5 ms·

Mac OS 7 was the reason I hated mac's from 1996-1998. I am curious what virtues it could possibly have because I just remember having to run around the UCLA com

Mac OS 7 was the reason I hated mac's from 1996-1998. I am curious what virtues it could possibly have because I just remember having to run around the UCLA computer lab troubleshooting that OS futzing with the network printer daemon.

gry 18y ago
It it is a problem to solve. Hackers need little excuse beyond that. I think that's why most people appreciate the hack.
compay 18y ago
Agreed, MacOS 7 brings back more bad memories than good. I think the virtue here though is not Mac OS 7 itself, but rather the interesting exercise in OS porting.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  It's neat, but not particularly impressive or interesting. It's an emulator running as a user space application; The iPhone isn't running Mac OS 7 natively (of course, it can't, since they use different CPU architectures, etc). There have been classic Mac emulators for OS X for awhile now, and porting it to the iPhone was probably quite easy.
  - gry 18y ago
    Reminds me of the current Louis CK meme floating about. System 7 is running on your phone. While it in itself right now isn't the most amazing thing, the series of events leading up to it is.
- Angostura 18y ago
  How can you not like System 7. It introduces tinted 3D folders for goodness sake.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    I believe that was OS 8, actually. As I drift off to memory land, I still remember the System 7.5.3 update that made icons that were being dragged translucent. That was so exciting back then :)
bonaldi 18y ago
Virtues? It runs in comically small amounts of memory and on processors without much puff; yet is beefy enough to handle serious DTP, early Photoshop and the web. I'm not saying it's something to switch to today, but System 7 has features that OS X still hasn't got around to matching, especially in Finder speed/snappiness.
rbanffy 18y ago
Just keep in mind that the other major GUI available when 7 launched was Windows 3.0. It has multitasking, virtual memory and peer-to-peer networking. Quite impressive for the time.

gry 18y ago

It it is a problem to solve. Hackers need little excuse beyond that. I think that's why most people appreciate the hack.

compay 18y ago

Agreed, MacOS 7 brings back more bad memories than good. I think the virtue here though is not Mac OS 7 itself, but rather the interesting exercise in OS porting.

tlrobinson 18y ago
It's neat, but not particularly impressive or interesting. It's an emulator running as a user space application; The iPhone isn't running Mac OS 7 natively (of course, it can't, since they use different CPU architectures, etc). There have been classic Mac emulators for OS X for awhile now, and porting it to the iPhone was probably quite easy.
- gry 18y ago
  Reminds me of the current Louis CK meme floating about. System 7 is running on your phone. While it in itself right now isn't the most amazing thing, the series of events leading up to it is.
Angostura 18y ago
How can you not like System 7. It introduces tinted 3D folders for goodness sake.
- jrockway 18y ago
  I believe that was OS 8, actually. As I drift off to memory land, I still remember the System 7.5.3 update that made icons that were being dragged translucent. That was so exciting back then :)

bonaldi 18y ago

Virtues? It runs in comically small amounts of memory and on processors without much puff; yet is beefy enough to handle serious DTP, early Photoshop and the web. I'm not saying it's something to switch to today, but System 7 has features that OS X still hasn't got around to matching, especially in Finder speed/snappiness.

rbanffy 18y ago

Just keep in mind that the other major GUI available when 7 launched was Windows 3.0. It has multitasking, virtual memory and peer-to-peer networking. Quite impressive for the time.