (IMO) and easier to run on my PPC machines.

I ran Leopard on my iBook G4 for about a month. Then "downgraded" to Tiger and never looked back. :D
 
NeXTStep 3.3 :D

I'm only slightly kidding, NeXTStep has almost everything OSX does, but it ran on a cpu 1/100th the speed and it ran well, rock solid, no crashes, windows move and minimize like butter, programs just pop into being when launched no dock bouncing or delay.

It's kind of scary to think that in 10 yrs the OS went from comfortably fitting on a 120mb drive to needing 8gigs for a minimal install.

yeah yeah yeah, living in the past, time moves on, grumble grumble grumble.

Oh did I mention only 8mb of ram needed...
 
Mac OS 8.5. Thats where it all started for me. Loved that OS.

All of OS 8 was pretty dire, better then OS 7 though. Continual crashes and such.
I remember being astounded when I was first running OS X and an app crashed and I didn't have to reboot.

I think my favourite OS was 10.2. It was the first OS X that I used 100% of the time.
 
Jaguar or Panther. Jaguar made OSX the best operating system, Panther made it so good that I ditched Windows and never looked back. (I voted Panther. Exposé ftw)
 
Tiger

Main reason is that was the first version i used when i switched from Windows, and i enjoyed learning about OS X with this version

I am finder Leopard a bit more sluggish on my MacBook and a bit of a ram hog, sure this is not the os just my machine
 
10.3 Panther

The only Mac OS where I upgraded straight through the whole series of updates without having a major hiccup.

Also, didn't feel dog slow like 10.2.
 
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