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Mac(OS)talgia
- SuperNinKenDo 2y agoAlways been rather partial to the Windows 9x look myself, but Mac OS 9 is a solid runner-up to me in terms of looks. Enjoyed seeing some of the reimaginings of modern apps, quite gorgeous.
- duskwuff 2y agoAgreed. The Platinum UI design holds up extraordinarily well - it had a clear design language which was easy for developers to use and extend.
- exabrial 2y agoAll we ever needed was in Snow Leopard. Everything since then (ok except maybe for SIP and XProtect) is bloatware.
- boc 2y agoSnow Leopard was truly the best. An actual OS release based around performance improvements under-the-hood instead of flashy, half-baked features.
- andrewclunn 2y agoStill can't believe we once had an operating system named OS X Panther. The puns...
- LiquidPolymer 2y agoI have an ancient laptop with Snow Leopard running. It keeps my Nikon Film Scanner useful since Nikon abandoned the software for these scanners rather abruptly. I've been a pro photographer since 1990 and the Kodachrome setting embedded within the Nikon scanner is fantastic for capturing the color and detail of this exceptionally sharp film.
- Affric 2y agoKodachrome was beautiful it’s a shame we will never see it’s like again. Do you still do film photography? Ektachrome?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 2y agoSIP is quite terrible. Requiring an access level higher than root to access system files, and only processes that are signed by Apple and have special entitlements can have that access level? It's my computer, I should be at the top of the permissions totem pole, not Apple. If they're dead set on using signing to enforce the higher-than-root level, then I should be the one signing the executables. Fortunately, you can disable this crap.
- sitharus 2y agoSIP is wonderful. I no longer have to completely repave machines after my family install crapware because I know it can't mess with the base system. But for those of us who need that access we can disable it, with a bit of a dance to make it hard for people who _don't_ need it.
- astrange 2y agoDo you want OS updates to work or not? They can't work if you randomly edit files.
- favorited 2y ago> It's my computer, I should be at the top of the permissions totem pole, not Apple Here are the instructions to enable logging in as root, since privilege escalation seems inconvenient for you: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102367 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102367
- CGamesPlay 2y agoThis does not allow you to modify SIP-protected files.
- favorited 2y agoOf course it doesn't, SIP would be pointless if it did. But since GP is so opposed to temporarily disabling SIP when they need escalated permissions, I assume they must feel the same way about needing to `sudo` and enter their password.
- jaredklewis 2y agoNo love for APFS?
- bangonkeyboard 2y agoNot from me. A black box filesystem that can't even accurately say how much space is free and destroys mechanical hard drives with longer term use. There were other options to deal with HFS+'s 2038 problem.
- caseyy 2y agoSnow Leopard and Windows 7 are from a time when computers were made to serve the user. Then we discovered how much more money could be made by focusing on ad tech. The relationship between people and technology was so different in 2009. I miss it.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago10.6.8 was solid (people often forget that 10.6 and the intermediate patches were a bit of a mess) but when I use it I definitely feel a few spots where some polish and QoL improvements would be welcome. Its theme’s dominant gray is also a bit too dark. I don’t mind SIP personally. It always unnerved me that any random executable was just a single admin password entry away from doing whatever it pleased. My ideal desktop OS environment would be something like a polished-up Snow Leopard using the brighter, more refined theme from 10.9 Mavericks (except with the flat scrollbars de-flattened). If I had that I don’t think I could use anything else.
- nomel 2y agoAs a multi-computer user, "Continuity"[1] is magical. Being able to drag my cursor over to my other computer, drop some files, etc, is really great. [1] https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/ https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoIts performance over wifi is also shockingly close to that of third party KB+mouse sharing software running hardwired which is crazy. Trying to use Synergy, etc over wifi is normally a laggy mess.
- bsimpson 2y agoYou can use Steam Link to render a VR environment on one device and project it into another's goggles over wifi. Or you can use Stadia and its compatriots to play 3D-rendered video games over WAN. The amount of low-latency bandwidth modern computers have available is mindboggling.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoYep, I’ve used Sunshine and Moonlight to do exactly that. It’s super impressive, which makes it all the more confusing why Synergy and friends and send cursor movements and keystrokes (which I’d expect to be a stream of ints and chars) over WiFi without lagging.
- markcerqueira 2y agoI wonder how much of this sentiment is driven by Apple saying Snow Leopard was taking Leopard and focusing on performance and stability?
- astrange 2y agoIt's certainly not true that it focused on stability even if Bertrand said it. Any kind of change reduces stability by introducing regressions. This includes performance improvements and it even includes other stability fixes.
- astrange 2y agoApp auto saving was added in the next release Lion, I think you want that one.
- rahoulb 2y agoI love that. Also the MacOS "Zoom" button makes so much more sense than the OSX/macOS green button - and I still miss window shading.
- LimeLimestone 2y agoPress Option and it behave the way it used to. Or you can double click on the top of the app's window What I miss is not being able to set the priority of WiFi networks
- thunfisch 2y agoHugged to death. https://web.archive.org/web/20250128175526/https://swallowmygraphicdesign.com/project/macostalgia https://web.archive.org/web/20250128175526/https://swallowmy...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cameldrv 2y agoI get the nostalgia, but boy are computers so much better than back then. MacOS 7-8 (not sure about 9, never used it) would crash constantly. There was no protected memory, so as soon as one app started misbehaving, you'd have to reboot the computer and it would take forever and you'd lose your work. My recollection was that this would typically happen 3-4 times a day. Apple's project to make a new MacOS that didn't do this failed and so they had to buy NeXT, and the rest is history.
- kazinator 2y agoRemember "Machine Always Crashes, If Not, The OS Hangs"? :)
- feketegy 2y agoOS X Lion was the most stable operating system I've ever used. Tbh, it's all downhill from there, every new release gets a little worse not to mention all the hardware issues too.
- xp84 2y agoI still remember in the late oughts, when Mac software updates came out (say, 10.x.1 or whatever, Safari updates, etc.) an app called Software Update would tell you about them, allow you to click to download and install what you wanted, the installation all happened in the background while you worked, and then at the end the SWU dock icon would bounce to prompt you to restart when ready. Guess what? quick option-right-click → Force Quit on the app would shut that up, then you could go about your day and reboot when you were ready. Today, the Mac harangues you every time you wake it about the updates, then to apply them, you must reboot immediately, and stare at various Apple logos and progress bars for an indeterminate amount of time (no estimates offered).
- goosedragons 2y agoModern macOS updates take forever too. I had one clocked at 40 minutes! In that time I could reinstall Ubuntu 4x over.
- wetpaws 2y ago[dead]
- swiftcoder 2y agoWell, you've successfully made me nostalgic for the year 2000.
- rcarmo 2y agoThere’s something about the Platinum UI that makes it timeless. I have been running XFCE with a Platinum theme on several of my machines/VMs for a while (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/04/12/2330 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/04/12/2330) and I’m a bit sad that the XFCE top-level app menu plugin seems to have been deprecated in recent releases, since it really adds to the experience.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoThe XFCE global menubar plugin being deprecated likely happened because there’s no standardized way for applications on Linux to surface their menus to the environment for display (or to power a Unity-style HUD or whatever), which means that hackery via plugins for GTK and Qt are required to make a global menubar work. Keeping that hackery functional probably is a constant battle. There’s also how GTK apps have been on a crusade against menubars since GTK3 which doesn’t help matters. Same goes for Linux builds of Electron apps, which don’t offer the user the option to display a menubar even though all the menu work is already done for macOS builds. Whatever the case it bums me out too. I know a lot of people hate global menubars but I’ve always loved them and it kills me that they’re not a practical option on the Linux desktop, despite ultimate customizability being one of the most frequently-cited reasons to use Linux as a desktop OS. You can do anything you want, as long as what you want falls within the boxes of Win9X-like, tablet-like, or "trendy minimal tiling window manager"…
- rcarmo 2y agoFunnily enough it works on Ubuntu but there seems to be no Fedora package.
- simondotau 2y agoGlobal menu bars are a great way of making complex functionality discoverable without overwhelming the user. They should be thought of like an index at the back of a book — not for everyday use, but a universal standard way to call upon infrequent tools, and to discover commands which might be useful.
- bsimpson 2y ago
- ndrake 2y agohttps://infinitemac.org/ https://infinitemac.org/
- salgernon 2y agoThe big loss for me was when many apps took over the windows 3.0 MDI interface style. (Specifically thinking of code here). I was doing some hacking in codwarrior on Mac OS 9 a few weeks ago and it was such a joy to have 5 source code windows open any once - and a separate window with build or find results that weren’t wrapped in a miserable column. There’s actually a lot about Xcode I do like - but treating content panels like the old Puzzle desk accessory was never an improvement.
- Einenlum 2y agoSuch great work. I'm amazed by the video. I wondered for a moment if they managed to tweak these apps (I'm a bit naive I guess). Never had a Mac but I remember as a kid when I went to a friend who had one. It was so fascinating to me. So weird to be nostalgic of something I never owned or used.
- DavidPiper 2y ago> So weird to be nostalgic of something I never owned or used. For what it's worth, I feel the same way about the Nintendo 64, and the Mario franchise, etc. Makes me think that nostalgia requires a certain quality, not just familiarity.
- pimlottc 2y agoI kind of like how the retro Zoom has separate windows for each participant. It’s pretty frustrating how little control Zoom (not to mention Meet or Teams) gives you over the layout.
- _0xdd 2y agoHonestly, I sometimes feel like I got work done more efficiently on my 1024x768 displays in that era than I do with my 4K+ monitors now. Modern UIs are bewildering at times. I miss the days where Photoshop and Office had toolbars separate from the open document windows. Things just seemed so much more discoverable and made more efficient use of space.
- musicale 2y ago> Things just seemed so much more discoverable and made more efficient use of space Apple (and Microsoft for that matter) had solid user interface guidelines in that era. And real desktop apps (using the native system UI) rather than clunky web apps (each with its own non-native UI.)