It's great to find this site. I've been around and active for a while. I tried OSX for a while, and I've been using Windows or Linux at work since the early 90s, but I feel as others here do; nothing has the elegance that System 5 - System 9 had.
I'm not sure how many remember, but during the development of the Macintosh, Apple wrote a book called the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines". This book was built on careful consideration and experimentation to determine what actually works fastest, easiest, and most comfortably for human users. For many years, Apple stuck pretty closely to those principals. I think that had a great deal to do with why the old Systems were so wonderful, and why, as they forgot all about the Human Interface Guidelines, the new OSXs are so "Meh".
My Mac history:
Back in '87 my room mate had a Mac 128K that had been upgraded to a 512KE with a 2MB RAM upgrade and a SCSI port daughter card. He kept it in the living room where all three of us could use it.
In '90 another friend left me his Plus and IWII in his will.
Around '92 I bought seven Outbound Laptop Model 125s at the CompuAdd going out of business sale. Sold most of them, but kept one.
https://www.prismnet.com/~trag/Outbound/Around '94 I bought a IIci at a police auction.
I've been active in Mac Fora since the early 90s. First on UseNet in the comp.sys.mac.* hierarchy. Then on PowerWatch, LEMLists, DealNews (when they had a forum), XLR8yourmac.com (ditto), and most recently on 68kmla.org.
I authored an article on converting the Adaptec 2940UW for PCs into a PowerDomain 2940UW for Macs which was published on XLR8yourmac.com.
Another article on Marc Schrier's Clock Chipping Home Page about converting the 66MHz Turbo601 to 96MHz.
A variety of small guides on moving the Umax S900 (or J700) logic board into ATX accomodations. One of which is on Kennedy Brandt's SuperMac Insider site.
In the early 2000s I cloned a bunch of Rev. C Beige G3 ROM modules (laid out circuit boards, programmed and soldered chips) for people with Rev. A ROMs (no slave support). Incidentally creating a pinout for the Apple ROM module used from the PMX100 through the Beige G3, including all X500, X600, and 7200.
A few years later I built a bunch of 16MB SIMMs for the Mac IIfx.
At one point I tried and failed to create an adapter to let Macintosh CPU cards be used in the ANS (Apple Network Server). Might take another hack at it some day, but the X500 CPU socket connector is impossible to find.
Lately, (last decade) my projects have been stalled with child rearing, home-owning, baseball coaching, and similar real life stuff.
After a couple of decades of being a die hard Mac user at home, OSX made me so indifferent (and Windows improved enough) that I now use Win7 laptops for home internet access. The main machine at my desk at home is still a Umax S900 with volumes for System 7.6.1, 8.6 and 9.1. And I check email with Classilla.
I have two FW400 MDDs, a single 1.25GHz and a dual 1.25GHz. And an 800MHz 17" G4 iLamp, which were the last machines in their classes to run System 9.
I also have a G4 Mini on which I'm looking forward to installing System 9.
My only OSX machines, at this point are some Dell Latitude laptops which run OSX thanks to
https://osxlatitude.com/