Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What was everyone's favorite Mac OS?

  • System Software 6.0.x

    Votes: 7 2.8%
  • System 7.x

    Votes: 20 8.0%
  • Mac OS 8.x

    Votes: 8 3.2%
  • Mac OS 9.x

    Votes: 13 5.2%
  • Rhapsody

    Votes: 6 2.4%
  • Mac OS X Server 1.0

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • Mac OS 10.0 Cheetah/Cyan

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mac OS 10.1 Puma

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar

    Votes: 9 3.6%
  • Mac OS 10.3 Panther

    Votes: 30 12.0%
  • Mac OS 10.4 Tiger

    Votes: 155 62.2%

  • Total voters
    249
My favourite Apple OS of all time would have to be System 8.6... it looked great, and was rock solid. I also really liked Panther.

My two non-Apple favourites would be Windows NT4 (yeah yeah, shut up) and Slackware Linux 3.4.
 
dpaanlka said:
...
I'd still say OS 7 was/felt faster, but mostly because it has a GUI that is composed of wide ares of white space separated by 1px black lines. I did a simple GUI test of OS 7 vs OS 7 with Mac OS 8's Apperance Manager vs Mac OS 8 itself, and the plain OS 7 beat them all by pretty wide margins. I can't locate it now but RacerX should remember... it's how we first "met" :D
...

That's not hard to believe that it felt faster. Crude graphics are much easier to draw. Besides that, Mac OS 8 was cobbled together just to get something to the public. Obviously, System 7 was a whole lot better on the Quadra 840 than Mac OS 8 was on a PowerPC machine since Apple was still optimising the operating system for 680x0 and dragging their heels on PowerPC.

Apple--its own worst enemy.
 
bousozoku said:
Obviously, System 7 was a whole lot better on the Quadra 840 than Mac OS 8 was on a PowerPC machine since Apple was still optimising the operating system for 680x0 and dragging their heels on PowerPC.

100% agreed.

Although, Mac OS 7.6.1 is still my preferred OS even on early Power Macs. Basically, of all the machines I have (~75)... the two OSes I have pretty much settled on is 10.4.x Tiger, and 7.6.x Harmony (it had a code name too lol).
 
kalisphoenix said:
:)

I voted for Tiger. I haven't actually used Rhapsody, although I have OS4.2 and used to have a NeXTStation. If I had OS X Server 1.x, I definitely would've installed it on my PMG3 :)
I'm stoked. I just got a copy of OSX Server 1.0 (aka Rhapsody 5.6?). I can't wait to try it out.
 
Its between Panther and Tiger. Panther because of Expose, and Tiger because of Spotlight and Dashboard. I think Tiger was my favorite Mac OS to anticipate, however Leopard might top it.
 
RacerX said:
The last PowerMac G4s to be Mac OS 9 bootable were the Dual 1.25 GHz systems... the Dual G4 models with Firewire 800 (top of the line for them was the Dual 1.42 GHz systems) were Mac OS X only.

The Dual 1.25 GHz (non-Firewire 800) models were sold for more than a year after their original release (Summer of 2002) to education users who still needed Mac OS 9.

The last PowerBook to be Mac OS 9 bootable was the 1 GHz PowerBook G4... last of the Titanium models.

The reason I bought my Powermac dual-867 MDD when I did was because Apple had stated they'd be pulling OS 9 booting thereafter. I had spent a couple of hundred quid on a copy of Logic Audio that I wanted to be able to use on that machine (late version 4.x) that would have necessitated a purchase of an upgrade immediately to work with OS X (plus then I'd be getting into trying to find OS X drivers for older audio hardware). Basically I had to have a Mac that could run OS 9 properly (and, to be fair, it runs it fast).

Of course, Apple didn't follow through on its threat and kept OS 9 bootability around for a while afterwards. In fact, as far as I remember, iBooks and iMacs were bootable a long time after their PowerMac/Book cousins stopped being able to boot OS 9 properly.
 
Oh I Remember when...

I remember when the first Macintosh came out, and I then I remember when the color ones showed up! Wow! I was in Junior high school and working for the summer with the EPA and they had one. It was sooo much cooler than entering command lines into DOS. You could even make drawings on it! I agree that OS 8.6 is probably my favorite... even though I do love OSX it is a little bit of a RAM pig, and it is slow. I still have a warm space in my heart for OS 7 too.
 
dpaanlka said:
Well, my point being that all the classics are unstable compmared to OS X

Untrue in my experience. It wasn't until 10.2 that OS X was as stable as MacOS 9, let alone the more-stable MacOS 8.6.

True, the OS itself didn't kernel-panic so much once you got to 10.1, but the apps themselves were very much inclined to implode with an "unexpectedly quit" error message. If you just lost work and/or hosed a file or two, you don't particularly care if the freaking OS survived the experience — you just think "Damn, if I'd been booted in 8/9, this would not happen anywhere near as often".

With 10.2, the very same apps (version number compared to version number, etc) were a lot more stable and OS X was finally usable, dependable even.

I never had the rash of stability problems some folks describe for OS 8/9 (or even 7, really). You had to be a janitor and test-pilot; you had to do regular maintenance chores like disk repair, PRAM-zapping, and Desktop rebuilding, and you had to troubleshoot extension conflicts. But once you had a nice configuration working, this silly little trinket of an OS that everyone laughed at because it didn't do preemptive multitasking was more stable than NT (yeah, really), and despite its ridiculous memory architecture handled large amounts of memory a hell of a lot better than the desktop versions of Windows that were around and about in that era.

The "classic" operating systems are way underrated. There were lemons now and then but the overall quality was excellent. And good things built (Apple or 3rd party) tended to hang on and accumulate, and by the latter years it was very much a Grand Old OS with loads of brilliant legacy options and whatnot.
 
I have another proposal brought up.

Can you use an earlier version of OS X than what came with your mac?(eg, mac came with tiger, you wanna install panther). I read that Apple doesnt reccomend it but whats the worst that can happen?

Reason I ask is Mac OS X versions prior to Panther are dirt cheap(Mac OS X is going for 5 bucks on ebay) and since it is so cheap, maybe I could give them a wirl.
 
adamb100 said:
I have another proposal brought up.

Can you use an earlier version of OS X than what came with your mac?(eg, mac came with tiger, you wanna install panther). I read that Apple doesnt reccomend it but whats the worst that can happen?

In most cases, no, unless the operating system that shipped with your computer was newer than the version that shipped when the type of computer originally did.
 
My favorite version of the classic operating system is System 7.0.1. It was what came on my first Mac, the Powerbook 100 and I remember having so much fun with Hypercard on it.

My favorite version of the new operating system is Mac OS X 10.3. In my opinion, all the stuff Tiger added is pretty much junk except for case sensitive HFS+.
 
dpaanlka said:
In most cases, no, unless the operating system that shipped with your computer was newer than the version that shipped when the type of computer originally did.
I think your right, I put in my "legal" copy of panther and rebooted the apple logo moved to the right and froze. Unless thats because the panther copy was a restore cd.
 
You can't use Panther or any other OS but Tiger if you have an Intel Mac since all previous versions of OSX are PowerPC-based and not Intel or Universal.
 
System 6

I voted for System 6. I currently use system 6.0.8 while I emulate a Mac Plus with vMac. It's a good OS. In my experience, it's the best one I've ever used. :( :cool: :rolleyes: :) :D

system64nv.png
 
maddevon2222 said:
I voted for System 6. I currently use system 6.0.8 while I emulate a Mac Plus with vMac. It's a good OS. In my experience, it's the best one I've ever used. :( :cool: :rolleyes: :) :D

system64nv.png

Yikes! That has to be the worst Desktop Pattern I have ever seen! You know you can change which squares are black and which are white in the General control panel...
 
dpaanlka said:
Yikes! That has to be the worst Desktop Pattern I have ever seen! You know you can change which squares are black and which are white in the General control panel...

Yeah, I know how to change the pattern and which are black or white squares. But I do prefer this pattern at the moment. :D
 
maddevon2222 said:
Yeah, I know how to change the pattern and which are black or white squares. But I do prefer this pattern at the moment. :D

but... what is it supposed to be anyway? a bulb?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.