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It's worth noting that at this point in history (2001) Mac OS X is still a turkey; visually unique, but very slow and incomplete. It would have only been of in

It's worth noting that at this point in history (2001) Mac OS X is still a turkey; visually unique, but very slow and incomplete. It would have only been of interest to the freaks and geeks in the Unix/OpenStep community. I can only imagine there was much hand wringing in the old school Mac community about whether Apple was on the right track or not. It wasn't until version 10.3 in 2003 that OS X rounded into a form that would drive the final nail into the coffin of Classic Mac OS. In 2005, version 10.4 takes a giant step forward, leap frogs everything else on the market, and becomes a genuinely compelling alternative to both Windows users and Unix/Linux users. This is also the version that adopted arguably the only really compelling feature of BeOS (Spotlight), and the first version to support Intel. Apple's next release would be iPhoneOS 1.0.

wmf 5y ago
FWIW I preferred OS X to Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9 and used it as my daily driver starting with the public beta. But maybe I wasn't a very demanding user since I mostly used the terminal, OmniWeb, and Mail.
- grecy 5y ago
  I did too, though I have to say it was painfully slow on my Beige G3, and only became actually usable at about 10.3 or 10.4 as the comment above said.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    I ran Cheetah and Puma on my 9600/233. I tried really hard to convince myself that it was useable. Though to be fair the UNIX underpinnings were a revelation and it felt like living in the (gorgeous) future. Just a very slow one. I then used a B&W G3 until it went out of support. It indeed became better with every new release, which was quite impressive.
selestify 5y ago
What was so revolutionary about 10.4?
- ianlevesque 5y ago
  It's all subjective, but I'm not sure why they drew the line in the sand at 10.4. 10.2 was the first release that had hardware accelerated 2D graphics, which dramatically improved the UI responsiveness of Aqua. By 10.2's release Apple had also discontinued the development of Mac OS 9.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    The OS X Finder was unusable until 10.3, and ISTR there were still other missing things from OS 9 that 10.4 finally rectified, but I don’t recall what exactly. I do recall recommending against relatives and friends installing OS X until 10.4 finally filled in the gaps. edit: you can argue with “unusable,” but I never saw anyone use the NeXT Workspace or the OS X Finder pre-10.3. Everyone on those systems used the command line to get around.
    - jeromegv 5y ago
      I think you’re exaggerating. I was a student at a time, started with Mac OS 10.0 on a beige G3. It was slow but it worked. I browsed the web, did my homework, chatted with friends and used Classic for apps that we’re not converted to Carbon yet. It used the terminal because I was amazed I could do so much (like run my own web server), but it wasn’t a replacement to the Finder.
    - OnlyMortal 5y ago
      It’s worth noting that for political reasons, that I won’t go into, Finder was written with PowerPlant rather than AppKit. They even gave it some of the features of Workspace too.
- kergonath 5y ago
  Every release had a ~2 factor in performance improvements between the public beta and Tiger (10.4). Performances degraded a bit with Leopard (but improved again with Snow Leopard). That’s why Tiger is a bit of a high water mark for PPC machines. It was very useable on a G3 from 1999, albeit with a more recent graphics card for Quartz Extreme and quite a bit of additional RAM over its initial specs.
mattl 5y ago
> It would have only been of interest to the freaks and geeks in the Unix/OpenStep community. Guilty as charged. And it is a community.
mattl 5y ago
> It wasn't until version 10.3 in 2003 that OS X rounded into a form that would drive the final nail into the coffin of Classic Mac OS. Mac OS 9’s funeral was in 2002, however
rconti 5y ago
I was a Linux sysadmin and was quitting my job to go to college. I had been using Linux on the desktop since 1995. I thought I'd buy a laptop, and why waste my time trying to worry about hardware compatibility with Linux when I already have a Linux desktop? I figured, "let me just buy a Windows machine so I can easily play DVDs and use Office". When I stepped back and realized that was my only criteria, I thought, "why not try a Mac?" I brought my white G3 600mhz iBook to (2002 tech company) work shortly before starting school, expecting people to make fun of me for buying a Mac ("everyone" used Linux, but Windows was begrudgingly tolerated in the community) and EVERYONE was interested in OS X. I used that iBook for tons of work stuff in my last couple of months. Popping a serial console on SunFire 6800s, directly connecting via ethernet to them and forwarding X Apps to the Mac, etc. It was a revelation. Not only that, but you could actually close the lid, put it to sleep, and the battery wouldn't be dead when you came back from lunch.
- avar 5y ago
  I had an iBook G3 that I used with Linux PPC. I'm not sure about your model, but I think that entire line had hardware suspension, so it had little or nothing to do with OSX. It was one reason I got it, fast suspension was all over the place on PC laptop hardware on Linux at the time, but on Mac hardware it would Just Work, as long as your OS supported it (which I think amounted to just telling the firmware to initiate suspension). The other reason being that battery life on PPC was far superior to x86 at the time, that was one of the things that got a bit worse with Apple's x86 transition, and better again now with their new M1 hardware.
- fit2rule 5y ago
Scramblejams 5y ago
arguably the only really compelling feature of BeOS (Spotlight) I’d argue the most compelling feature of BeOS, one that to my knowledge has still not been replicated anywhere else, was its amazing UI fluidity. Seems like it didn’t matter how bogged down the system got, the UI was flawlessly responsive and boasted latencies today’s desktops could only dream of. I still miss it.
- watersb 5y ago
  arguably the only really compelling feature of BeOS (Spotlight) Be filesystem (BeFS) was terribly compelling, but only after you had lost your first draft of your first book to filesystem corruption. Or so I'm told.
  - wmf 5y ago
    BeFS was very compelling compared to FAT32 or HFS+ but it's no big deal compared to what we have today.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      One particular thing that was kinda nice was a separate MIME type attribute for all files, fully distinct from filename (and specifically extension), and used consistently throughout the OS to determine available actions etc. Although the real magic here is the latter - providing storage for an extra attribute in the filesystem is easy enough.
- luckman212 5y ago
  That's exactly what I remember about it too! No spinning beachballs there. Meanwhile, my M1 Mini shows me the pinwheel frequently...especially when launching any apps from Adobe Suite or Microsoft Office...
PostThisTooFast 5y ago

wmf 5y ago

FWIW I preferred OS X to Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9 and used it as my daily driver starting with the public beta. But maybe I wasn't a very demanding user since I mostly used the terminal, OmniWeb, and Mail.

grecy 5y ago
I did too, though I have to say it was painfully slow on my Beige G3, and only became actually usable at about 10.3 or 10.4 as the comment above said.
- kergonath 5y ago
  I ran Cheetah and Puma on my 9600/233. I tried really hard to convince myself that it was useable. Though to be fair the UNIX underpinnings were a revelation and it felt like living in the (gorgeous) future. Just a very slow one. I then used a B&W G3 until it went out of support. It indeed became better with every new release, which was quite impressive.

selestify 5y ago

What was so revolutionary about 10.4?

ianlevesque 5y ago
It's all subjective, but I'm not sure why they drew the line in the sand at 10.4. 10.2 was the first release that had hardware accelerated 2D graphics, which dramatically improved the UI responsiveness of Aqua. By 10.2's release Apple had also discontinued the development of Mac OS 9.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  The OS X Finder was unusable until 10.3, and ISTR there were still other missing things from OS 9 that 10.4 finally rectified, but I don’t recall what exactly. I do recall recommending against relatives and friends installing OS X until 10.4 finally filled in the gaps. edit: you can argue with “unusable,” but I never saw anyone use the NeXT Workspace or the OS X Finder pre-10.3. Everyone on those systems used the command line to get around.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    I think you’re exaggerating. I was a student at a time, started with Mac OS 10.0 on a beige G3. It was slow but it worked. I browsed the web, did my homework, chatted with friends and used Classic for apps that we’re not converted to Carbon yet. It used the terminal because I was amazed I could do so much (like run my own web server), but it wasn’t a replacement to the Finder.
  - OnlyMortal 5y ago
    It’s worth noting that for political reasons, that I won’t go into, Finder was written with PowerPlant rather than AppKit. They even gave it some of the features of Workspace too.
kergonath 5y ago
Every release had a ~2 factor in performance improvements between the public beta and Tiger (10.4). Performances degraded a bit with Leopard (but improved again with Snow Leopard). That’s why Tiger is a bit of a high water mark for PPC machines. It was very useable on a G3 from 1999, albeit with a more recent graphics card for Quartz Extreme and quite a bit of additional RAM over its initial specs.

mattl 5y ago

> It would have only been of interest to the freaks and geeks in the Unix/OpenStep community. Guilty as charged. And it is a community.

mattl 5y ago

> It wasn't until version 10.3 in 2003 that OS X rounded into a form that would drive the final nail into the coffin of Classic Mac OS. Mac OS 9’s funeral was in 2002, however

rconti 5y ago

I was a Linux sysadmin and was quitting my job to go to college. I had been using Linux on the desktop since 1995. I thought I'd buy a laptop, and why waste my time trying to worry about hardware compatibility with Linux when I already have a Linux desktop? I figured, "let me just buy a Windows machine so I can easily play DVDs and use Office". When I stepped back and realized that was my only criteria, I thought, "why not try a Mac?" I brought my white G3 600mhz iBook to (2002 tech company) work shortly before starting school, expecting people to make fun of me for buying a Mac ("everyone" used Linux, but Windows was begrudgingly tolerated in the community) and EVERYONE was interested in OS X. I used that iBook for tons of work stuff in my last couple of months. Popping a serial console on SunFire 6800s, directly connecting via ethernet to them and forwarding X Apps to the Mac, etc. It was a revelation. Not only that, but you could actually close the lid, put it to sleep, and the battery wouldn't be dead when you came back from lunch.

avar 5y ago
I had an iBook G3 that I used with Linux PPC. I'm not sure about your model, but I think that entire line had hardware suspension, so it had little or nothing to do with OSX. It was one reason I got it, fast suspension was all over the place on PC laptop hardware on Linux at the time, but on Mac hardware it would Just Work, as long as your OS supported it (which I think amounted to just telling the firmware to initiate suspension). The other reason being that battery life on PPC was far superior to x86 at the time, that was one of the things that got a bit worse with Apple's x86 transition, and better again now with their new M1 hardware.
fit2rule 5y ago

Scramblejams 5y ago

arguably the only really compelling feature of BeOS (Spotlight) I’d argue the most compelling feature of BeOS, one that to my knowledge has still not been replicated anywhere else, was its amazing UI fluidity. Seems like it didn’t matter how bogged down the system got, the UI was flawlessly responsive and boasted latencies today’s desktops could only dream of. I still miss it.

watersb 5y ago
arguably the only really compelling feature of BeOS (Spotlight) Be filesystem (BeFS) was terribly compelling, but only after you had lost your first draft of your first book to filesystem corruption. Or so I'm told.
- wmf 5y ago
  BeFS was very compelling compared to FAT32 or HFS+ but it's no big deal compared to what we have today.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    One particular thing that was kinda nice was a separate MIME type attribute for all files, fully distinct from filename (and specifically extension), and used consistently throughout the OS to determine available actions etc. Although the real magic here is the latter - providing storage for an extra attribute in the filesystem is easy enough.
luckman212 5y ago
That's exactly what I remember about it too! No spinning beachballs there. Meanwhile, my M1 Mini shows me the pinwheel frequently...especially when launching any apps from Adobe Suite or Microsoft Office...

PostThisTooFast 5y ago