My coworkers made me use Mac OS 9 for their (and your) amusement

[DieHard]

NEW OS 9 Review in SEPT 2014 !!!

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/09/my-coworkers-made-me-use-mac-os-9-for-their-and-your-amusement/

- don't forget to watch the Titanium Video and check out BT's hair

What do you think of this guy's review ?

My coworkers made me use Mac OS 9 for their (and your) amusement

And since users have abandoned it, developers have abandoned it. Trying to drag a Mac OS 9 system kicking and screaming into the modern age is a fun thing to try for an afternoon or two, but it's ultimately a pointless exercise

Think he's got this backwards... lol

I’m pretty sure that even the most ardent classic Mac OS users have given up the ghost by now—finding posts on the topic any later than 2011 or 2012 is rare. So if there are any of you still out there, I think you're all crazy... but I’m going to live with your favorite OS for a bit.

Yeah... fuck you too 

The laptop I decided to go with was the titanium PowerBook G4. While these weren't without quality issues, they at least promised usable screen resolutions and Mac OS 9 compatibility. They also tend to fall right where we'd want them on the pricing spectrum—old enough to be cheap, but not so old or well-loved to be collectors' items.

Yeah... cause there are so many 12 year old PC notebooks that still work...

In the end I really couldn't do a whole lot with classic Mac OS, which was kind of too bad.

This guy gave it a try... but I think he draws too many conclusions from a very limited trial... he also make the assumption that "his" daily computing tasks are the same as the masses, just because the apps he needs are obsolete, he branded the entire Mac OS obsolete

[Knezzen]

I read it before and I think he is a bit harsh on our favorite Mac OS

[IIO]

thats because he has never actually used it when it was the OS of the time.

wtf is oregon trail? OS9 was the OS of RTCW, MOHAA, and WCIII. wtf is appleworks? ms office 2001 is a much better program.

he probably also missed adobe after effects, nuendo, and all the other 300 programs which are doing more or less the same than more "modern" programs do today, while using 5 times the CPU for blinking buttons and transparent backgrounds.

[IIO]

he writes things like "Niceties like scroll wheels and right-clicking aren't supported, even with an external mouse" which are simply not true. right-clicking works by default, even without any mouse driver. he just didnt get it to work. only when you want to replace command and alt you will need a logitech driver or usb overdrive.

Forget being able to click on links in IRC to open them. It ain't happening.

works great in shadowIRC or KDX. i wonder what he used? probably some OS7 app again.


what i find funny is that he admits that OS9 is more responsive and  that he could basically do most thing with it which he needed for work.

on the negative side there are things like stability (true) and a slow processor, which does not allow him to watch him movies and uploading to the network in background while working.

and in the end he sums it up and says he was happy to use his 10.10 macbook pro in the evening again.

thats not very rational, and it is for sure more a religious or tourette based decision than an economic one.

old system:
$ 100
 - can do my work
 - must be careful not to produce chrashes
 - SSDs are limited to 120 mb/s

new system:
$ 2500
 - can do my work
 - can watch videos while i work
 - can upload in background
 - looks better, for example has all controlpanels in one coreservice window (where OS9 only has OMG! all controlpanels in one finder window)
 - can use SSDs with up to 900 mb/s

decision: i prefer to spend $2500.

lol.

[Protools5LEGuy]

12-13 of this month I read from Dan, the article http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/mac-os-9-is-lightning-rod.html that mention us!!!

I am happy to know that Riccardo Mori has made a reply here http://systemfolder.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/vintage-macs-work/

When I saw Arstechnica article I laugh a bit...    He clearly hasn't all the tools that IIO, DieHard and MacTron has...  Just 20 minutes browsing Macintosh garden selecting tools would have made a fair article, but anyway, even the LowEndMac articles on OS9 are too biased. Or are written by Fanboys, or simply, they didn't do their homework. 

SPOILER: OFFTOPIC

wtf is oregon trail?

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-oregon-trail
Are you been [youtube]Jne9t8sHpUc[/youtube]?

I never played oregon, but is one of the most downloaded/rated on http://macintoshgarden.org/

I guess IIO is been ironic. Most OS9 users see AppleWorks as superior to Office... I am proud of that I never needed a word'processor for my work...   Only on college I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiWriter

[IIO]

really, i´ve never heard of it before - so it must be more than 20 years old!
 

[IIO]

oh and i would not say that he was unfair. it is just another view he has, not comparable with yours or mine.

[MacTron]

I knew about this text, but just in part because I had to stop reading at:

I only began using Macs seriously after the Intel transition, when the Mac stopped being a byword for Micro$oft-hating zealotry and started to be just, you know, a computer.

... nobody can be seriously taken in Computer science if he ignore one of the more glorious parts ...

[Protools5LEGuy]

After reading again the article, I have voted...

He have no clues of the tools but Classilla and IIRC.

... nobody can be seriously taken in Computer science if he ignore one of the more glorious parts ...

That glorious part was followed by OSX and G5s... For me G5=Fiasco. Maybe hes got a point... 


SPOILER: OFFTOPIC

really, i´ve never heard of it before - so it must be more than 20 years old!
 

I used ChiWriter on 8086 IBM PS-2 Model25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_System/2#Models. On 2nd and 3rd of B.U.P. I studied GWBasic  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC, Banner and  Chiwrite on a signature called "Informatica" .
Years before, on my E.G.B. I were on a class full of Dragon 32&64 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64 Spain is different  . My mother studied Anatomy on MSX2 computers...

That was the age of AtariST and Amiga... Even Macintosh software could run faster thru emulators on them...

[IIO]

thats the difference between computer scienctist and "IT experts".

[IIO]

so it must be more than 20 years old!
I used ChiWriter on 8086 IBM PS-2 Model25

sry for the confusion, i was talking about that game the guy used. feels like he tries to make fun of OS9, but he probably just dont knew it better.

i am mostly with you that text editing sucks by default - and this is why i use simpletext and indesign/illustrator instead of appleworks or office as well.

chiwriter == later replaced mostly by textures? hm, i´ve lost my copy of latex for OS9 :/

[Protools5LEGuy]

hm, i´ve lost my copy of latex for OS9 :/

There should be one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX#Versions. For OSX there is:http://www.tug.org/mactex/

I have come with your help  on one example on Why most people prefers OSX over OS9 on PowerPCs.
There are OSX PPC alternatives to most offimatic daily work. You can see
TenFourFox is more advanced than classilla   
Final Cut on OSX support H264 
USB2 speed vs USB1.
Newer games on OSX.

I guess that if you cannot run Facebook/YouTube/Skype on OS9 as on OSX, they would never choose OS9.

But for musician are priceless. I am proud to have BT on our members. He is one of the best examples of why G4/OS9 still worth.

Some hardcore members as Erik eyoungren http://forums.macrumors.com/member.php?u=612797 still devates working with G4/Leo vs Intel machines, but not for so long...

See the MacRumors/OSX version of this post: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1792355

[IIO]

on Why most people prefers OSX over OS9 on PowerPCs.

i never got why anyone would use a PPC for OSX, except maybe for u&i software or cinema4d and if you really dont have the money for a minimac. which restricts this user group to like 50 people.

I guess that if you cannot run Facebook/YouTube/Skype on OS9 as on OSX, they would never choose OS9.

thats what one of the repliers to the articla said, you muste jugde a system in conjunction with the technology of its time. noone cared for flash 10 compatibilty in webbrowsers in 2001 for an obvious reason. a quicksilver 2001 can not even play youtube videos in higher than 240p, because it is too slow, so why would anyone need to have that in netscape for OS9.

the same is of course true for todays technology. noone needs to have protools HD like audio summing in a telephone, but iOS coreaudio always had 8.24 as default. and i foresee that the iphone 8 SX will have 128 bit audio - and people will buy it because its so cool.

[MacTron]

I hate to go off topic but I really can name some great Mac Os 9 features that easily make bite the dust some "Other" operating systems... and some new "enhancements" in those systems that are really big technological step down...
... but this is not the usual approach... LOL
S. Jobs had to dig deep for the Mac Os 9 ... the 9.3 rumors pointed too dangerous enhancements for the Next Step future...

[IIO]

the benefit of not having a multithreading OS can easily be seen when trying to use live midi inout in OSX on an old PPC.

[Protools5LEGuy]

S. Jobs had to dig deep for the Mac Os 9 ... the 9.3 rumors pointed too dangerous enhancements for the Next Step future...

Where are them? I would love see those 9.3 rumors...   

If Apple would choose BeOS instead Next we would had 9.3 , 9.4, 9.5 with all the "new" features.

I think BeOS was the first to make "classic" compatibility layer. You could run MacOS "virtualization" on BeOS Ppc (?)

The carbon extension thing made LOTS of "only" OSX software work also on 9, but Apple "promoted" all software builder to show the "X" logo only. Probably even they pay for it.

After years and years of OS9 use, we still discover things that make it go even beyond. For example, the MacTron post of sustitute Finder app with our favorite DAW. But the truth is that not everybody get to that level on most OSes.

the benefit of not having a multithreading OS can easily be seen when trying to use live midi inout in OSX on an old PPC.

I guess you mean OS9 more accurate sample'wise than OSX.

[supernova777]

congratulations
i posted this back in september
lol

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1840.msg9166#msg9166

and tbh i made some comments in the comments of the article and pretty sure i got about 50-100 people to sign up here because of those coments specifically

[supernova777]

if u view the author of the article  http://arstechnica.com/author/andrew_cunningham/
u can see that he often creates articles trying to ruffle peoples feathers
and get them riled up.
this is what "internet journalists"  do.. they write the most obscene + shocking articles on pourpose
trying to "go viral" its like a free lottery for these people trying to make the article that gets shared most
and they often are the same people that are profiting frocmt he advertising embedded in the articles
or they own the websites that they are posted on..

[Protools5LEGuy]

i made some comments in the comments of the article and pretty sure i got about 50-100 people to sign up here because of those coments specifically

I was searching them when I came thru a TFF/Classilla author interesting coment

TenFourFox/Classilla dev here.

I would ... have chosen something a little beefier for this test, personally. I use Power Macs daily, but my slowest daily driver is a 1GHz iMac G4 with 1.25GB of RAM, my regular machine is a quad G5 with 8GB (this is being typed on it), and my usual laptop is a 1.33GHz G4 12" iBook with 1.5GB of RAM. The 800MHz is pretty much only a good OS 9 machine, as you discovered. The 1GHz G4 is about as slow as I'd personally tolerate, and the reason I like it is because of how it looks, not how it performs.

The layout engine in Classilla is as far as it's going to go; it's roughly Mozilla 1.6 in terms of technology. It's just too big a job to port later things to CodeWarrior. Right now I'd like to get its SSL more up to snuff. I just haven't had the time keeping up with the Firefox rapid release treadmill for TenFourFox, and your read of the blog is correct: it's getting harder and harder to port a 2014 codebase to a 2005 operating system, let alone an entirely different architecture. Plugins were an easy choice to let go. When Mozilla dropped QuickDraw support for plugins in Fx19, I took the chance to expunge them completely. I'd like to drag it to 38ESR, though, at least. That will mean 10 years of support for even the last quad that rolled off the assembly line.

Part of the reason that TenFourFox uses more memory than Safari is that it has a JIT (PowerPC versions of Safari don't), so compiled JavaScript is cached, and I suspect that more recent implementations of Safari do use more RAM. On my 1.25GB RAM iMac, it usually uses around 300MB for about 10 tabs open, based on a quick look in Activity Monitor. On this quad with 23 tabs open, it's using 440MB.

I wouldn't call OS 9 abandoned, per se. I concede it's true that development is pretty much zero except for weirdos like me who do it for the heck of it. There are many people who still use it as a primary OS, and I'd bet nearly as many as those using DOS for the same purpose, but they're primarily using it for specific apps or because they like its interface and responsiveness (still sad that Rhapsody never took off in the form it was originally), and Classic covered most of its use cases while giving you the benefits of OS X besides. Frankly, the best reason to keep a Power Mac running is Classic. SheepShaver is an inadequate substitute. It's wonderful when it works (and it does work for some things), but it still has substantial compatibility issues and it is nowhere near as well integrated into the operating system. Classic runs damn near anything. There are many Classic apps I still use periodically that I either don't like the OS X versions of, find them inferior, or don't exist. Classic isn't great for gaming, but it'll do in a pinch. Tiger gives you the choice, so I keep 10.4 on virtually all of my PowerPC based systems.

I do have a MacBook Air, which I bought for my Master's program. No question it is substantially faster than the G4. But it feels ... disposable, something I subjectively feel about all of Apple's current hardware offerings, which is funny, because the iBook is plastic. When I was visiting my folks this weekend, I took the iBook. On its refurb battery it still ekes out 3-4 hours, and it suffices for basic purposes. The Air mostly goes on planes, because it's admittedly more convenient in that environment.

Why are there nutjobs like me still using a Power Mac, 8 years after Steve Jobs took it out back and shot it? Well, my quad does what I need it to do. The only tasks it doesn't are TurboTax and Android development. Otherwise, it does everything else, it's safely behind a firewall, and I really just need to keep a web browser running for it, so I did. This isn't my day job and I don't work for Mozilla, though I've been involved with them as a contributor for a number of years. It's just a hobby. The quad will probably always stay in my collection one day when I finally do replace it.

PowerPC forever.

[DieHard]

congratulations
i posted this back in september
lol

Chris, That's what I get for being asleep at the switch lately attending to a few of life's surprises… well at least I made a poll 

Oh, you also forgot to pay homage to BT on the Titanium video, so I vote a repost was due 

Of course the internet author wanted to ruffle feathers, I just wish he gave the apps he tested as much thought as he did picking out the hardware.

Lastly, I just want to mention that his entire article ignored "artistic" side Mac OS 9… For such a smart guy who likes to be on the cutting edge (he updates everything with no complaints) he lacks the insight to see the beauty in things and his entire focus was on how Mac OS 9 relates to his workflow/functionality… I guess in his world classical music might also suck since it's dated and Renaissance paintings look "Old school" and "ugly".. We have compared Mac OS 9 to codified "art" in other threads. Art is very subjective… many of us see a Classic Mac machine that is running a Classic Mac OS as truly a timeless work of art that is still valued for it's ability to transform our creative ideas into finished products.

Some say obsolete... for others, the functionality of their Macs has never been questioned.