What's Your Favourite Iteration Of OS X?

[Goftrey]

I'm interested in seeing what everyone's favourite version of OS X is. With the stark contrast of the clean, Aqua UI in Cheetah-Tiger, to the very 'iOS-ish' feel found in Lion & Mountain Lion. Please drop a vote!

My personal favourite is Snow Leopard. It's so incredibly streamlined, slick & quick. It really is just a slimmed down, un-bloated version of Leopard... And that's a good thing. I'm really not a fan of Lion+ as I feel OS X is becoming more & more like a bloated version of iOS. I also absolutely adore Tiger for, again, in the similar way to Snow Leopard, it's super slick, refined nature.

 

[item3785]

For me, it's Tiger. Although I loved Snow Leopard, and still like Mountain Lion, Tiger was the first Mac OS X I used after switching from Windows. It was a revelation of how an OS should be. I'm sure there are features from later OS X releases I would miss if I had to use Tiger again, but it's still my favourite for the eye opener it was.

 

[trustever]

One more for Snow Leopard... it was so quick to boot up and not so memory hungry as his successors (I still put the snow leopard picture background sometimes just to cure the nostalgy)...

 

[maflynn]

For me its a tie between 10.4 Tiger and 10.8 Mountain Lion.

10.4 was for the most part the perfect balance of features and performance. Apple really hit it out of the park with making this fast and stable. I think 10.8 exhibits similar features, in that is fast and feature rich.

I thought the subsequent versions of OSX after 10.4 were getting more bloated and bogged down, but I think 10.8 while not svelte is a solid operating system.

btw, I loved OS9 and still have that on my G4 Cube just because

 

[OllyW]

I like and use both Snow Leopard & Mountain Lion.

If Apple persist with an new version of OS X every 12 months I'm seriously considering giving the next release a wide berth because I had no end of problems with Leopard and Lion.

 

[S.B.G]

I started with Tiger on my first Mac. Snow Leopard was my favorite only because Spaces & Exposé were separate and Finder had color in it. Otherwise Lion and Mountain Lion are also very good for me.

 

[Drew017]

I started off with OS 9, then OS X panther and Tiger on my iBook, then Leopard, SL, Lion, then ML on my Macbook (white) and ML on my MacBook Air. That being said, I think that after using a lot of versions of OS X, Mountain Lion is my favorite. or at least until 10.9 is released

 

[mobilehaathi]

Snow Leopard was my favorite only because Spaces & Exposé were separate and Finder had color in it.

Sometimes the little things are most important. This is exactly why I love SL over its successors.

 

[blackburn]

I've started with ms-dos, then used windows 3.11, NT, 95, 98SE, 2000, XP, Vista, 7.
On the Mac OS side of things I've used System 7 a lot and started using Mac OS with Tiger. Loved Leopard and Snow Leopard. Hated Lion and Mountain Lion is meh.

 

[r0k]

I picked SL. While it didn't add many features, I loved the fact that it freed up 15 to 30 GB on our older Macs.

I like but couldn't vote for Lion or ML because they took things away. Lion took away Rosetta and ML took away Java (after a few updates). ML also kicked all of my older Intel Macs off the OSX island! Then there's gatekeeper. Is this for security or a first baby step on the way to making OS X into a walled garden?

I may not like Java but when I need it to reorder checks, I don't want to hear about what some guy in Cupertino thinks is good for me. I just want to be able to order my checks. I can complain on my bank's web site all day long about java but that doesn't mean they will lift a finger. Then there's the whole no 64 bit Chrome but Java doesn't support 32 bit Chrome debacle. Use Crashplan? Get ready for some terminal commands to make Java 6 work in order to get Crashplan up and running again. Oh they have "plans" for a native Crashplan app but no definite schedule. Yes this whole taking away Java thing is feeling more like a debacle every day. This wouldn't bother me as much if Time Machine was more of a backup solution and less of a placebo.

Sure I like the OSX app store, iCloud and Shared Photostreams and the like but frankly many of these features could easily have been ported back to Snow Leopard. Really. Then many users wouldn't have been forced to choose between legacy PPC apps and the ability to use iCloud. Fortunately the only legacy PPC app I ran with any regularity was Palm Desktop so I was able to bring myself to lose access to the app forever in return for iCloud, photostream and the like. Another app I lost access to was Dreamweaver. I'm so done with Adobe and all their activation bullcrap that I don't care it doesn't work any more. I refuse to reinstall my $10 copy of MS Office 2011 for the same reason. After going through activation once, I decided that if that machine ever got wiped I wasn't going through it again. So the MS Office DVD sits in the basement between the 78 rpm records, canning jars and buggy whips.

I suppose if this ongoing Java war ever gets straightened out in such a way I can do the stuff I need to do without resorting to hacks and workarounds, I might see my way clear to change my vote to ML but for now, I have to vote for SL. It was the last Apple OS I was able to greet with unqualified enthusiasm and without reservations.

 

[displaced]

I've used every version including point-releases since 10.0.3. It was supplied on CD with our iMac G3 in 2001. It wasn't the default OS, but I installed it alongside OS9 purely because I couldn't stand the Classic OS.

It's been a fun ride. I voted for Mountain Lion. It's what Lion should've been and works absolutely fine for me.

Anyone else remember the old dark days of using iCab, Camino and Internet Explorer, all of which were unbelievably slow? Remember when Aliases didn't work? When the Dock would crash several times an hour? Unplugging a USB device would cause a kernel panic? Or when just simply scrolling anything, anywhere was an exercise in frustration?

Good job they gave us 10.1 for free

 

[benwiggy]

I like Mountain Lion. I don't see Snow Leopard as the apogee of Western Civilization -- there were plenty of bugs in early iterations of 10.6 (and still are some).

LaunchPad is actually very useful if you've got huge monitors, rather than moving to the Dock all the time. The same for Mission Control. The only "iOS-ification" I can see is the removal of scroll bars, which I guess Apple is pointing out are completely unnecessary, as you should be scrolling with your input device.

I like the syncing with other Macs/iDevices through iCloud; Reminders, etc. I also like the improvements to Finder copying and various other little touches that don't get much press.

I've ben using OS X since 10.2, and it's been a great ride.

However, I'm worried that Apple isn't updating old OS versions once the new one comes out; but I don't see that as an issue with the OS itself. We haven't seen many updated to Lion of late, and there's plenty of Macs that can't update to 10.8.

 

[Goftrey]

Anyone else remember the old dark days of using iCab, Camino and Internet Explorer

Many, MANY PowerPC users still use Camino. In the state it's in right now, it's one of the fastest browsers around. I also know of many people (on OS9) that use iCab; not for the reason of speed, but more for the fact it's one of, if not the only half decent modern (I say with a grain of salt) browser available for the classic Mac OS'.

 

[Apple fanboy]

ML as its the only one I've ever used. Before that I'm ashamed to say I've used every windows platform since 95.

 

[iLog.Genius]

I'm going to say Tiger. First version of OS X I've really used and I don't remember ever complaining about anything about it, it truly "just worked". If you compare what was available back then, everything about the OS was smooth. I can't really say the same about today's OS's.

 

[gojaguars]

In 2005, it was my dream to have a quad-core PowerMac G5 with a 30-inch ACD running Tiger. Why? Because it was stable. It was fast. It was secure. It brought the innovative Spotlight search. Oh, and it was just beautiful to look at.