Apple OS X Ping!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 03/26/2015 9:48:22 PM PDT by Swordmaker
It’s hard to believe that 14 years have elapsed since OS X — then Mac OS X — was originally released as a supposedly finished product. But it wasn’t quite the first version of Apple’s Unix-based OS to be available to the public. The previous September, Apple sold you a Public Beta, for $29, designed to demonstrate that, first and foremost, the new OS was real and that it would soon be ready for public consumption.
I remember the Public Beta well. The interface was good-looking all right, though I chafed at the “lickable” comment from Steve Jobs. Did he really once lick the screen of a Mac as was reported? One of my editors at the time inserted “cartoonish, goofy” into my description of the Dock.
Regardless, the ideas seemed attractive and all, and Apple certainly put a warm and fuzzy face upon a normally obtuse OS, but what could I do with it? Printing was broken, and it took several releases to get things to work properly. Apple’s solution for Classic Mac OS support, to open the old OS in a separate document window, was clever enough, but I more often than not just rebooted my Mac into the installed version of System 9.x and went about my business.
It didn’t help that OS X was dead slow. There wasn’t even support for graphics acceleration of interface objects in the initial releases, and that added to the perception of sluggishness. I wasn’t surprised that Jobs called OS 10.0 a release meant for power users and developers. That statement was the admission that even the release version was still largely a beta release, with lots more work to be done. But after years of delays, the arrival of OS X demonstrated that Apple was serious this time in delivering an industrial strength operating system to the masses.
Within months came OS X 10.1, largely a bug fix and performance update. But new Macs still booted by default in Mac OS 9.
The situation got much better with OS 10.2 Jaguar, which arrived in the summer of 2002 and delivered major performance improvements. The broken printing system was overhauled after Apple acquired CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), which provided enhance support for most recent printers. I liked the upgrade enough not to pay serious attention to the fact that Jobs continued to refer to Jaguar “jag-wire.”
With OS X 10.3 Panther, I wrote my final computer books. I had grown tired of the routine that favored word counts and writing speed over quality. I also felt that, as OS X matured, and reached more and more people, the need for a computer book was slowly coming to an end.
OS X 10.4 Tiger actually had two public releases. First in the spring of 2005, and yet again in January 2006 as the first Intel-compatible version for new generation Macs. It also marked an end for the Classic compatibility environment for Mac users. In a sense, the situation presaged OS 10.6 Snow Leopard a few years later, the last version to support Rosetta, which allowed you to run PowerPC apps on an Intel Mac.
Apple didn’t look back.
Through the years, Mac OS diehards maintained that Apple dropped too many features in moving to the new system. The extensible Apple menu was largely history. Fast access to the apps you use most often works well enough in the Dock, which I never actually regarded as cartoonish.
As OS X has matured, the ongoing interface changes have been controversial. Beginning with OS 10.7 Lion, some Mac users complained about the alleged iOS-ification of the Mac, the alleged decision to incorporate more of the qualities of the mobile OS. But the actual changes were minor and done mostly for consistency. Reversing the direction of scrolling to “natural” to mirror iOS, is an example. But it’s not as if you can’t get used to the new way of doing things. In fact, when I use a Mac that is set up for the traditional method, I find myself having to get used to it all over again.
Yes, OS X Yosemite has hundreds and hundreds of additional features compared to the original release. It looks different mostly in form, since the basic functions and behavior of legacy functions are mostly similar. The Dock is less 3D, but still works pretty much the same as it has for quite a while. It’s still as user friendly or as user hostile as ever.
Today, there are well over 70 million Mac users, far more than ever. The vast majority never touched the original Mac OS. Over 50% are using OS X Yosemite, a record when it comes to the adoption rate. A lot of that is simply because Apple delivers OS X free these days, and many Mac users can get prerelease copies due to the ongoing public beta program.
While each OS X release has ongoing glitches, and there are still complaints as Apple continues work on a 10.10.3 update, there are rumors that the next major release will be focused primarily on fixing bugs and improving performance. New features will be few, but then again an OS X release tends to have far more new features than what Microsoft traditionally offers. With Windows 10, the major new feature is restoring stuff from Windows 7 with the new modern interface, and stealing a few things from OS X, such as multiple desktop support.
One of my long-time clients actually has a Power Mac from around 2000 or so still running Mac OS 9, and still working perfectly. He doesn’t use it very much, and it’s been years since I’ve seen it in operation. Unlike many people, I am not fearful of change. A Mac is still a Mac.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
> ...With Windows 10, the major new feature is restoring stuff from Windows 7 with the new modern interface, and stealing a few things from OS X, such as multiple desktop support...
Ummmm, no. *cough* Unix *cough* Linux *cough*
The multi-desktop stuff on my CentOS Linux workstation is incredibly smooth, featureful, and highly functional. IMO both Windows and OS-X could do better than they're doing in that respect.
That said, nice walk down memory lane... :)
This guy may know OSX but he’s clueless in windows. Also keep in mind windows XP an obsolete OS still has more users.
I suspect that Gene Sternberg knows a hell of a lot more about computers in general than do you.
"Gene has written over two dozen books on computers and the Internet, plus hundreds of articles for such industry publications as MacAddict, MacHome, MacUser, Macworld and Computer Shopper. He also writes a weekly column, "Mac Reality Check," for Gannett News Service and USA Today, and is a Contributing Editor for CNET, the world’s largest technology news service. His computer news and support Web site, The Mac Night Owl, receives thousands of regular visitors each day."
I caught that also. As far back as I can remember, I have always had multiple desktop support on linux.
Count us in the tiny minority. Mrs. POF managed software licensing at Apple to developers for all Apple II machines, Lisa, and early Mac. We've had about every flavor of Mac from Day 1 in our house. I wish we had kept them all and maintained our own museum, but our house simply didn't have enough room while we were raising our family.
Meh.
Running Yosemite, but have never like upgrading,ever. Only do it because I have to.
I was running Apple MacOS 7 on my Amiga 3000 as an emulation. Ran faster than it did on a native Mac with the same 68030 processor.
I’m still running WXP SP3 on a Dell Inspiron with a Duo Core CPU, 4GB RAM (3.25 recognized by XP), a 512MB video card with AVG and AntiMalWareBytes keeping it running squeaky clean.
Ad Blocker Browser plug ins amongst others keeps my browser free of ads.
I’ll probably upgrade to a SS HD from the 250GB SATA HD I currently have.
XP was the last good OS that Windows released, and I never liked the Apple UI, not to mention the price of the HW
And I still remember a lot of DOS commands.
Is there any workaround that enables running PowerPC applications under Yosemite?
Your link is to a sour-grapes blogger's negative anti-Apple blog who claims that developers and others "FEAR apple."
As a graphic designer he did not like Apple's change in the looks of the User Interface and has been loud and bitter about it ever since Apple made the change in iOS 7. He was and is irate about Apple "flattening" the look of iOS and OS X. Using that as a springboard, he proceeds to launch a screed of Apple's horrendous business practices and other heinous sins, primarily against developers.
I did not PING the group to the thread because it is just one Anti-Apple hating blogger's opinion piece. . . filled with discredited quotations taken from cherry picked articles. Marco Arment, the author of one of his primary source articles, wrote him correcting his mis-statements about his citations of his article in the comments. . . and arrogant to the end Schiff gets in a Twitter argument with the author attacking his own source author about what Arment actually meant and said, until Arment gave up in disgust, while Schiff left the mis-quotations in the article instead of correcting the record.
It is no wonder that Utilizer likes this article and posted it: The blogger, Eli Schiff, criticizes everything Apple does and uses false evidence and unsupported innuendo. . . similar to Utilizer's methods of posting.
"You continue to blatantly and intentionally ignore accuracy. It dramatically weakens your argument when your examples are false." — Tweet from Marco Arment to Eli Schiff
Eli Schiff has been making negative comments about Apple's User Interface design for years. Why give him more space for his worthless, negative, and, in the words of one of his primary sources, demonstrably false screed?
It just doesn't meet the level of accuracy, interest, or truth for bothering the 700 members of the ping list.
I think a performance-focused release would be a good thing. People always ask for new features, but the truth is that the features being added to all modern OS-es are relatively minor, because the major stuff has all been done. With an increasing mobile-focused landscape, trimming the fat is vital (assuming that work would trickle down to iOS). I would love it if Safari on my iPad Air could be a bit more responsive and render at speeds closer to the non-mobile platforms.
You can give SheepShaver a try.
SheepShaver is an Open Source PowerPC Mac OS run-time environment. That is, it enables you to run PowerPC Classic Mac OS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of Mac OS and a PowerMac ROM image to use this program. SheepShaver is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).Features:
- SheepShaver runs Mac OS 7.5.2 through Mac OS 9.0.4
- PowerPC G4 emulation on non-PowerPC platforms, direct execution otherwise
- Basic but portable JIT engine (x86, x86_64, mips)
- Copy and paste of text between Mac OS and the host OS
- File exchange with the host OS via a Unix icon on the Mac desktop
- Color video display with support for run-time resolution switching
- Run-time depth switching from 1 bpp to current host depth settings
- Native QuickDraw 2D acceleration for BitBlt and FillRect operations
- CD-quality stereo sound output
- Networking: SheepShaver supports Internet and LAN networking via Ethernet and PPP with all Open Transport compatible MacOS applications
If you are using a PowerPC-based system, applications will run at native speeds (i.e., without any emulation involved). On other systems, SheepShaver provides the first PowerPC G4 emulator, though without MMU, to enable the execution of Mac OS Classic. Performance with the current CPU emulator using basic just-in-time (JIT) translation techniques is roughly 1/8-th of native speeds.
The following platforms are currently supported: Linux (i386, ppc, x86_64), MacOS X (i386, ppc), Darwin, NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 5.3 and Windows for x86. Please note that I am pretty careless of the Windows version since I am not a Windows developer. You are heartily invited to join the effort!
It looks as if it will be very slow. . .
I have a Mac Mini G4 that is running in Mac OS X with Classic that lets me run HyperCard. It opens apps and files much faster than my 2009 Mac Pro with 2 4 core processors running from an SSD with 32 Gigs of Ram.
Thanks. Slow is relative if all you want to do is open something or export it. Data accessibility is the big thing.
I know that 10.6 is also a cutoff point for certain OSX apps, too, though I don’t know why. I want to integrate everything but I don’t want to spend a bazillion dollars on app upgrades that I don’t need.
Windows 8 looks very good. Much better than any Apple OS. I like the Windows 8 GUI better than Windows 7. The problem is no start button....Microsoft made an stupid mistake by not including a start button for desktop and laptop users
So you download and install “Start 8” and you have your start button back. Works like a charm. http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
I never use the Windows 8 so called apps and I bypass the apps tiles. All that stuff is for touch devices such as tablets and smartfones. When I boot up I go from log-on to desktop with ye old start button
And you’d be wrong. I to have written several books on the topic.
The OS X I kept the longest until this week was the “snow leopard”, OS X 6. Kept that OS X because I did not want to take any chances with the newest OX X, which is Yosemite, which because to a lot of “bm” or bad-mouthing of it because of too many “issues” with it, I did not want to take a chance. But Apple also is no longer supporting that brand of OS X, the snow leopard, so I took the plunge.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.