I have uses the newer OS’s of Mac but never the classic series that were numbered.

For those who have used apple computing back in the day, what was it like using it? Was it a lot more snappier and better user interface intuitiveness?

I say this because it always seemed to me that the macintosh operating systems seemed to be more… “smooth sailing” than Bill’s 50/50 BSOD contraptions (Windows ME anyone?)

Obviously things have changed a lot more with newer macos being more fisher priced down in looks but I’d really like to know what you guys thought about OS 8 or 9!

Thank you!

  • OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world
    301·
    4 months ago

    I’ve used Macs all of my adult life, my first Mac came with System 7, and then up to Mac OS 8 and beyond. I’ve used every iteration of Mac OS since.

    System 7, Mac OS 8, and Mac OS 9 were in a word: FUNctional! By that I mean the ol’ Apple tagline “it just works” wasn’t just marketing. It really did just work. Never crashed, no viruses, just easy, smooth, simple functionality.

    And it was FUN to use. Since things did what they were supposed to do, and the system was build from the ground up to be intuitive for anyone - from children to the elderly, there weren’t any struggles to get stuff to do what you wanted, and especially the later versions, the OS interface was highly customizable. You could modify the window skins, scroll bars, icons, schemas, everything. Want to make your Mac look like a tropical fish aquarium, with all the windows swimming sound and making glub glub sounds when you opened files? Easy. Want it to be no-nonsense black & white fast as hell pro system? No problem.

    Sometimes people got carried away and overdid it with the customizations, and they’d brick their computers (I was an Apple certified tech for a while and had to repair many a file system) - and that was even a fun challenge.

    Ultimately, pre-OSX MacOS was a great product of its time. It was different from Windows - and that’s what threw off many Windows users - they’d try to approach MacOS as if it were a WinPC, and things weren’t where they expected them to be, but if you learned MacOS (which was easy) you’d find it did everything you needed it to do.

    I don’t follow your comment that the current MacOS “being more fisher priced down in looks,” I think it looks very sleek & professional, but whatever. To each their own.

    • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
      71·
      4 months ago

      I recently decided to learn modern macOS after avoiding it my whole life.

      The UI isn’t horrible, but I found that I needed to buy about 20 different apps to regain basic OS functionality. Naturally some of these apps will charge me if I want to use them on the next version of macOS as well - honestly their whole app ecosystem feels like a scam.

      I bought more apps than I would recommend to anyone just for the sake of testing and learning them. That being said, assuming someone doesn’t know their way around zsh/bash, can’t figure out homebrew, or doesn’t know how to use GitHub, they are probably going to have a bad time (although weirdly my tech illiterate friends like vanilla… am I crazy, or is window snapping extremely efficient?).

    • Surp@lemmy.world
      52·
      4 months ago

      When people say Mac never gets viruses i like to remind them that no one making a virus is trying to target the computer that doesn’t sell as well. They want to reach as many people as possible not as little as possible which would be in Macs case comparatively to windows.