Woz mentioned something some time ago about how before OSX a whole lot of the Mac OS was housed in ROM. His claim was that this contributed to the security of

Woz mentioned something some time ago about how before OSX a whole lot of the Mac OS was housed in ROM. His claim was that this contributed to the security of the platform, and i suspect it may also have contributed to the snappiness you refer to. Frankly, the statement makes me think that pre-OSX Macintosh was the last holdout of the microcomputer era.