7 ms·

The article in general is pretty good, but this is off: > The Macintosh’s operating system was showing its age, especially compared to Microsoft’s Windows 95.

by zeveb 10y ago

The article in general is pretty good, but this is off: > The Macintosh’s operating system was showing its age, especially compared to Microsoft’s Windows 95. I don't think that there was ever a point where Systems 7, 8 or 9 were worse than Windows 95.

bitwize 10y ago
While Apple was faffing about with Taligent and Copland, Microsoft shipped something that provided preemptive multitasking and memory isolation for 32-bit apps. Windows 95 was a collection of hacks that never should've worked but it put Apple behind the 8 ball to bring its OS tech into the present.
- Taniwha 10y ago
  Apple also shipped A/UX which did all that
  - wmf 10y ago
    And was so expensive no one cared.
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      And this is probably the greatest inhibitor Unix had for its adoption.
  - switchbak 10y ago
    They also shipped the Lisa prior to that, which also had protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. This died for other reasons however (too expensive, upstaged by the mac, etc).
- Angostura 10y ago
  Oh, I rather liked OpenDOC.
FreakyT 10y ago
They really were, though; astoundingly, System 7/8/9 didn't even support preemptive multitasking[1] which Windows 95 did have. [1] http://forums.macnn.com/64/classic-macs-and-mac-os/44121/what-extent-mac-os-9-x/ http://forums.macnn.com/64/classic-macs-and-mac-os/44121/wha...
- awfgylbcxhrey 10y ago
  And the Amiga had preemptive multitasking in 1985. :-) (It didn't have per-process memory protection, though, but it was a huge point of pride for Amiga users back in the early 90s)
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    Microware's OS-9 Level 1 had preemptive multitasking IIRC - this was late-1970s, early-80s - it was distributed by Radio Shack for the TRS-80 Color Computer line, which ran the 6809 8-bit processor, at something like .89 MHz (pretty f'in amazing when you think about it).
stcredzero 10y ago
System 9 still lacked preemptive multitasking, due to a pragmatic decision from the very beginning of MacOS. (Perhaps even predating the Mac?) That alone would be enough to say that it was showing its age. As someone who was using System 9 at the time, I would say that this is indeed what knowledgeable users were thinking.
- buserror 10y ago
  It's not entirely true. Copland microkernel was in (hidden) in System 8.5 onward, and provided preemptive multitasking, file mapping, timers etc. It's just that the only real 'task' on it was the old cooperative OS. They had made a LOT of work on that, and the driver model by the time System 9 arrived. What really failed on Copland was the 'userland' equivalent. At the time, Apple had gone into a completely bizarre way of designing complex APIs for everything and most of them had no use whatsoever. There were heaps of crap, like OpenDoc and many others and Copland was 'trying' (and failing miserably) to integrate all of that. How do I know? I have a collector t-shirt with 'Copland Driver Kitchen' on it ;-)
  - stuckagain 10y ago
    8.5 wasn't released until years after Win 95, though.
  - bdrool 10y ago
    Slight correction: it was called the "nanokernel".
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    It's not entirely true. Copland microkernel was in (hidden) in System 8.5 onward, and provided preemptive multitasking, file mapping, timers etc. It's just that the only real 'task' on it was the old cooperative OS. So not entirely true -- it's "only" true from the standpoint of typical User Experience.
9oliYQjP 10y ago
Windows 95 supported preemptive multitasking for 32-bit applications. Mac OS kept using cooperative multitasking for an embarrassingly long time through all versions of 7, 8, and 9. Macs didn't get preemptive multitasking until OS X came along although there was a half hearted API that some apps could opt into in OS 9. By that time, a lot of Windows users were already on Windows 2000 or moving up to XP, both of which made classic Mac OS look downright archaic. But not to be mistaken, Windows 95 was a lot more advanced than classic Mac OS in a lot of important characteristics.
- to3m 10y ago
  Don't forget the per-process heap size bar that you had to adjust. If you were used to any 386 version of Windows, it was like going back to a very well-manicured version of the dark ages. I'll freely admit that it was, in the main, not worse than MS-DOS, most of the time.
wilsynet 10y ago
> I don't think that there was ever a point where Systems 7, 8 or 9 were worse than Windows 95. Systems 7, 8 and 9 had better font handling, prettier icons, a more comprehensive GUI experience (eg. drag and drop worked everywhere), and a richer desktop publishing ecosystem. But with respect to multitasking, 32-bit application support, protected mode, and networking, including support for, you know, the Internet -- Windows 95 was way, way, way better than Mac OS. Apple had a 11 year head start with the Mac. With Windows 95, Microsoft had finally caught up, and then some. The only people who thought Win 95 = Mac 84 were Apple fanboys.
- AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
  And paid apple astroturfers.
- bluedino 10y ago
  >> networking, including support for, you know, the Internet -- Windows 95 was way, way, way better than Mac OS. I don't know about that - Macs with Mosaic and then Netscape were the internet surfing tools of choice in the Windows 3.x and 95 days. Anyone remember winnuke?
- kls 10y ago
  Agreed, watching a Photoshop filter lock up an entire machine was painful in those days. Not to mention all of the other random beach balls one would get. I actually came over to the Mac (for my home machine) for a little while after the writing was on the wall for the Amiga and it felt like a painful step backwards. At work we had been running NeXt boxes for a while, which made it's deficiencies all the more apparent. I was not a big fan of Win95 but it would be a far stretch to argue that System 7/8/9 where anywhere near it in terms of actual use without regular crashing, which plagued MacOS at the time. Everyone was familiar with the bomb icon back then.
  - tambourine_man 10y ago
    >Not to mention all of the other random beach balls one would get Beach balls were a Next invention, which was bright along to OS X. It was monochrome originally and supposed to represent the terribly slow CD-ROM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel#From_NeXTStep_to_Mac_OS_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel#From_NeXTSte... Classic Mac OS had a wrist watch: https://i.stack.imgur.com/orvO6.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/orvO6.png
AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
Windows 95 had protected memory and virtual memory. You are simply wrong.
hota_mazi 10y ago
When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water, including AmigaOS. Which was itself vastly superior to anything else at the time, including the various Mac OS. It took years for Apple to even support preemptive multitasking, they were easily 5 if not 10 years behind (and still kind of are today).
- masklinn 10y ago
  > When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water Surely not in a technical sense. OS2/Warp and NeXT already existed and BeOS would be released a few months later able to play multiple videos in real time (playing MP3 on Windows would preclude doing anything else with the machine for a few more years, lest you liked skipping).
  - georgeecollins 10y ago
    Windows 95 was the best mass market OS at that time. Yes OS2/Warp and NeXT existed, but they were not popular. The Mac and Amiga OSs were inferior at that point.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      That doesn't come even remotely close to "blowing everything out the water".
    - valuearb 10y ago
      It had the best bones at that point, but it's UI/Fonts/Graphics were still subpar.
      - masklinn 10y ago
        > It had the best bones at that point Windows 95? Had the best bones? The underlying system was just terrible, there's a reason why the line would be replaced by NT two releases later.
- konradb 10y ago

by zeveb 10y ago

bitwize 10y ago

While Apple was faffing about with Taligent and Copland, Microsoft shipped something that provided preemptive multitasking and memory isolation for 32-bit apps. Windows 95 was a collection of hacks that never should've worked but it put Apple behind the 8 ball to bring its OS tech into the present.

Taniwha 10y ago
Apple also shipped A/UX which did all that
- wmf 10y ago
  And was so expensive no one cared.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    And this is probably the greatest inhibitor Unix had for its adoption.
- switchbak 10y ago
  They also shipped the Lisa prior to that, which also had protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. This died for other reasons however (too expensive, upstaged by the mac, etc).
Angostura 10y ago
Oh, I rather liked OpenDOC.

FreakyT 10y ago

They really were, though; astoundingly, System 7/8/9 didn't even support preemptive multitasking[1] which Windows 95 did have. [1] http://forums.macnn.com/64/classic-macs-and-mac-os/44121/what-extent-mac-os-9-x/ http://forums.macnn.com/64/classic-macs-and-mac-os/44121/wha...

awfgylbcxhrey 10y ago
And the Amiga had preemptive multitasking in 1985. :-) (It didn't have per-process memory protection, though, but it was a huge point of pride for Amiga users back in the early 90s)
- cr0sh 10y ago
  Microware's OS-9 Level 1 had preemptive multitasking IIRC - this was late-1970s, early-80s - it was distributed by Radio Shack for the TRS-80 Color Computer line, which ran the 6809 8-bit processor, at something like .89 MHz (pretty f'in amazing when you think about it).

stcredzero 10y ago

System 9 still lacked preemptive multitasking, due to a pragmatic decision from the very beginning of MacOS. (Perhaps even predating the Mac?) That alone would be enough to say that it was showing its age. As someone who was using System 9 at the time, I would say that this is indeed what knowledgeable users were thinking.

buserror 10y ago
It's not entirely true. Copland microkernel was in (hidden) in System 8.5 onward, and provided preemptive multitasking, file mapping, timers etc. It's just that the only real 'task' on it was the old cooperative OS. They had made a LOT of work on that, and the driver model by the time System 9 arrived. What really failed on Copland was the 'userland' equivalent. At the time, Apple had gone into a completely bizarre way of designing complex APIs for everything and most of them had no use whatsoever. There were heaps of crap, like OpenDoc and many others and Copland was 'trying' (and failing miserably) to integrate all of that. How do I know? I have a collector t-shirt with 'Copland Driver Kitchen' on it ;-)
- stuckagain 10y ago
  8.5 wasn't released until years after Win 95, though.
- bdrool 10y ago
  Slight correction: it was called the "nanokernel".
- stcredzero 10y ago
  It's not entirely true. Copland microkernel was in (hidden) in System 8.5 onward, and provided preemptive multitasking, file mapping, timers etc. It's just that the only real 'task' on it was the old cooperative OS. So not entirely true -- it's "only" true from the standpoint of typical User Experience.

9oliYQjP 10y ago

Windows 95 supported preemptive multitasking for 32-bit applications. Mac OS kept using cooperative multitasking for an embarrassingly long time through all versions of 7, 8, and 9. Macs didn't get preemptive multitasking until OS X came along although there was a half hearted API that some apps could opt into in OS 9. By that time, a lot of Windows users were already on Windows 2000 or moving up to XP, both of which made classic Mac OS look downright archaic. But not to be mistaken, Windows 95 was a lot more advanced than classic Mac OS in a lot of important characteristics.

to3m 10y ago
Don't forget the per-process heap size bar that you had to adjust. If you were used to any 386 version of Windows, it was like going back to a very well-manicured version of the dark ages. I'll freely admit that it was, in the main, not worse than MS-DOS, most of the time.

wilsynet 10y ago

> I don't think that there was ever a point where Systems 7, 8 or 9 were worse than Windows 95. Systems 7, 8 and 9 had better font handling, prettier icons, a more comprehensive GUI experience (eg. drag and drop worked everywhere), and a richer desktop publishing ecosystem. But with respect to multitasking, 32-bit application support, protected mode, and networking, including support for, you know, the Internet -- Windows 95 was way, way, way better than Mac OS. Apple had a 11 year head start with the Mac. With Windows 95, Microsoft had finally caught up, and then some. The only people who thought Win 95 = Mac 84 were Apple fanboys.

AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
And paid apple astroturfers.
bluedino 10y ago
>> networking, including support for, you know, the Internet -- Windows 95 was way, way, way better than Mac OS. I don't know about that - Macs with Mosaic and then Netscape were the internet surfing tools of choice in the Windows 3.x and 95 days. Anyone remember winnuke?
kls 10y ago
Agreed, watching a Photoshop filter lock up an entire machine was painful in those days. Not to mention all of the other random beach balls one would get. I actually came over to the Mac (for my home machine) for a little while after the writing was on the wall for the Amiga and it felt like a painful step backwards. At work we had been running NeXt boxes for a while, which made it's deficiencies all the more apparent. I was not a big fan of Win95 but it would be a far stretch to argue that System 7/8/9 where anywhere near it in terms of actual use without regular crashing, which plagued MacOS at the time. Everyone was familiar with the bomb icon back then.
- tambourine_man 10y ago
  >Not to mention all of the other random beach balls one would get Beach balls were a Next invention, which was bright along to OS X. It was monochrome originally and supposed to represent the terribly slow CD-ROM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel#From_NeXTStep_to_Mac_OS_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel#From_NeXTSte... Classic Mac OS had a wrist watch: https://i.stack.imgur.com/orvO6.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/orvO6.png

AWildDHHAppears 10y ago

Windows 95 had protected memory and virtual memory. You are simply wrong.

hota_mazi 10y ago

When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water, including AmigaOS. Which was itself vastly superior to anything else at the time, including the various Mac OS. It took years for Apple to even support preemptive multitasking, they were easily 5 if not 10 years behind (and still kind of are today).

masklinn 10y ago
> When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water Surely not in a technical sense. OS2/Warp and NeXT already existed and BeOS would be released a few months later able to play multiple videos in real time (playing MP3 on Windows would preclude doing anything else with the machine for a few more years, lest you liked skipping).
- georgeecollins 10y ago
  Windows 95 was the best mass market OS at that time. Yes OS2/Warp and NeXT existed, but they were not popular. The Mac and Amiga OSs were inferior at that point.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    That doesn't come even remotely close to "blowing everything out the water".
  - valuearb 10y ago
    It had the best bones at that point, but it's UI/Fonts/Graphics were still subpar.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > It had the best bones at that point Windows 95? Had the best bones? The underlying system was just terrible, there's a reason why the line would be replaced by NT two releases later.
konradb 10y ago