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> We seem to have two very different experiences of past technology. Or you are talking about two different aspects. Older systems were more fragile, sure, but

> We seem to have two very different experiences of past technology. Or you are talking about two different aspects. Older systems were more fragile, sure, but that doesn't have much to do with their usability. You can have a simpler UX on a strong foundation. I didn't grew up with classic Mac (so no rosy glasses here) but the few times i used it (mainly via emulation, though i did use one real 'pizza box' Macintosh at the past) i really liked how downright simple the system is. This is a sentiment that was also echoed by my aunt who used classic Mac both at work and home back in the day and switched to Mac OS X at some point - decades later she still says that the classic Mac was much simpler and easier to use (she said that it was so approachable that one of her coworkers was actually referring to it as if it was some pet :-P). Note that when she started using computers she was already a full grown adult, so she hasn't associated classic Mac with her childhood or anything like that that people sometimes like to claim as reason for liking simpler stuff (which, i'll admit that it is partially true, but that only holds up for when you haven't used the stuff you claim to be simple any time recently and with modern tech and emulators this is really easy to confirm). Also hardware is still sucky at times - my RX 5700 XT powered PC was randomly hanging and crashing all the time until AMD managed to stabilize things a bit a few months after the GPU's release. I still do not update regularly the drivers and keep an archive with the older drivers that worked around just in case something breaks because i do not trust the newer drivers to work without issues. Similarly on another system with a 2400G APU i installed Linux which would randomly lock up at startup - that was a brand new system BTW, it was just a system i bought with the cheapest components i could find.

tambourine_man 6y ago
Classic Mac OS was remarkably simple indeed and that simplicity died with Mac OS X. You could put the “System” and the “Finder” inside a folder called “System Folder” at the root of the drive and that was enough for you to have a bootable disk. You could name your files whatever you wanted, as one should, no magical dot 3 letters extension at the end required. There was a one to one relationship between a folder and a window and the files within it. One folder had always one window showing its contents which where always arranged in the way you set up. The arrangement was even preserved if you copied it to another drive. I could go on and on. Memory management, process isolation and multitasking were deeply flawed and bolted on, but the rest of the experience was incredibly simple and cohesive and hasn’t been matched since.
- tijedoro 6y ago
  Maybe a nit, but FWIW, on OS X you still can name your files whatever you want, 3 letter suffixes do not influence the file type, and folders still store their layout if in that mode (click the 4 squares in the toolbar and maybe you have to change one setting in the CMD J window not at a mac right now). (not attcking you, the fact that it is a hidden setting probably proves your point. just find it interesting that this stuff is around still)

tambourine_man 6y ago

Classic Mac OS was remarkably simple indeed and that simplicity died with Mac OS X. You could put the “System” and the “Finder” inside a folder called “System Folder” at the root of the drive and that was enough for you to have a bootable disk. You could name your files whatever you wanted, as one should, no magical dot 3 letters extension at the end required. There was a one to one relationship between a folder and a window and the files within it. One folder had always one window showing its contents which where always arranged in the way you set up. The arrangement was even preserved if you copied it to another drive. I could go on and on. Memory management, process isolation and multitasking were deeply flawed and bolted on, but the rest of the experience was incredibly simple and cohesive and hasn’t been matched since.

tijedoro 6y ago
Maybe a nit, but FWIW, on OS X you still can name your files whatever you want, 3 letter suffixes do not influence the file type, and folders still store their layout if in that mode (click the 4 squares in the toolbar and maybe you have to change one setting in the CMD J window not at a mac right now). (not attcking you, the fact that it is a hidden setting probably proves your point. just find it interesting that this stuff is around still)