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Not really. The author seems to want to retain a great deal of control over the system while maintaining simplicity. The classic Macintosh system software is

by II2II 6y ago

Not really. The author seems to want to retain a great deal of control over the system while maintaining simplicity. The classic Macintosh system software is a reasonable example of this. Up to System 7.5 the operating system and the bulk of software only exposed components that were intended to be manipulated by the end user. For example: you could install a printer driver by dropping the appropriate file into System Folder:Extensions or install a font by dropping the appropriate file into System Folder:Fonts. If you wanted to remove a component, you could drag it to the trash. While you would lose access to a particular feature, everything else would continue to function. Much of that was facilitated by structured files, since everything could be bundled into the component's resource fork. Application software behaved in much the same way. Of course, that changed around System 7.5. The function of the various components were less evident than a printer driver, font, or application dictionary. Dependencies increasingly became things that must exist for the software to function, rather than being optional features. Mac OS eventually dropped the concept of resource forks, so things that used to be contained in one file were distributed across many. There are many reasons for those changes and the complexity of modern software likely makes returning to that old model impractical, if not impossible. That being said, for all of the improvements we have seen a lot of control has been lost.

flenserboy 6y ago
System 6 was pretty much the pinnacle point for combining ease of use with space for tinkering. Something like that (which is what the author seems to be longing for) combined with solid, multitasking underpinnings, would be a welcome player in the current landscape.
- II2II 6y ago
  You reminded me of an interesting feature in System 6: it was possible to turn multitasking off. I found the feature useful when it came down to crunch time in my university studies. Just as people today talk about disconnecting from the Internet when they need a distraction free work environment, I disabled multitasking. As for System 6 being the pinnacle, I have a hard time deciding between System 6 and System 7.1. The early versions of System 7 added a few quality-of-life improvements while maintaining most of the simplicity of System 6. System 7.5 (or maybe System 7.1 Pro) is when the Macintosh System Software went off the rails in my opinion.
  - temporallobe 6y ago
    Fascinating...how did the system behave with multitasking off? I’ve never encountered an OS with such a feature. Closest I can imagine is something like iOS.
    - II2II 6y ago
      From the end user perspective: you could only use one application at a time. In most cases, switching between programs meant quitting the current program and launching another program from the Finder. There were a couple of exceptions to this: * Some programs let you launch another program without quitting. If I recall correctly, those programs would remain in memory but would not run in the background. If you wanted to return to the original program, you would have to exit the program it launched. This was typically available in development tools. * Desk accessories were device drivers that looked like programs. This allowed the end user to run small programs, like a calculator or clipboard manager, while continuing to use another piece of software. The more interesting question is how did the system behave with multitasking turned on, since the original system software did not support multitasking. For a while multitasking support could be added with a separate piece of software. System 6 was the first version of the Macintosh system software to incorporate multitasking and it was turned off by default (if I recall correctly). System 7 was the first version where multitasking could not be disabled. I suspect that multitasking could be added in a relatively seamless fashion to the system software since developers were supposed to use the Macintosh Toolbox (API), so things like memory management were always mediated by the operating system. The main user-visible quirk was the ability to partition memory, which ensured that properly written software would not overwrite the memory of other applications. (Granted, there was no memory protection, so it could happen.)
  - flenserboy 6y ago
    System 6 stays with me as much better, mainly because System 7 randomly crashed unless I had just the right set of extensions, while System 6 only went down for me when an application (usually predictably) misbehaved. 7.5(.5) was truly terrible, though 7.6.1 ended up being remarkably stable.
temporallobe 6y ago
I work with macOS a lot, both for professional and personal use. I feel like Apple is making macOS increasingly abstract and taking away more control from the user with every update. For example, you used to be able to turn off auto-mounting of external/internal disks with a few command-line entries, but as of several versions ago, that feature was mysteriously removed and no one in the mac community seems to know how to fix it. It’s the kind of thing that makes me drift towards *nix OSs for personal computing and side projects. I still use and prefer Mint for such things.
JadeNB 6y ago
> Mac OS eventually dropped the concept of resource forks, so things that used to be contained in one file were distributed across many. Resource forks are still supported, if not commonly used, even in APFS. For example, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Compression , transparent compression is implemented that way.

by II2II 6y ago

flenserboy 6y ago

System 6 was pretty much the pinnacle point for combining ease of use with space for tinkering. Something like that (which is what the author seems to be longing for) combined with solid, multitasking underpinnings, would be a welcome player in the current landscape.

II2II 6y ago
You reminded me of an interesting feature in System 6: it was possible to turn multitasking off. I found the feature useful when it came down to crunch time in my university studies. Just as people today talk about disconnecting from the Internet when they need a distraction free work environment, I disabled multitasking. As for System 6 being the pinnacle, I have a hard time deciding between System 6 and System 7.1. The early versions of System 7 added a few quality-of-life improvements while maintaining most of the simplicity of System 6. System 7.5 (or maybe System 7.1 Pro) is when the Macintosh System Software went off the rails in my opinion.
- temporallobe 6y ago
  Fascinating...how did the system behave with multitasking off? I’ve never encountered an OS with such a feature. Closest I can imagine is something like iOS.
  - II2II 6y ago
    From the end user perspective: you could only use one application at a time. In most cases, switching between programs meant quitting the current program and launching another program from the Finder. There were a couple of exceptions to this: * Some programs let you launch another program without quitting. If I recall correctly, those programs would remain in memory but would not run in the background. If you wanted to return to the original program, you would have to exit the program it launched. This was typically available in development tools. * Desk accessories were device drivers that looked like programs. This allowed the end user to run small programs, like a calculator or clipboard manager, while continuing to use another piece of software. The more interesting question is how did the system behave with multitasking turned on, since the original system software did not support multitasking. For a while multitasking support could be added with a separate piece of software. System 6 was the first version of the Macintosh system software to incorporate multitasking and it was turned off by default (if I recall correctly). System 7 was the first version where multitasking could not be disabled. I suspect that multitasking could be added in a relatively seamless fashion to the system software since developers were supposed to use the Macintosh Toolbox (API), so things like memory management were always mediated by the operating system. The main user-visible quirk was the ability to partition memory, which ensured that properly written software would not overwrite the memory of other applications. (Granted, there was no memory protection, so it could happen.)
- flenserboy 6y ago
  System 6 stays with me as much better, mainly because System 7 randomly crashed unless I had just the right set of extensions, while System 6 only went down for me when an application (usually predictably) misbehaved. 7.5(.5) was truly terrible, though 7.6.1 ended up being remarkably stable.

temporallobe 6y ago

I work with macOS a lot, both for professional and personal use. I feel like Apple is making macOS increasingly abstract and taking away more control from the user with every update. For example, you used to be able to turn off auto-mounting of external/internal disks with a few command-line entries, but as of several versions ago, that feature was mysteriously removed and no one in the mac community seems to know how to fix it. It’s the kind of thing that makes me drift towards *nix OSs for personal computing and side projects. I still use and prefer Mint for such things.

JadeNB 6y ago

> Mac OS eventually dropped the concept of resource forks, so things that used to be contained in one file were distributed across many. Resource forks are still supported, if not commonly used, even in APFS. For example, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Compression , transparent compression is implemented that way.