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Classic Mac OS was cursed by its memory management. Decisions that made sense pre-multitasking would later haunt them up through Mac OS 9.[^1] [1]: https://en.

Classic Mac OS was cursed by its memory management. Decisions that made sense pre-multitasking would later haunt them up through Mac OS 9.[^1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS_memory_manageme...

anthk 4y ago
SO was W9X and even W98SE. Install a driver? BSOD. Set up something? BSOD. You sneeze at IE5? BSOD. And so on.
- wmf 4y ago
  Windows users could run NT4 Workstation which was pretty reliable but Macs had no such option.
  - anthk 4y ago
    True but DirectX was pretty limited on NT4. And A/V production too, because everything was tailored to w9x.
    - lightedman 4y ago
      NT4 didn't allow DMA to video RAM, which is why it was almost useless for video applications and a bunch of earlier emulators and such.
      - anthk 4y ago
        This. Service packs improved this a little (up to 6a) but the damage was done. You could install DX5 unnoficially but that's. Meanwhile, Windows 98 supported DirectX versions up to 9.0c. If anyone patched it to have DX7 support at less, the game compatibility and multimedia would skyrocket for NT4, but it didn't happen.
- fortran77 4y ago
  That's not really true. Windows 9x and beyond had real multitasking and virtual memory that worked.