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An OS 9 odyssey: Why some Mac users won’t abandon 16-year-old software

189 points by shawndumas 10y ago

orionblastar 10y ago
Yeah I have Basilisk II running MacOS 8.1 that a friend of mine had to recompile because the libraries they used for it are out of date. It has IE 4.0 but the certificates have expired so it won't load most websites. Nobody seems to be targeting the older PowerMacs for Web Browsers and other Internet apps. I used to use it for safe web browsing because Windows viruses don't infect it and the web browser is so old it won't run the new stuff for the latest version of IE.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  This is kind of a harebrained theory of mine that I'm not sure it's possible to test: are you more safe on very, very obsolete platforms because the chances of stumbling onto malware that'll target you is almost nonexistent? If so, there's an argument for doing your day to day web browsing in SheepShaver running Classilla.. if not for the dealbreaking lack of support for any security better than SSLv3 (hopelessly broken).
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    I think fringe is probably more important than obsolete (though both together could be powerful). The problem being, obsolete software is trivial by modern standards to exploit, so it seems it would be like wandering a minefield. Stumble on some dusty old exploit, and it's over.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Just like there are clients running old code, there are old viruses around. I doubt it is safer than running up-to-date software, though it might be safer than being just a couple of versions behind.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    I remember hearing that, at one point, there were some secure government sites that ran everything on classic Mac OS because it was one of the only operating systems that had no CLI and as such weren't vulnerable to someone getting console access and going to town. Never verified that story, though.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I'm not sure if its the same story but the US Army once used Mac OS for some of its web servers because they were judged the most secure. I cannot remember what third party web server they were using.
      - orionblastar 10y ago
        I used to work as a federal contractor in 1996-1997. The Army did switch to MacOS for web servers. I'm not sure what Mac web server they used. They tried Windows that got hacked, and they ran Linux but didn't always update it and it got hacked as well. I think they ran some stuff as Root in Linux. The MacOS security model was different from Linux or Windows and supposed to be more secure. Of course social engineering meant that people can call their help desk and pretend to be someone working on the server to get the password reset. No security software is going to stop a social engineering attack. Also after people get their password reset they forget to change it and leave it "password" and other easy to remember passwords. So weak passwords mean someone can get in without using an exploit but a password dictionary attack.
        protomyth 10y ago
        And here's the article https://tidbits.com/article/5552 https://tidbits.com/article/5552 "The compelling aspect of this story is that as a result of the break-in, the U.S. Army has switched the machines that serve the Army's home page from Windows NT-based PCs to Power Macintosh G3s running WebSTAR from StarNine Technologies." [edit:] I do love the speculation at the end on if Mac OS X Server will be as good security-wise as Mac OS.
  - davb 10y ago
    That's probably true to some extent. The security of these older systems also undoubtedly benefits from the much smaller attack surface. They typically have far fewer services (network or otherwise) and simpler interfaces between components. If known vulnerabilities were patched, I can see how it would be easy to trust a simpler, legacy platform over a modern platform. Very few experienced professionals I've worked with (myself included) posses a working knowledge of a modern OS's services and persistent processes - that's a lot of trust to place in the platform. There's something to be said for the time when you could have an inside out understanding an OS, its libraries and its binaries. I thought vanilla Android was overly complex, but one look at the running processes on a Samsung S7 and I was horrified. The same can be said of OSX or a recent mainstream Linux distribution. I'd happily take a less flexible but much simpler OS over what we have now. Removing all those layers of services and indirection might increase short term development costs, but I think it would be worth it. Modern computing has me feeling more and more like a grump old man. I'm only 30.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    Classilla do better than SSLv3 these days. It even supports SHA2 certificates now.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    You're less likely to pick up a widely targeted virus, and more likely to be pwned if anyone attempts to target you personally.
  - guardiangod 10y ago
    If you want to run obsolete platforms with built in modern security protections, why don't you just use OpenBSD? /rimshot I love you OpenBSD
fern12 10y ago
That was a nice trip down memory lane. I still have fond memories of zipping through the MacAddict magazine forums on Camino. And downloading a dozen freeware apps I didn't need through VersionTracker. Nowadays, I avoid the App Store as much as possible, it gives me so much eye strain.
- amyjess 10y ago
  Do you remember the sampler CDs that used to come with CD-ROM Today magazine in the mid 90s? They had all sorts of random games and other stuff that I had so much fun with as a kid. One of the first things I did once I got my emulators set up was to hunt down those CDs again...
  - fern12 10y ago
    Yep, I used to get CDs with my monthly issue of MacAddict. Those were a highlight for me. I still remember when I discovered Glenn's Games. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  The AppStore is sluggish for me. I don't understand why installing xcode updates shows zero progress in the AppStore other than a tiny rotating wheel - I have to open Activity Monitor and see how busy installd and downloadd (or whatever it is called) are to try and guess how far along the installation I am.
  - fern12 10y ago
    I can't stand the App Store. I have to strain my eyes to read the categories, then strain them again to read the price, and again to read the reviews. I miss the old way of doing everything within a browser (albeit not one that knows everything about me, lol).
justinator 10y ago
I'm surprised that they didn't talk to writers that just want to write a novel without all the distractions of a modern MacOs experience.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  I don't use a word processing program much anymore. I just haven't taken the time to learn all the features, or care to. What I have been using instead is Sublime text. I didn't plan on it, but just found myself using it to write. I know they have writing plug-ins, but haven't had the need to even seek those out. It probally seems crazy, but it just works for me now. Plus, most of my writing these days goes right into HTML markdown?
  - kctess5 10y ago
    I do this too! I write most prose in sublime. It gives me spell check, word count, handy text folding features, and tons of other useful features without the distractions of thinking about styling. If necessary, I paste dump it into Pages/gdocs as a last step, but usually I just write markdown.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Not crazy at all. I used to use Notepad with the font set to something proportional. "Word processing" programs have blurred the line between writing and editing, but in a professional publishing pipeline they've always been best done with separate tools. And the tool for writing, should be a tool that offers as few distractions to writing as possible. Definitely no editing or layout tools.
    - sgc 10y ago
      I am of another school of thought. The layouts of my documents are there to make them easier to understand, and I benefit from them while I am writing. So I personally do not like writing in a text editor, even though I spend a lot of time in one when I am completing other tasks. At the same time, I simply create or import styles at the beginning of a project, so I am virtually never doing layout while I am writing.
amyjess 10y ago
I have classic Mac OS running in emulators (BasiliskII and SheepShaver) because: a) I enjoy the nostalgia (I grew up with Macs as a kid and didn't get a PC until I was 12-13) b) I find the underlying technology extremely fascinating (resource forks especially) c) there are a lot of old Mac-only games that are a lot of fun (Power Pete! Spin Doctor! Slick Willie... though my emulator doesn't like that one. Plus a bunch of random games from the sampler CDs I used to collect as a kid.) I'd never, ever use classic Mac OS as a daily driver again, but it's a lot of fun for me to play with it every once in a while.
- ashark 10y ago
  I miss After Dark. A handful of the screensavers (four, I think?) are available for OSX, but only through some Japanese site with a distribution and payment system that's not immediately confidence-building compared to other solutions on the modern web. It's reminiscent of shareware, which I guess is kind of appropriate but doesn't make me more likely to hand them my CC number.
  - zachberger 10y ago
    I miss the flying toasters.
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    xscreensaver will always be there for you.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Ditto, I loved that screensaver. jwz at least made a Flying Toasters module for xscreensaver, but there were so many great ones. I especially miss Starry Night, which seems like it ought to be trivial to recreate.
- macandcheese 10y ago
  The things I'd do for a Power Pete remake... iOS seems like a pretty good platform for it all told. I tried the emulator and managed to get it to run but everything was sped up 4x or so...
agumonkey 10y ago
The look and feel of OS 9 is still working today. And I wasn't a Mac user so no hard nostalgia feeling (compared to a Wintel box). Ironic that I was so into hyper fluid dynamic UI (css3 or other stacks) now I'm finding myself missing Win 3 / OS 9 "fixed function pipeline".
- PeCaN 10y ago
  BeOS and OS 9 were well designed. I feel like we've sort of lost our way about what made those OSes good, replaced it with very “showy” graphic design. Operating systems should be a tool for information and communication, not a modern art exhibit.
pumblechook 10y ago
Personal reason: in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability. It is becoming much more difficult now to separate platform convention from actual user tested, researched UX. In the old Apple machines they used to be one in the same, so I find it very useful to often compare old design to new (where applicable) in order to suss out any differences and investigate them. Many times we've simply gotten used to less usable interfaces because we upgraded and didn't think twice, and the old machines can be a useful sanity check. Edit: when I mean separating platform convention from user-tested UX, I mean that there are some pretty obvious times when platform UX conventions haven't been user tested (or were implemented despite negative user testing results). The most obvious one to me is iOS's flat buttons. I write iOS apps and try to do as much user testing on them as possible, and I've found this to be by far the most frequent struggle for users - discerning which things are pressable and which aren't.
- jeromenerf 10y ago
  > in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability. Maybe you are right on this. Maybe this is why I feel nostalgic of pixelartish BeOS, QNX Neutrino, maybe MacOS9 / *Step and even plan9 rio/acme or IRIX. My UX in terms of usability and style seem to cycle: 0. get inspiration, 1. comfort, 2. fatigue, 3. back to 0 and realize the previously inspiring thing is now obsolete. Sad thing, in 30 years, I have cycled a lot more with "computer interface" domain than I have with congas and cameras, some of my favourites having been produced in the late 80s / early 90s. Software do not age well, yet, and there isn't much chance to keep them running, even if their features, concepts and styles are still relevant to a significant user base. That being said, I use OS, terminals and text editors whose concepts take roots in the 60s :) As the discussion above focused on macos Finder, I miss the now unmaintained Rox Filer the same way.
makecheck 10y ago
They are 100% correct about the spatial Finder; 15 years later and what the current OS has is still laughable compared to some of the gems of the Classic Finder. A few years back Steve Jobs had the audacity to describe some Cocoa rewrite as a “whole new Finder” and I got excited only to realize it was still garbage. You sort of have to experience the Classic Finder to understand just how wrong the modern Finder really is. From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it) to not having to wonder what will happen when you click something, not to mention the pop-up tab windows from 8.5+. Also, to this day I don’t quite understand why Apple went so far away from Platinum. Today’s toolbar icons and buttons are downright ugly compared to the UI that was achieved with far fewer colors on Classic Macs. They “almost” had it when 10.5 Leopard managed to unify most of the OS and apps but then they started fiddling again. While I do like the “vibrancy” effect in parts of the current OS, even that is overdone (scrolling under toolbars, really?). It would have been better to combine the vibrancy technology with more professional user interface elements reminiscent of Classic.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it) This—along with the rest of the 2d layout—is my absolute least favorite aspect of the finder. If I could completely disable that (along with the .DS_store and __MACOSX absurdities) and force everything to use three-column layout, I would in a heartbeat. It's just a recipe to PREVENT easy access to your data—how can they allow dragging icons out of the view or overlapping each other? You can't even "reload" to reset their location, and people can even send you ZIPPED FILES where the locations are broken. Coverflow is even worse for usability. I have no idea how people can work with either icons or no ability to switch up the sorting on demand—I don't think I've used my desktop except as basically a "tmp" folder for screenshots in years. Why not just use launchpad as the desktop? Does anyone actually use their desktop to store often accessed files, or is it just a replacement for ~/Documents at this point? I wish they would give ANY love to the finder at this point. I don't care how it's written; it's gotten steadily less usable with every iteration.
  - nihonde 10y ago
combatentropy 10y ago
Even the 1984 Macintosh was snappy in its user interface: when you clicked a menu it opened instantly, when you dragged a window it always moved instantaneously. Working with Windows even 20 years later was disappointing. You click the Start menu, and waited. Finally it appeared. You hovered over a menu item and waited. Finally its submenu appeared.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  There was a hover delay built into WinXP which I also found annoying, but you could disable it (for free) using Powertoys for XP from Microsoft. It wasn't the computer that was too slow but a stupid UI decision by Microsoft. That was easy to fix though. I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. It was shit. It was much harder to do anything useful. Try editing a video for instance. Or even just emailing a photo. Or loading a file from a floppy which took tens of seconds. Some people remember the experience of using an old PC as being better because it was simpler because they didn't even attempt to do anything more complex than very basic tasks like word processing. I remember launching an application on a 1989 Mac SE30 took (I'm guessing) about 10 seconds. You heard the HD thrashing around long before the application was visible. Most programs launch in less than two seconds on my >5yr old i5-2500 with an SSD (Windows 7). The machine has started up and is ready to use in less than a minute. I have over 300 tabs in Firefox and it is still responsive (admittedly after a significant launch delay, but after that it's fast). You could run notepad/Word and nothing else if you want on a modern PC and it will run lightning fast, and the menus are quick. If you enjoy the old PC experience so much, there's no reason you can't continue to use one.
  - combatentropy 10y ago
    > There was a hover delay built into WinXP No, this was longer and inconsistent. The more I used the menu, the faster it got, until finally the built-in delay was the only delay. > I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. No, I'm just saying that there were some nice things about old Macs that took Windows decades to match. And I'm agreeing with the article that there are some subtleties that are still hard to beat, despite many other things that are of course many times worse. The article wasn't about how an old Mac is better in every way and we should all dump our modern computers and go back. It was pondering the irony: "Hey, isn't it ironic that this computer can't open Facebook, but it has a spatially oriented file browser the remembers the spots for all your icons in every folder." To this day, Windows cannot keep the Recycle Bin in the bottom-right corner across screen resizes. It is obviously recording the coordinate from the screen's top left. That always bugged me too (I know, it's the small things).
jonah 10y ago
My friend, San Francisco photographer Adrian Mendoza[1], keeps a couple PowerMacs around to run graphics software that never made the OS X transition[2]. It's interesting that certain kinds of art production[3] is becoming harder and harder because the tools are obsolete. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/ [2] Predominantly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools [3] https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928 https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928
- boobsbr 10y ago
  I remember having a Kai's Power Tools CD in my 386/486 days. Don't remember if it came bundled with my SB16 multimedia kit or with something else.
lukeh 10y ago
Recording studios with Harrison Series 12s are still stuck on very old 030s for their automation...
peterburkimsher 10y ago
I'm downgrading to iTunes 10.6.3 on Mac OS 10.5.8, the last version to work on PPC. Unfortunately I have to reimport all my music since 2012. I held out at iTunes 10.7 for a long time because I don't want to lose USB sync of contacts and calendars. My dad recently offered me an old PPC Mac Mini, and I hope I can get it to sync my iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3. It is possible to downgrade iOS using Odysseus, and I expect to keep this obsolete system for a while. Apple had an ecosystem from 2001 (Quicksilver G4 running 10.5.8) to 2014 (iPhone 4S). That's 13 years, half my lifetime. iSync would "just work". Internet access is not always reliable enough for me to trust the cloud, and I prefer to manage my own Digital Hub. I used some Platinum themes for about a year. It looks beautiful on Retina; there's so much space. Eventually I realised that my icon cache had grown to over 3GB though, so I removed them. I'm keeping an eye on the old versions though, just in case I get the urge to downgrade further at a later date.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  Why do you want PPC? I'm thinking 10.6.x on the last Intel mac with Snowleopard support would be an 'upgrade' to your usecase. Btw. what I miss most is the glory days of OSX Preview. This thing, I could just throw at it whatever I wanted and it would handle it without choking. Nowadays I have to force quit that damn thing more than I use it, just because I load some largish PNG. As a student this thing was the absolute killer feature for my mac, because I could put together conclusion papers way faster and in much higher quality than anything possible on Windows. Rectangular Text snippets being vector scalable after pasting into Pages and images keeping their original quality was just a godsend [1]. [1] http://imgur.com/a/slstJ http://imgur.com/a/slstJ
  - astrange 10y ago
    Preview shouldn't be falling over ever, even if PNG is a fairly inefficient format for partial loading. File a bug at https://bugreporter.apple.com https://bugreporter.apple.com or with Feedback Assistant.
    - m_mueller 10y ago
_acme 10y ago
I still do my writing in the OpenDoc word processor WAV.
- fungi 10y ago
  in an emulator?
- Applejinx 10y ago
  Oh my God, I remember that term. I used to do all my web browsing in Cyberdog. Working in OpenDoc I got used to nothing having splash screens, and it was like a glimpse of a future that never happened…
Jerry2 10y ago
After using MacOSX for a decade, I've been using Linux exclusively for 3 weeks now... after my rMBP was stolen and I can't afford a new Mac right now. Of all the software that I used on a Mac, I have to say that I miss the Finder the most. I've tried every file manager available on Linux (you name it, I've probably tried it) and I can't find anything that's even close to Finder. Nautilus and Nemo are the closest but they are both buggy and are missing a ton of features that I loved in Finder. Everything else just doesn't have the polish or is just missing features that make using Finder such a joy. I remember when I complained about "Classic Finder" and then about missing features in "Cocoa Finder" after the massive rewrite. Looking back, those small issues and warts are nothing when you compare it to what's available on other OSes. Anyway, to appreciate the genius and polish of using Finder, just spend few weeks with other OSes and see how much you'll miss it :)
- 4ad 10y ago
  I am using OS X and the only time I ever fire Finder is when I want to view a bunch of pictures. I never understood how exactly file managers are supposed to help somebody. I never feel the need for a file manager.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  Funny that. I use OSX, Windows and Linux daily. Most of my time is spent on OSX, then Windows, then Linux (not daily linux though, I lied - every few days). I like preview feature in Finder. It's awesome and I wish every OS had that. Apart from that, Finder must be the only thing that really bothers me on OSX. That and whatever equivalent comes with Fedora/XFCE and Windows Explorer. They are all complete garbage compared to Total Commander. It might be my early exposure to NC and DirOpus, back in the day, but everything else is just magnitudes slower to use. I understand for 'normal' users, something like TC would be hard to use compared to finder/explorer, but for the rest of us I can't understand why would you use anything else.
  - rsync 10y ago
    "I like preview feature in Finder. It's awesome and I wish every OS had that." Agreed - the space-bar convention for quick preview and browsing through files is really, really useful. In fact, it's so nice that I can't believe it's still there in a not-yet-wrecked form. Give it some time.
kawera 10y ago
Hardware support is also one of the reasons to keep using OS9. I still use it on a 1998 Powermac almost every week as my drum scanner requires a custom PCI card and an app that ties everything together. Its vendor went under long ago and so no one to port their app to OSX. Works like a charm, with original keyboard and mouse.
kalleboo 10y ago
While we're all on the nostalgia kick - I only recently learned that parts of the System 7.1.1 source code had leaked a few years ago (notably the Toolbox stuff that went in ROM). That stuff was a fascinating read. Seeing source comments signed by Andy Herzfeld, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn and Larry Kenyon and dating back to before the Mac was even released (and lining them up with folklore.org stories) was amazingly nostalgic. Here's a changelog line from the SystemSounds.r Rez resource file many of you might recognize the story behind... <3> 3/28/91 DTY Change the name of “Xylophone” to “Sosumi”.
- yuhong 10y ago
  It is basically the source of the SuperMario ROM from the first PowerPC Macs I think.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
A lot of Finder hate here, and I agree, it's a piece of shit. Forget about it. Get Path Finder[1], you won't regret it. I have no affiliations, I'm just an over zealot fan. 1. http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ Edit: fixed a word
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Thanks for the heads up on this. Looks like a neat replacement. I like that it has Git integration etc. all built in. The "Drop Stack" feature seems like a killer one (for me). I've lost count of the number of times I have copied image or icon files from several subfolders into one destination project folder. Drop Stack may mean the end of having multiple Finder windows or tabs open...
jsight 10y ago
It is funny that they love the spatial finder so much. Remember when Gnome did this with Nautilus? It was not a popular decision at the time. Although it obviously did have a few very vocal proponents.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I seem to recall that Windows File Explorer could do spacial as well. The concept only really work when you have a folder depth of 2-3 nested folders tops. After that you start getting so many windows on the screen it becomes like a dropped deck of cards.
  - jsight 10y ago
    It might have had that, although I seem to remember it not remembering window placement correctly. That was a long time ago, though, so I could have the details wrong.
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      So far as I recall Windows 3 was the only one that actually tried to be spatial. Windows 1 and 2 were essentially tiling window managers on the opposite side of the spectrum, and Windows 95's Explorer intentionally was not spatial. There was the brief period 98 to ME that Explorer was sometimes spatial, but that seemed more an accident of Explorer's "Active" phase than intentional.
dasil003 10y ago
My friend got an Apple IIGS in 1986 and kept it going almost this long (until about 2000 if I recall). He had it upgraded to the gills with 8MB RAM, and the TransWarp GS accelerator card. It definitely was a parallel universe from Mac OS where there were amazing graphics and sound capabilities that didn't start to land on Mac OS until the mid-90s.
donretag 10y ago
I know I will be in the minority and say that I hated Macs before OSX. Good riddance. Most importantly the lack of true multi-tasking as highlighted in the article. Even Windows 95 performed before. Doing software development was a chore. Never liked the Mac UI, even in OSX. The lack of focus-on-hover is still today a major pain for me. Even Windows has focus-on-hover. Hate the single menu bar on top. Yes, even after all these years using Macs, I still do not like it. However, I just love the hardware and the fact that you can get closer to Linux (important as a dev) than you can on Windows.
- jaza 10y ago
  Have to agree: I've used Macs sporadically for over 20 years (never by choice), and I've never liked the UI. I too hate the single menu bar, and I've also discovered that many recent converts to Mac actually don't understand its behaviour, that the single menu bar metamorphoses between system - app1 - app2 - system dropdowns, depending on the active window. That, and the fact that pushing the red 'x' button in the corner doesn't close an app (just hides it, only file - quit actually closes it), is exactly the same on OS9 and OSX, and it irks me the same.
- rsync 10y ago
  Agreed. OSX: I love the OS, I hate the UI.
OJFord 10y ago
> He couldn't log in to his Ars e-mail That's unfortunate! (For British [Commonwealth?] readers, at least.)
mattkevan 10y ago
Good riddance. These nostalgia pieces forget what flaky pieces of junk OS 8 and 9 actually were. Even Apple knew that they were stop-gaps, papering over the cracks until they could get a new system out the door. 7.5.5 was pretty solid though - it ran happily on our Mac Plus from nearly a decade earlier. However I've still got a Bondi iMac running 9.2 and every time I start it up I'm glad those days are long gone. Remember extension conflicts? I do. Having to manually remove all the extensions and put them back one-by-one, rebooting each time, to find the two (or more) which didn't like each other was a total pain. Have you zapped the P-RAM? Did you re-bless the system folder? Cargo cult computer maintenance. Getting a reliable TCP IP stack working? Good luck with that. The fear of an application crash (I'm looking at you IE 5) taking down the whole system and losing work. Cross your fingers and hope you can still save after a force quit. The ability for users to move or delete key files in the System folder. What fun.
Applejinx 10y ago
I run the DSP plugin company airwindows.com and have continued to support PPC machines, though I don't think it extends back to OS 9. Recently added Mac and PC VST (I'm told the backward compatibility on Windows tends to reach back farther: from my experiences in XCode I can believe it). I'm understandably very curious whether there even is any DAW that can use the PPC Mac VST support I've been including in the new plugins :)

189 points by shawndumas 10y ago

Yeah I have Basilisk II running MacOS 8.1 that a friend of mine had to recompile because the libraries they used for it are out of date. It has IE 4.0 but the certificates have expired so it won't load most websites. Nobody seems to be targeting the older PowerMacs for Web Browsers and other Internet apps. I used to use it for safe web browsing because Windows viruses don't infect it and the web browser is so old it won't run the new stuff for the latest version of IE.

Karunamon 10y ago
This is kind of a harebrained theory of mine that I'm not sure it's possible to test: are you more safe on very, very obsolete platforms because the chances of stumbling onto malware that'll target you is almost nonexistent? If so, there's an argument for doing your day to day web browsing in SheepShaver running Classilla.. if not for the dealbreaking lack of support for any security better than SSLv3 (hopelessly broken).
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  I think fringe is probably more important than obsolete (though both together could be powerful). The problem being, obsolete software is trivial by modern standards to exploit, so it seems it would be like wandering a minefield. Stumble on some dusty old exploit, and it's over.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Just like there are clients running old code, there are old viruses around. I doubt it is safer than running up-to-date software, though it might be safer than being just a couple of versions behind.
- amyjess 10y ago
  I remember hearing that, at one point, there were some secure government sites that ran everything on classic Mac OS because it was one of the only operating systems that had no CLI and as such weren't vulnerable to someone getting console access and going to town. Never verified that story, though.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I'm not sure if its the same story but the US Army once used Mac OS for some of its web servers because they were judged the most secure. I cannot remember what third party web server they were using.
    - orionblastar 10y ago
      I used to work as a federal contractor in 1996-1997. The Army did switch to MacOS for web servers. I'm not sure what Mac web server they used. They tried Windows that got hacked, and they ran Linux but didn't always update it and it got hacked as well. I think they ran some stuff as Root in Linux. The MacOS security model was different from Linux or Windows and supposed to be more secure. Of course social engineering meant that people can call their help desk and pretend to be someone working on the server to get the password reset. No security software is going to stop a social engineering attack. Also after people get their password reset they forget to change it and leave it "password" and other easy to remember passwords. So weak passwords mean someone can get in without using an exploit but a password dictionary attack.
      - protomyth 10y ago
        And here's the article https://tidbits.com/article/5552 https://tidbits.com/article/5552 "The compelling aspect of this story is that as a result of the break-in, the U.S. Army has switched the machines that serve the Army's home page from Windows NT-based PCs to Power Macintosh G3s running WebSTAR from StarNine Technologies." [edit:] I do love the speculation at the end on if Mac OS X Server will be as good security-wise as Mac OS.
- davb 10y ago
  That's probably true to some extent. The security of these older systems also undoubtedly benefits from the much smaller attack surface. They typically have far fewer services (network or otherwise) and simpler interfaces between components. If known vulnerabilities were patched, I can see how it would be easy to trust a simpler, legacy platform over a modern platform. Very few experienced professionals I've worked with (myself included) posses a working knowledge of a modern OS's services and persistent processes - that's a lot of trust to place in the platform. There's something to be said for the time when you could have an inside out understanding an OS, its libraries and its binaries. I thought vanilla Android was overly complex, but one look at the running processes on a Samsung S7 and I was horrified. The same can be said of OSX or a recent mainstream Linux distribution. I'd happily take a less flexible but much simpler OS over what we have now. Removing all those layers of services and indirection might increase short term development costs, but I think it would be worth it. Modern computing has me feeling more and more like a grump old man. I'm only 30.
- yuhong 10y ago
  Classilla do better than SSLv3 these days. It even supports SHA2 certificates now.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  You're less likely to pick up a widely targeted virus, and more likely to be pwned if anyone attempts to target you personally.
- guardiangod 10y ago
  If you want to run obsolete platforms with built in modern security protections, why don't you just use OpenBSD? /rimshot I love you OpenBSD

fern12 10y ago

That was a nice trip down memory lane. I still have fond memories of zipping through the MacAddict magazine forums on Camino. And downloading a dozen freeware apps I didn't need through VersionTracker. Nowadays, I avoid the App Store as much as possible, it gives me so much eye strain.

amyjess 10y ago
Do you remember the sampler CDs that used to come with CD-ROM Today magazine in the mid 90s? They had all sorts of random games and other stuff that I had so much fun with as a kid. One of the first things I did once I got my emulators set up was to hunt down those CDs again...
- fern12 10y ago
  Yep, I used to get CDs with my monthly issue of MacAddict. Those were a highlight for me. I still remember when I discovered Glenn's Games. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot.
72deluxe 10y ago
The AppStore is sluggish for me. I don't understand why installing xcode updates shows zero progress in the AppStore other than a tiny rotating wheel - I have to open Activity Monitor and see how busy installd and downloadd (or whatever it is called) are to try and guess how far along the installation I am.
- fern12 10y ago
  I can't stand the App Store. I have to strain my eyes to read the categories, then strain them again to read the price, and again to read the reviews. I miss the old way of doing everything within a browser (albeit not one that knows everything about me, lol).

justinator 10y ago

I'm surprised that they didn't talk to writers that just want to write a novel without all the distractions of a modern MacOs experience.

icantdrive55 10y ago
I don't use a word processing program much anymore. I just haven't taken the time to learn all the features, or care to. What I have been using instead is Sublime text. I didn't plan on it, but just found myself using it to write. I know they have writing plug-ins, but haven't had the need to even seek those out. It probally seems crazy, but it just works for me now. Plus, most of my writing these days goes right into HTML markdown?
- kctess5 10y ago
  I do this too! I write most prose in sublime. It gives me spell check, word count, handy text folding features, and tons of other useful features without the distractions of thinking about styling. If necessary, I paste dump it into Pages/gdocs as a last step, but usually I just write markdown.
- derefr 10y ago
  Not crazy at all. I used to use Notepad with the font set to something proportional. "Word processing" programs have blurred the line between writing and editing, but in a professional publishing pipeline they've always been best done with separate tools. And the tool for writing, should be a tool that offers as few distractions to writing as possible. Definitely no editing or layout tools.
  - sgc 10y ago
    I am of another school of thought. The layouts of my documents are there to make them easier to understand, and I benefit from them while I am writing. So I personally do not like writing in a text editor, even though I spend a lot of time in one when I am completing other tasks. At the same time, I simply create or import styles at the beginning of a project, so I am virtually never doing layout while I am writing.

amyjess 10y ago

I have classic Mac OS running in emulators (BasiliskII and SheepShaver) because: a) I enjoy the nostalgia (I grew up with Macs as a kid and didn't get a PC until I was 12-13) b) I find the underlying technology extremely fascinating (resource forks especially) c) there are a lot of old Mac-only games that are a lot of fun (Power Pete! Spin Doctor! Slick Willie... though my emulator doesn't like that one. Plus a bunch of random games from the sampler CDs I used to collect as a kid.) I'd never, ever use classic Mac OS as a daily driver again, but it's a lot of fun for me to play with it every once in a while.

ashark 10y ago
I miss After Dark. A handful of the screensavers (four, I think?) are available for OSX, but only through some Japanese site with a distribution and payment system that's not immediately confidence-building compared to other solutions on the modern web. It's reminiscent of shareware, which I guess is kind of appropriate but doesn't make me more likely to hand them my CC number.
- zachberger 10y ago
  I miss the flying toasters.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  xscreensaver will always be there for you.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Ditto, I loved that screensaver. jwz at least made a Flying Toasters module for xscreensaver, but there were so many great ones. I especially miss Starry Night, which seems like it ought to be trivial to recreate.
macandcheese 10y ago
The things I'd do for a Power Pete remake... iOS seems like a pretty good platform for it all told. I tried the emulator and managed to get it to run but everything was sped up 4x or so...

agumonkey 10y ago

The look and feel of OS 9 is still working today. And I wasn't a Mac user so no hard nostalgia feeling (compared to a Wintel box). Ironic that I was so into hyper fluid dynamic UI (css3 or other stacks) now I'm finding myself missing Win 3 / OS 9 "fixed function pipeline".

PeCaN 10y ago
BeOS and OS 9 were well designed. I feel like we've sort of lost our way about what made those OSes good, replaced it with very “showy” graphic design. Operating systems should be a tool for information and communication, not a modern art exhibit.

pumblechook 10y ago

Personal reason: in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability. It is becoming much more difficult now to separate platform convention from actual user tested, researched UX. In the old Apple machines they used to be one in the same, so I find it very useful to often compare old design to new (where applicable) in order to suss out any differences and investigate them. Many times we've simply gotten used to less usable interfaces because we upgraded and didn't think twice, and the old machines can be a useful sanity check. Edit: when I mean separating platform convention from user-tested UX, I mean that there are some pretty obvious times when platform UX conventions haven't been user tested (or were implemented despite negative user testing results). The most obvious one to me is iOS's flat buttons. I write iOS apps and try to do as much user testing on them as possible, and I've found this to be by far the most frequent struggle for users - discerning which things are pressable and which aren't.

jeromenerf 10y ago
> in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability. Maybe you are right on this. Maybe this is why I feel nostalgic of pixelartish BeOS, QNX Neutrino, maybe MacOS9 / *Step and even plan9 rio/acme or IRIX. My UX in terms of usability and style seem to cycle: 0. get inspiration, 1. comfort, 2. fatigue, 3. back to 0 and realize the previously inspiring thing is now obsolete. Sad thing, in 30 years, I have cycled a lot more with "computer interface" domain than I have with congas and cameras, some of my favourites having been produced in the late 80s / early 90s. Software do not age well, yet, and there isn't much chance to keep them running, even if their features, concepts and styles are still relevant to a significant user base. That being said, I use OS, terminals and text editors whose concepts take roots in the 60s :) As the discussion above focused on macos Finder, I miss the now unmaintained Rox Filer the same way.

makecheck 10y ago

They are 100% correct about the spatial Finder; 15 years later and what the current OS has is still laughable compared to some of the gems of the Classic Finder. A few years back Steve Jobs had the audacity to describe some Cocoa rewrite as a “whole new Finder” and I got excited only to realize it was still garbage. You sort of have to experience the Classic Finder to understand just how wrong the modern Finder really is. From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it) to not having to wonder what will happen when you click something, not to mention the pop-up tab windows from 8.5+. Also, to this day I don’t quite understand why Apple went so far away from Platinum. Today’s toolbar icons and buttons are downright ugly compared to the UI that was achieved with far fewer colors on Classic Macs. They “almost” had it when 10.5 Leopard managed to unify most of the OS and apps but then they started fiddling again. While I do like the “vibrancy” effect in parts of the current OS, even that is overdone (scrolling under toolbars, really?). It would have been better to combine the vibrancy technology with more professional user interface elements reminiscent of Classic.

duaneb 10y ago
> From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it) This—along with the rest of the 2d layout—is my absolute least favorite aspect of the finder. If I could completely disable that (along with the .DS_store and __MACOSX absurdities) and force everything to use three-column layout, I would in a heartbeat. It's just a recipe to PREVENT easy access to your data—how can they allow dragging icons out of the view or overlapping each other? You can't even "reload" to reset their location, and people can even send you ZIPPED FILES where the locations are broken. Coverflow is even worse for usability. I have no idea how people can work with either icons or no ability to switch up the sorting on demand—I don't think I've used my desktop except as basically a "tmp" folder for screenshots in years. Why not just use launchpad as the desktop? Does anyone actually use their desktop to store often accessed files, or is it just a replacement for ~/Documents at this point? I wish they would give ANY love to the finder at this point. I don't care how it's written; it's gotten steadily less usable with every iteration.
- nihonde 10y ago

combatentropy 10y ago

Even the 1984 Macintosh was snappy in its user interface: when you clicked a menu it opened instantly, when you dragged a window it always moved instantaneously. Working with Windows even 20 years later was disappointing. You click the Start menu, and waited. Finally it appeared. You hovered over a menu item and waited. Finally its submenu appeared.

brokenmachine 10y ago
There was a hover delay built into WinXP which I also found annoying, but you could disable it (for free) using Powertoys for XP from Microsoft. It wasn't the computer that was too slow but a stupid UI decision by Microsoft. That was easy to fix though. I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. It was shit. It was much harder to do anything useful. Try editing a video for instance. Or even just emailing a photo. Or loading a file from a floppy which took tens of seconds. Some people remember the experience of using an old PC as being better because it was simpler because they didn't even attempt to do anything more complex than very basic tasks like word processing. I remember launching an application on a 1989 Mac SE30 took (I'm guessing) about 10 seconds. You heard the HD thrashing around long before the application was visible. Most programs launch in less than two seconds on my >5yr old i5-2500 with an SSD (Windows 7). The machine has started up and is ready to use in less than a minute. I have over 300 tabs in Firefox and it is still responsive (admittedly after a significant launch delay, but after that it's fast). You could run notepad/Word and nothing else if you want on a modern PC and it will run lightning fast, and the menus are quick. If you enjoy the old PC experience so much, there's no reason you can't continue to use one.
- combatentropy 10y ago
  > There was a hover delay built into WinXP No, this was longer and inconsistent. The more I used the menu, the faster it got, until finally the built-in delay was the only delay. > I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. No, I'm just saying that there were some nice things about old Macs that took Windows decades to match. And I'm agreeing with the article that there are some subtleties that are still hard to beat, despite many other things that are of course many times worse. The article wasn't about how an old Mac is better in every way and we should all dump our modern computers and go back. It was pondering the irony: "Hey, isn't it ironic that this computer can't open Facebook, but it has a spatially oriented file browser the remembers the spots for all your icons in every folder." To this day, Windows cannot keep the Recycle Bin in the bottom-right corner across screen resizes. It is obviously recording the coordinate from the screen's top left. That always bugged me too (I know, it's the small things).

jonah 10y ago

My friend, San Francisco photographer Adrian Mendoza[1], keeps a couple PowerMacs around to run graphics software that never made the OS X transition[2]. It's interesting that certain kinds of art production[3] is becoming harder and harder because the tools are obsolete. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/ [2] Predominantly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools [3] https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928 https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928

boobsbr 10y ago
I remember having a Kai's Power Tools CD in my 386/486 days. Don't remember if it came bundled with my SB16 multimedia kit or with something else.

lukeh 10y ago

Recording studios with Harrison Series 12s are still stuck on very old 030s for their automation...

peterburkimsher 10y ago

I'm downgrading to iTunes 10.6.3 on Mac OS 10.5.8, the last version to work on PPC. Unfortunately I have to reimport all my music since 2012. I held out at iTunes 10.7 for a long time because I don't want to lose USB sync of contacts and calendars. My dad recently offered me an old PPC Mac Mini, and I hope I can get it to sync my iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3. It is possible to downgrade iOS using Odysseus, and I expect to keep this obsolete system for a while. Apple had an ecosystem from 2001 (Quicksilver G4 running 10.5.8) to 2014 (iPhone 4S). That's 13 years, half my lifetime. iSync would "just work". Internet access is not always reliable enough for me to trust the cloud, and I prefer to manage my own Digital Hub. I used some Platinum themes for about a year. It looks beautiful on Retina; there's so much space. Eventually I realised that my icon cache had grown to over 3GB though, so I removed them. I'm keeping an eye on the old versions though, just in case I get the urge to downgrade further at a later date.

m_mueller 10y ago
Why do you want PPC? I'm thinking 10.6.x on the last Intel mac with Snowleopard support would be an 'upgrade' to your usecase. Btw. what I miss most is the glory days of OSX Preview. This thing, I could just throw at it whatever I wanted and it would handle it without choking. Nowadays I have to force quit that damn thing more than I use it, just because I load some largish PNG. As a student this thing was the absolute killer feature for my mac, because I could put together conclusion papers way faster and in much higher quality than anything possible on Windows. Rectangular Text snippets being vector scalable after pasting into Pages and images keeping their original quality was just a godsend [1]. [1] http://imgur.com/a/slstJ http://imgur.com/a/slstJ
- astrange 10y ago
  Preview shouldn't be falling over ever, even if PNG is a fairly inefficient format for partial loading. File a bug at https://bugreporter.apple.com https://bugreporter.apple.com or with Feedback Assistant.
  - m_mueller 10y ago

_acme 10y ago

I still do my writing in the OpenDoc word processor WAV.

fungi 10y ago
in an emulator?
Applejinx 10y ago
Oh my God, I remember that term. I used to do all my web browsing in Cyberdog. Working in OpenDoc I got used to nothing having splash screens, and it was like a glimpse of a future that never happened…

Jerry2 10y ago

After using MacOSX for a decade, I've been using Linux exclusively for 3 weeks now... after my rMBP was stolen and I can't afford a new Mac right now. Of all the software that I used on a Mac, I have to say that I miss the Finder the most. I've tried every file manager available on Linux (you name it, I've probably tried it) and I can't find anything that's even close to Finder. Nautilus and Nemo are the closest but they are both buggy and are missing a ton of features that I loved in Finder. Everything else just doesn't have the polish or is just missing features that make using Finder such a joy. I remember when I complained about "Classic Finder" and then about missing features in "Cocoa Finder" after the massive rewrite. Looking back, those small issues and warts are nothing when you compare it to what's available on other OSes. Anyway, to appreciate the genius and polish of using Finder, just spend few weeks with other OSes and see how much you'll miss it :)

4ad 10y ago
I am using OS X and the only time I ever fire Finder is when I want to view a bunch of pictures. I never understood how exactly file managers are supposed to help somebody. I never feel the need for a file manager.
Keyframe 10y ago
Funny that. I use OSX, Windows and Linux daily. Most of my time is spent on OSX, then Windows, then Linux (not daily linux though, I lied - every few days). I like preview feature in Finder. It's awesome and I wish every OS had that. Apart from that, Finder must be the only thing that really bothers me on OSX. That and whatever equivalent comes with Fedora/XFCE and Windows Explorer. They are all complete garbage compared to Total Commander. It might be my early exposure to NC and DirOpus, back in the day, but everything else is just magnitudes slower to use. I understand for 'normal' users, something like TC would be hard to use compared to finder/explorer, but for the rest of us I can't understand why would you use anything else.
- rsync 10y ago
  "I like preview feature in Finder. It's awesome and I wish every OS had that." Agreed - the space-bar convention for quick preview and browsing through files is really, really useful. In fact, it's so nice that I can't believe it's still there in a not-yet-wrecked form. Give it some time.

kawera 10y ago

Hardware support is also one of the reasons to keep using OS9. I still use it on a 1998 Powermac almost every week as my drum scanner requires a custom PCI card and an app that ties everything together. Its vendor went under long ago and so no one to port their app to OSX. Works like a charm, with original keyboard and mouse.

kalleboo 10y ago

While we're all on the nostalgia kick - I only recently learned that parts of the System 7.1.1 source code had leaked a few years ago (notably the Toolbox stuff that went in ROM). That stuff was a fascinating read. Seeing source comments signed by Andy Herzfeld, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn and Larry Kenyon and dating back to before the Mac was even released (and lining them up with folklore.org stories) was amazingly nostalgic. Here's a changelog line from the SystemSounds.r Rez resource file many of you might recognize the story behind... <3> 3/28/91 DTY Change the name of “Xylophone” to “Sosumi”.

yuhong 10y ago
It is basically the source of the SuperMario ROM from the first PowerPC Macs I think.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

A lot of Finder hate here, and I agree, it's a piece of shit. Forget about it. Get Path Finder[1], you won't regret it. I have no affiliations, I'm just an over zealot fan. 1. http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ Edit: fixed a word

cyberferret 10y ago
Thanks for the heads up on this. Looks like a neat replacement. I like that it has Git integration etc. all built in. The "Drop Stack" feature seems like a killer one (for me). I've lost count of the number of times I have copied image or icon files from several subfolders into one destination project folder. Drop Stack may mean the end of having multiple Finder windows or tabs open...

jsight 10y ago

It is funny that they love the spatial finder so much. Remember when Gnome did this with Nautilus? It was not a popular decision at the time. Although it obviously did have a few very vocal proponents.

digi_owl 10y ago
I seem to recall that Windows File Explorer could do spacial as well. The concept only really work when you have a folder depth of 2-3 nested folders tops. After that you start getting so many windows on the screen it becomes like a dropped deck of cards.
- jsight 10y ago
  It might have had that, although I seem to remember it not remembering window placement correctly. That was a long time ago, though, so I could have the details wrong.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    So far as I recall Windows 3 was the only one that actually tried to be spatial. Windows 1 and 2 were essentially tiling window managers on the opposite side of the spectrum, and Windows 95's Explorer intentionally was not spatial. There was the brief period 98 to ME that Explorer was sometimes spatial, but that seemed more an accident of Explorer's "Active" phase than intentional.

dasil003 10y ago

My friend got an Apple IIGS in 1986 and kept it going almost this long (until about 2000 if I recall). He had it upgraded to the gills with 8MB RAM, and the TransWarp GS accelerator card. It definitely was a parallel universe from Mac OS where there were amazing graphics and sound capabilities that didn't start to land on Mac OS until the mid-90s.

donretag 10y ago

I know I will be in the minority and say that I hated Macs before OSX. Good riddance. Most importantly the lack of true multi-tasking as highlighted in the article. Even Windows 95 performed before. Doing software development was a chore. Never liked the Mac UI, even in OSX. The lack of focus-on-hover is still today a major pain for me. Even Windows has focus-on-hover. Hate the single menu bar on top. Yes, even after all these years using Macs, I still do not like it. However, I just love the hardware and the fact that you can get closer to Linux (important as a dev) than you can on Windows.

jaza 10y ago
Have to agree: I've used Macs sporadically for over 20 years (never by choice), and I've never liked the UI. I too hate the single menu bar, and I've also discovered that many recent converts to Mac actually don't understand its behaviour, that the single menu bar metamorphoses between system - app1 - app2 - system dropdowns, depending on the active window. That, and the fact that pushing the red 'x' button in the corner doesn't close an app (just hides it, only file - quit actually closes it), is exactly the same on OS9 and OSX, and it irks me the same.
rsync 10y ago
Agreed. OSX: I love the OS, I hate the UI.

OJFord 10y ago

> He couldn't log in to his Ars e-mail That's unfortunate! (For British [Commonwealth?] readers, at least.)

mattkevan 10y ago

Good riddance. These nostalgia pieces forget what flaky pieces of junk OS 8 and 9 actually were. Even Apple knew that they were stop-gaps, papering over the cracks until they could get a new system out the door. 7.5.5 was pretty solid though - it ran happily on our Mac Plus from nearly a decade earlier. However I've still got a Bondi iMac running 9.2 and every time I start it up I'm glad those days are long gone. Remember extension conflicts? I do. Having to manually remove all the extensions and put them back one-by-one, rebooting each time, to find the two (or more) which didn't like each other was a total pain. Have you zapped the P-RAM? Did you re-bless the system folder? Cargo cult computer maintenance. Getting a reliable TCP IP stack working? Good luck with that. The fear of an application crash (I'm looking at you IE 5) taking down the whole system and losing work. Cross your fingers and hope you can still save after a force quit. The ability for users to move or delete key files in the System folder. What fun.

Applejinx 10y ago

I run the DSP plugin company airwindows.com and have continued to support PPC machines, though I don't think it extends back to OS 9. Recently added Mac and PC VST (I'm told the backward compatibility on Windows tends to reach back farther: from my experiences in XCode I can believe it). I'm understandably very curious whether there even is any DAW that can use the PPC Mac VST support I've been including in the new plugins :)