A bit of nostalgia: A Salute to Mac OS X

simX

simX

Unofficial Mac Genius
In honor of Mac OS X's recently passed first birthday, I thought I'd go back through some of the MacWorld articles and look at the progression of Mac OS X through the ages.

And wow, has Mac OS X changed dramatically, from what was demoed in January 2000, to what we have now in January 2002! In two short years, Mac OS X has rapidly evolved, and as most anyone would agree, it has changed for the better. It almost brings a tear to my eye when I see such things as the Apple logo decal in the middle of the menu bar (in the public beta which lacked an Apple menu), and the little purple button, used for single-window mode, that used to be in the place of the long white button in the upper-right-hand corner of each window.

Mac OS X, as we know it today, is a powerful operating system that just about lives up to the standards of the ideal operating system. I'm sure there are many features that I, and many of you, still want in Mac OS X (spring-loaded folders, RAM disks, to name a couple), but I hope that Mac OS X has lived up to the hype that Apple has given it. It sure has for me. Although I still revert to some of my old Classic Mac OS habits, I know that I couldn't live without the knowledge that my applications are much less crash prone, or even the fact that I have a command line to fall back to in dire situations. I know that many of you still have complaints about Mac OS X, but seeing as it is scarcely one year old (if you only count the days since it's been officially released), and the Classic Mac OS has had over 17 years to evolve, I believe that Mac OS X is phenomenal as it is. And I only think it's appropriate that we look back over the years that Mac OS X has been in the making.

Yet even though the future looks very bright for the Mac platform, as we honor Mac OS X, so should we honor the Classic Mac OS, and the joys of a intuitive, easy-to-use operating system that it brought us. Mac OS X would never be here if it weren't for the dedication that all of Apple's programmers put into the Classic Mac OS. And even though we are phasing out the Classic Mac OS from our lives, it will always be a part of my computer experience, and every other Mac user that has touched that Platinum interface. As we make the transition over from Platinum to Aqua, it is only fair that we acknowledge what the Classic Mac OS has brought to the Mac platform.

So here I appeal to all of you MacOSX.com users, who have no doubt embraced Mac OS X. First-time Mac users, long-time Mac users, UNIX geeks who have shifted to Mac OS X, I appeal to you now. Post what you love about the Mac platform, what you love about Mac OS X. Post what you will miss from the Classic Mac OS days, whether it be the joys of Crystal Quest (the first color game ever on a Macintosh) or the initial joys of being productive on a personal computer. Post what has brought you to the Mac platform and what keeps you here. Post anything that you feel deserves attention, from the easter eggs in System 7 to the funny genie effects of Mac OS X.

This is NOT a bash Windows thread, or a thread to complain about the lack of features in Mac OS X or the Classic Mac OS. This thread is solely to honor the Macintosh operating system in its own right. Mac OS X (and arguably the future of the Mac platform)'s first birthday has passed, and so I hope that we can all briefly honor it as well as the road it took to get here. I hope that we can keep this thread alive for a while (even if after moving it to a more appropriate forum).

I will be posting what I love about the Mac platform and Mac OS X, but first, I need to eat breakfast. :)
 
1. Stability.
2. Ease of use. Really. After you get past your OS 9 hangups, you can navigate much faster through the OS X Finder. Sure, it needs additional work, but they got more right in version 1.0 than wrong.
3. iApps. Can't overlook this. Without great iApps like iMovie, iTunes, iDVD and iPhoto, the OS wouldn't be half as useful.
4. Did I already mention stability?
5. Cocoa. Thanks to Cocoa, rapid application development is a reality. In one short year we have gotten some great shareware apps out of developers using Cocoa. Watson. osXigen. Pic2Icon. Duality. PixelNHance. OmniWeb. Snax. This list just keeps on growing.
6. Java. Having the best Java support is a huge plus. I get a grin when I run an app like LimeWire on my PBG4/500 - because it runs so much smoother and faster than on my PIII800. And we're only at the beginning!
7. Having access to a command line when needed.
8. The speed in which 3rd party developers have rushed to make OS 9 missing features available in OS X (Unsanity's Haxies, ASM, DragThing, DefaultFolderX, Keyboard Maestro, TinkerTool).
9. The Power of UNIX. It's just incedible that with UNIX under the hood, a Mac OS X user can 1) Run X Windows and the vast majority of UNIX software, 2) Run JAVA 3) Run Classic Mac OS apps, 4) Run legacy NeXT apps through Cocoa, 5) Carbon apps, and through 6) VPC, any x86 OS and application. Amazing.
10. The Dock. While it's FAR from perfect and needs some major adjustments in my opinion, it's a good start. Give us options like the ability to turn off the floating titles (or have them appear with a yellow background , ala tooltips - the white w/ shadow text is too harsh over anything other than a dark background), ability to access stuff from the Apple menu when right clicking on the Mac OS Logo in the Dock, and the ability to have "Tabbed" groups within a dock, ala Drag Thing.
 
Now that I've regained myself and don't have that tear in my eye anymore from my speech, I'd like to detail a few things about the Classic Mac OS and maybe a few from Mac OS X's beta days.

First with the Mac OS X beta thing. Look at this window:
3columnfinder.jpg


Now look at one of your windows in Mac OS X. How things change, huh? Your window is now named the name of the directory instead of "Finder", the buttons aren't huge big buttons, there's no single-window mode button, there's no search field (haha I laughed at the caption now that the search field is taken out again -- the caption hailed the search field as a nice new feature), and the back button and the path pop-up are now all on the same line.

Also, do any of you remember the shoddy "Music Player" that was included with the Mac OS X public beta? None of us knew that that was the precursor to iTunes. :)

On to the Classic Mac OS:

#1: Crystal Quest. Ever played that game? I used to play it all the time in black-and-white for hours. It's like this year's EV Nova.. it was so addictive. What with all the dumples (I think that's what they're called) and the things that almost always kill you when you shoot them because they die in a spray of fatal shot thingies, I miss that game so much. It can still be played under the Classic Environment of OS X (which is VERY surprising, seeing as it was the first color Mac game, built for System 6), but it often gets errors and you can't play it full screen. Ah, well. That game will always live in my memories. :)

#2: Easter eggs. Dang there were so many easter eggs in the Classic Mac OS. There was the pong/waving flag easter egg that came when you typed "secret about box" in the note pad and dragged it to the Finder to make a text clipping. There was the System 7 easter egg (that was taken out in later builds because it caused problems) that like on the 7th day of the 7th month, you go to the 7th menu in the Finder and select the 7th menu item and something interesting would pop up (I never saw it personally, but I heard about it). Then of course there's the Stickies easter egg where you typed something like "Camel!" in a sticky and if you waited for a few seconds, a picture of a camel would pop up. Ohh, those were the good days (for easter eggs, anyway).

#3: Dragging windows by the sides. This was a great time-saver in the Classic Mac OS, and I'm sad to have it gone in Mac OS X. :(

#4: Option-windowshading. Oh come on, I know you did that when you were in the Classic Mac OS. You open a bunch of windows, and then option click the window-shade button, and you hear a bunch of window shutters closing. I always loved that. ;) Do it again and you hear a bunch of them opening.

#5: Does anyone remember QuickTime 2.5? That version originally shipped with the original Myst game, by Broderbund and Cyan. :) Too bad the developers of later Myst games decided to stop supporting the Mac OS and to have Mac game developers port the game. :mad:
 
I'm generally new to Macs, purchased my first (the iBook I'm on now) back in August, and ran OS 9 until January. 9.1 was okay, it did it's job and I enjoyed having something other than Windows. But now that I've updated to X, I actually have a computer I like!

Before, I just used the computer for homework purposes, mainly because I didn't know how to do anything. Now I can download and rip music, burn CDs, make iMovies, save my digital pictures. Everything Apple wants you to be able to do with your Mac.

The best thing I like about OS X? The graphical look of it, I love the doc and the colorfulness.

What do I miss from Windows? A fast browser (you know I'm right) and Counter-Strike. We were freaking addicted to that game back in the dorms.

Oh, and I'd like to thank the jackass who stole my PC our freshman year. If it weren't for you, I probably would have never gotten a Mac.
 
Great post, simX!

I think that Mac OS X has rapidly become my OS of choice because of the fact that you really feel like you can do ANYTHING. Mac OS 9 always had a touch of anxiety about it, a fear of "if I force quit this app, the system will come crashing down around my head" and "wait, wait wait for it to finish starting, don't click until it's done..." or "Shhhh! Director is starting up. Don't move or it'll do something bad." (Man, I love that one)... and with OS X I feel a sense of empowerment that has been missing in every other Mac OS since 1984. The fact that you CAN emulate the OS 9 way of doing things is a testament to how brilliantly designed OS 9 was——that millions of people prefer its system functionality to that of a modern, crash-protected, stable OS based on UNIX? OS 9 was and now always will be the pinnacle of Apple's Classic OS... and it deserves respect for that. It was the ultimate evolution, the ultimate finished version of what Apple started in 1984 with one simple word: "Hello."

The Classic OS has always been very friendly; it was intuitive, it was graceful. It didn't do everything perfectly, but it was so much easier to find things and accomplish tasks than *ahem* competing systems of the time. OS 9 has had its weaknesses, but it was the best way to get anything done.

Now OS X has come, and in a year it has become a stable, usable, customizable, BEAUTIFUL operating system; one that not only CAN do everything, but it makes you WANT to do everything. I sit here in front of a screen less than an inch thick that floats in midair--- no flickering, no gargantuan tower sitting under my desk, no Blue Screen of Death, no wristwatch cursor--- and I realize that I can do anything I want to do. This is what makes OS X so powerful; it brings all of its ability together in an interface that, quite simply, makes a lot of SENSE. It takes some getting used to, but man, can it do things. And sure, I get frustrated at it sometimes (don't we all) and with its inadequacies, which at times seem much more important than its abilities, and then realize that no matter what, I'll have Classic and Mac OS 9 to fall back on. That is what is so great about Apple; they make great products, but they don't abandon the old ones. My dad's got a huge flickery CRT screen and a big tower under the desk, but hell, it runs OS X like a champ!

OS 10.2 has spring-loaded folders, so right off the bat there goes another huge complaint. (Now if only they release it soon—- but I'm confident they're simply fixing even more things) I'm sure that updates will continue to not only add in features we requested, but to also add new abilities that, quite simply, we would never imagine.

My iPod had a lot of problems. A LOT. It was obviously defective, so Apple immediately agreed to accept it for replacement. The box sent to pick up the unit was sent out a minute and a half after I put down the phone. Via Airborne Express. I got it in under 17 hours, put the iPod in, scheduled a re-pickup, sent it back, watched the tracking thing, and watched in awe as, on a Friday night, they sent it back using "Saturday Delivery"... more expensive even than using Airborne's normal Overnight system, which doesn't work on weekends... I was and always will be amazed at their commitment to actually HELPING people instead of just trying to get their money.

Those of you without an iPod won't quite understand this the same way, but when Apple went to Tokyo and released the new update, it was, to put it mildly, a stroke of genius. Not only did they add features that everyone had requested, they fixed things I had found mildly annoying once or twice (little things that I never would have bothered to mention to anyone). They improved everything about it to such a degree that I feel like a I have a new MP3 player. The iPod is no longer my favorite MP3 player, folks--- iPod with Update 1.1 is. This sort of attention to detail, the focus on what makes a product great and not what makes money in the short-term, is why Apple is and hopefully always will be the BEST company I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with.

OS 9 is still a very special part of my computer life. Even though the shockingly bland appearance (when compared to Aqua) is sometimes enough to make me say, "Oooooh, get me back to X, please," I still enjoy it for all the joy it's brought me in its daily use. OS 9 may be winding down, but a new era is starting up with OS X... and in the process I hope that I never, ever forget Classic.

Long live Apple!
 
Along the lines of Apple helping customers:

I ordered my iMac on the 8th of March. I waited and waited and waited until last Monday (the 25th). I got a notification of shipment on the 25th, which told me that I had 2-5 business days to wait for delivery. I had already spent a lot on the computer itself, and I knew it would be a long wait, so I figured that I wouldn't spend extra money on faster shipping. FedEx tracking numbers are entered into the system 12-24 hours after shipment, so even though I knew that the iMac had shipped, I didn't know when it would get here. Tuesday morning I was able to see the shipment. It was already in Tucson! At about 10:00 Tuesday my roommate called me at work and told me that my iMac had arrived. Apple apparently decided that I had waited long enough, and upgraded my shipping to Priority Overnight.

This is utterly amazing. Every single other company that I have ordered from tries to cut corners as much as possible, especially on shipping.

I now have a computer where I really do agree with BlueFusion -- I feel like I can do anything. I am not an experienced Mac user -- the last experience I had with Macs was on System 6. I have a little Unix knowledge (to the point where I can set up FreeBSD or Linux on my machine, and get it fully configured). I know Windows well (though I may hate to admit it. :) ). But with an OS that I have used for barely a month (a little experience on my roommate's iMac) I am completely comfortable here in OS X.

It's astounding to me that I can feel this happy about just sitting in front of my computer. I've never had a problem wth that before, of course. :) But the million "little things" that went wrong on a Windows machine (and the hundreds of "huge things") made the transition to OS X relief beyond description. It's kind of like having someone sit on your chest -- someone small enough that you don't immediately suffocate. Leave that person there for a year, or two, or ten. When that person gets off your chest, it's amazing how easily you can breathe!
 
When I was in 6th grade, getting a dollar a week for allowance. I decided to get a computer and started saving. I had to avoid spending money on the SNES when it came out or the N64 when all my other friends got them. Finally in my sophomore year of High School I had 1400$, enough to buy an iMac and ship it. I remember the state of euphoria I went through for 6 days between ordering it and waiting for it to come. It was blazingly fast at 266 mhz on OS 8.6.

Now it is 2 and a half years later and I am still using it. New RAM, new HD, added external CD-R and OS X.1.3 all installed by me.

Was I the only one who sat at my computer with the OS X disk in hand feeling like I was saying good bye to an old friend? Promising I'd visit often and worrying that it would hate me for chasing the younger, prettier OS? I still feel guilty sometimes; but I run fsck -y and lie in bed with a cigar, "Was it good for you?"

It is just so incredible that I have the power of unix and The most beautiful operating system available on my little blueberry iMac. The fact that I could go from flat OS 8 all the way to glowing quartz widgets and still be productive is what I love about OS X. I'm even getting into XDarwin apps and playing with the world of Unix.

I know I'm going to have to upgrade soon, but since all my PeeCee friends have done so twice since I got my computer because their computers broke or they had to in order to keep up I think I have gotten more than my money's worth. I will also be able to keep it around and use it for a long time yet or pass it on to my sisters for less demanding work.

People (my girlfriend) ask me why I get so excited about my computer saying "It's just a computer." To me it really isn't.

Thank you Apple
 
Here is a shot that predates simX's Mac OS X DP3 window (at least that is what it looks like it is from).
 

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Originally posted by themacko
I'm generally new to Macs, purchased my first (the iBook I'm on now) back in August, and ran OS 9 until January. 9.1 was okay, it did it's job and I enjoyed having something other than Windows. But now that I've updated to X, I actually have a computer I like!

Before, I just used the computer for homework purposes, mainly because I didn't know how to do anything. Now I can download and rip music, burn CDs, make iMovies, save my digital pictures. Everything Apple wants you to be able to do with your Mac.

The best thing I like about OS X? The graphical look of it, I love the doc and the colorfulness.

What do I miss from Windows? A fast browser (you know I'm right) and Counter-Strike. We were freaking addicted to that game back in the dorms.

Oh, and I'd like to thank the jackass who stole my PC our freshman year. If it weren't for you, I probably would have never gotten a Mac.
Click to expand...

Wow, I have almost the EXACT same story. My computer was stolen out of my dorm room one year ago today (Easter Sunday freshman year). I bought my first mac (the iBook I'm on now) in August.

But I used 10.0.1 from the start, and only used 9 sparingly. After 10.1 came out, I deleted 9 altogether and haven't looked back.

I still have a PC, tho, so I can still get my Half Life fix when I need one. :D
 
I guess I could also share my short little story about how I came to use Macs, although I've been using them for a long time.

I first got onto computers when I was, oh, around three years old or so. Does anybody remember those keyboards that hooked up to your TV, and then you could use them like a computer? Of course, they weren't nearly as powerful as any personal computer today, but I used to bang on that keyboard all the time. I don't remember exactly which company made it or which model it was, though. Needless to say, I eventually banged on it too hard and it broke. :p

Then later we got a Mac Plus, which was my first Mac. I still remember that monotone startup chime that it makes -- if you'd like to hear it, just download MacTracker from versiontracker.com. I used to run Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle on that computer. DC and BDC still rock any games -- the only games that come close to rivaling DC and BDC are Crystal Quest and the Escape Velocity series.

Anyway, our next machine was a Macintosh IIsi. That was when we got our first internet connection, via Compuserve. We had an external 28.8 baud modem which we connected, and the only notion of the internet I had at that time was what Compuserve gave to me. I never really went on the net and looked at websites until later on when it started rapidly emerging.

We also had a Syqeust drive, and on a bunch of Syquest disks, we had a lot of games, of course. SimCity original, SimCity 2000, Prince of Persia, Spacestation Pheta, Solarian II.. all were great games of my childhood years. :) *sniff* I remember I stayed up really late one night playing SimCity 2000 and I ended up falling asleep, and when I got up in the morning I found that fires and an earthquake had totally demolished my city (and my dad had stupidly saved it, to boot!). Ah, well.

It sounds surprising, but my next computer was an original iMac. I always used the Macs at our elementary school and junior high school (all those IIsi's and IIcx's and Performa's), and my dad had a Powerbook 3400c (he actually had a Powerbook 150 before that, and what was funny was that later in its life the screen got damaged and a portion of the screen was yellow, even though the screen was black & white!). So when the new iMac was finally released (not announced -- released), I got my new iMac the first Saturday it came out. I remember watching that "Simplicity Shootout" video at the computer store and how I basically fell in love with it. :) We got a SuperDisk Drive (1x version, which my mom still uses on her iBook, although she uses her iBooks CD burning capabilities too) and a few SuperDisks. I still remember the new computer smell that it had when I finally set it up (it was just as easy as was claimed) and my dad set up his school server so we could connect through it and get free internet access. I was on that thing all the time. I played games and surfed the net and did all of that good stuff... I did all of my homework on it, played Escape Velocity, used e-mail. That was basically the first computer that I really used all the time and had to myself (my older brother didn't really need a computer at that time). I remember when I bought it, I was bragging to my friend about how I got a 233 MHz computer with a G3 processor, and *gasp* _U_S_B_ devices! He had a lowly 8600 or something (that he was considering upgrading to a G3 processor, but the Sonnet card was totally messed). That was the end of the world, and everyone was predicting that the iMac would flop because there were basically no USB devices on the market for the Mac. (And 6 million iMacs later, some people are still saying the same thing about the new iMac and Apple's awesome lineup of hardware.)

Two years later, I bought my trusty G4 cube and an accompanying 15" flat panel display, and I've been slowly amassing peripherals to accompany it (all which can be seen in my signature :) ). My CD burner, my SuperDisk Drive that came over from my iMac (that like I said, my mom now has), my USB microphone, etc., etc.

And that G4 cube is what I've been using ever since (although I'm really eyeing that new high-end iMac :D )! I'm happy to say that a PC has never infiltrated my home for at least ten years, and that's a pretty big feat for a Windows-centric world.
 
Originally posted by simX
...our next machine was a Macintosh IIsi. That was when we got our first internet connection, via Compuserve. We had an external 28.8 baud modem which we connected, and the only notion of the internet I had at that time was what Compuserve gave to me. I never really went on the net and looked at websites until later on when it started rapidly emerging....
Click to expand...
I remember using Compuserve on an Atari with an acoustic 300baud modem. But I don't remember anybody doing Internet stuff with their Mac II's.

I used a DOS machine though my 1st 2 years of college, but then I started using the Mac's in the SU instead. The first machine I used Mosaic on was a Centris 650. My very own Mac did not come until years later... unfortunately it was the crappy 7200 which always had issues. (That was the Gil Ameilo era...)
 
I started using Macs because of one application... Theorist! It didn't run on any other platform and it was such a great little math program. I still use it today.

As for my first internet experience, It was on a SGI IRIS Indigo using xmosaic back in 1994. We also had Macs and Suns with mosaic on them, but the Indigo was the best. One of my first internet memories was watching the images of the Shoemaker-Levy comet hitting Jupiter. It was quite exciting.

After getting beck to school, I had an account in the Sun lab that I used for e-mail and browsing the web. I remember how strange it was watching the internet change from an academic tool to a place of commerce.

Here is a pic of Theorist running on my Quadra 700 (with A/UX).
 

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Originally posted by Koelling
When I was in 6th grade, getting a dollar a week for allowance. I decided to get a computer and started saving. I had to avoid spending money on the SNES when it came out or the N64 when all my other friends got them. Finally in my sophomore year of High School I had 1400$, enough to buy an iMac and ship it.
Click to expand...
Uh, by my calculations that would mean that you took about 27 years to get from 6th grade to sophomore in HS....

Is there something you've left out...? ;) :D
 
Koelling, it sounds like you are just like me. Not a day passes where I don't either catch flack for being so obsessed with a "computer" or where someone who doesn't understand the macintosh platform tries to let me know why I suck. When you speak about seeing macs as more than just a computer, I totally agree. It's like a relationship, especially understandable in the way you tell it. I really enjoyed your story about saving the money in such a disciplined way and using your mac for all that it is worth and then some. I know there's nobody quite like me when it comes to mac obsession in the area where I live and with the people I know, but it's good to know that there are people like you out there doing it right and using/appreciating the best computers (friend) a guy can have. Sincerely, Ryan
 
Hmm... I mostly like about Macintosh that it's friendly. Not only 'user-friendly', but also just friendly. Every Mac (okay, maybe the iMac and iBook today more than the TiBook or the PM G4) seems to have a little something of a little cuddly creature that wants to be your friend. Much Nintendo in that, I guess. *smile*. (I hate how smilies change the leading in paragraphs of my posts on bulletin boards.)

That said, my history of Macintosh-Faith is as follows...

In 1989 I had an Atari ST 1040. I was already in love with Macs from school, but I didn't have the money to buy a Mac Plus at the time. But I bought the Spectre GCR Macintosh emulator, which cost about 500 USD at the time. But it made the Atari a Mac Plus (speedwise) with a better resolution screen (640*400).

My first *real* Macintosh was the PowerBook 150. Really cheap portable computer, almost no interfaces at its back, it was much, much lighter than the others (more expensive ones like the phantastic PB 180, look it up at applehistory.com). It was that PowerBook that is one of the main reasons why I'm a writer today. (Check out http://story.ch if you understand the German language...) It felt perfect for writing. MacWrite Pro was also a very, very good word processing application.

Well, I went through many PowerBooks since then: 180c, 520c, 5300ce, eMate 300, iBook (Rev. B, blueberry) and my TiBook of today.

And I'll leave the Macintosh behind me if (if, because I still believe someone will fix those basic failures in man's code) I die and can't take a Mac with me.
 
lol, yeah I did leave a little out I guess :) But it did take me 4 years and that is a long time when you're 12. It also means I opted for a computer rather than a car and let me tell you, I don't regret that at all (I don't have a car still because stupid people on the road piss me off).

RyanLang: I hope I help you in some way get through any flack you get for being a Mac user, I certainly get a lot. But that's okay because it doesn't really matter what they think as long as I am productive.
 
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