Hindsight is a wonderful thing; the early (32-bit!) days of MacIntel

[B S Magnet]

I think from the perspective of us grizzled old school veterans, perhaps -- but reading books like AppleDesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group or Apple Confidential is an interesting window on the ethos driving Apple. In a lot of ways, products like the AS MacBook Air is the pinnacle of Jobs' original vision for what the Mac was supposed to be: A "just works" appliance, fulfilling his "Mac in a book by 1986" ambitions, all entirely made in a process controlled from top to bottom by Apple.

Apple is always full of surprises. I didn't think Apple would release the eMac after going all-in on LCDs. I didn't think they'd even release something like the Mac mini, or the iPod shuffle.

Who knows? Maybe Apple will realize that modular electronics like Project Ara and the Framework Laptop are what will be the future, and we'll see MacBooks and iPhones that you really can build up like Lego. (With Apple making sure the "blocks" are proprietary and profitable to make and sell. )

If it hasn’t happened already, then a certain Henry Winkler, as a 70yo Fonz, enters the chat… 🏂🧀🦈

 

[Gudi]

I agree the 32bit Core Duo was a misfit in the lineup. The desktop PPCs were already 64bit at Apple, and the wait was on for a 64bit laptop.

And today people complain that they can't run 32-bit games on M-series chips. 😁

 

[Siliconguy]

I had a 2006 (1.67 Ghz Core Duo) mini in the stereo cabinet up until 2019. It served well, but in the end it was too limited even for that. One of the few Macs I actually sent to recycling.

The GMA 950 video was marginal when new and rapidly degraded to hopeless. The memory was limited, the processor couldn't handle HD graphics, etc. Even as a Linux box I couldn't do anything with it.

I remember when I benchmarked it against the 2002 Quicksilver the '06 did win at integer, but in everything else the Quicksilver won (it was the dual CPU model). It was small and quiet and well suited for the stereo cabinet, but that was the end of it's virtues.

A 2014 mini is in the stereo cabinet now, I'll have to see how long that one stays there.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Nintendo weirdly likes to ruin video output during end-of-life revisions (see NES top loader, SNES Jr., Wii Mini).

Not so with the Japan only 1990s AV Famicom which unlike its VHF only predecessor, outputs NTSC composite video via the same MULTI-OUT socket that was introduced with the SNES/Super Famicom. Here's mine.

 

[chaosbunny]

Back in the day when the Inteltransition happened I had just bought not one but two 15" 1,67 ghz PowerBook G4s. First one in April of 2005, that got stolen in August so I had to buy a new one right before the high res PowerBooks were released. Then shortly afterwards came the first MacBook Pros. Boy was I mad. I always loved the design of MacBook pros before the unibodies, that finetuned version of the Powerbooks. A little bit thinner, the iSight, the larger trackpad and the remote control. I just couldn't afford to get a new one again so soon. I finally got a good deal on a leftover all-silver MacBook Pro right after the unibodies came out. I still use it almost every day, it's our media center in the living room.

I managed to get a refurb high end 16" MacBook Pro right before they announced the ARM transition. Bad luck again. But this time it's different, I actually prefer the design of the 16" Intel and it easily keeps up performance wise, even for editing 6k raw. Best thing about the new OS announcement yetserday is that it'll be supported one more year since I plan on keeping it at least until 2025/26.

And since there's still Intel support I might also be able to keep my old C2D friends up to date for the foreseeable future!

Somehow the Intel-ARM transition seems smoother than the PowerPC-Intel transition. Might have something to do with the Intels not being behind performance wise that much compared to the state of the PowerPCs back in the day.

 

[B S Magnet]

A little bit thinner, the iSight, the larger trackpad and the remote control.

OK. You actually made me break out a ruler and measure my 17-inch A1139 and my 17-inch A1261.

(Can’t speak to the 15-inch variants, as I lack a 15-inch pre-unibody MBP.)

But at least on the 17-inch pre-unibody MBP, the physical trackpad dimensions between it and the late 2005 PowerBook (if not all the 17-inch PowerBooks) are identical.

The rest of your observations are spot-on, though!

 

[gpat]

I think from the perspective of us grizzled old school veterans, perhaps -- but reading books like AppleDesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group or Apple Confidential is an interesting window on the ethos driving Apple. In a lot of ways, products like the AS MacBook Air is the pinnacle of Jobs' original vision for what the Mac was supposed to be: A "just works" appliance, fulfilling his "Mac in a book by 1986" ambitions, all entirely made in a process controlled from top to bottom by Apple.

Any laptop computer fulfills that definition. The Macbook Air doesn't stretch that any further. The iPad, perhaps...

 

[m1maverick]

Between Apple crashing the AIM Alliance singlehandedly and Apple halting continuing development of PowerPC architecture by any serious start-up it could afford to swallow whole, the entire R&D to have have come to pass is, frankly, unknowable to any of us. But we can fathom a different Apple which showed a different kind of shrewdness (maybe in another multiverse), in which Apple continued with PowerPC development and PowerPC products, working truly in alliance with Motorola and IBM, whilst at the same time also selling a separate line of Intel based systems running the exact same OS. This would have put a lot of heat on Microsoft, as neither of them were developing an OS for PowerPC systems (that anyone is aware of, at least).

Windows NT ran on PPC. You can download it here (or so it says, I didn't actually try to do so).

 

[Amethyst1]

Windows NT ran on PPC.

It doesn’t run on Macs. And there are virtually no apps for it. The same goes for OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition.

 

[B S Magnet]

It doesn’t run on Macs. And there are virtually no apps for it. The same goes for OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition.

What… no Minesweeper? D:

 

[Amethyst1]

What… no Minesweeper? D:

 

[m1maverick]

It doesn’t run on Macs. And there are virtually no apps for it. The same goes for OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition.

The person I responded to said PowerPC systems, not Macintosh systems. Agree on the lack of application support.

 

[retta283]

Windows NT ran on PPC. You can download it here (or so it says, I didn't actually try to do so).

For what it's worth, Windows NT 3.51 is perhaps the most stable operating system ever created. It remains more stable than NT 4 or Windows 2000 due to the way that drivers are handled, primarily GPU drivers not being in the kernel. Required more powerful hardware as a result, but it was a dream on good hardware. Lack of software support rendered this largely moot however, so it is almost never talked about.

Otherwise I'd wager the most stable OSes are Windows 2000 and OS X Panther. Many are in the second echelon but these three were the pinnacle. In my opinion of course, user experience is widely variable.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Otherwise I'd wager the most stable OSes are Windows 2000 and OS X Panther. Many are in the second echelon but these three were the pinnacle. In my opinion of course, user experience is widely variable.

Over three years, I only ever experienced one freeze on a daily driver, near always-on laptop that ran Win2K. It outlasted the neighbouring Linux installation that went from bad to worse and eventually became unusable. This acknowledgement comes from someone who has always begrudgingly used Windows.

 

[retta283]

Over three years, I only ever experienced one freeze on a daily driver, near always-on laptop that ran Win2K. It outlasted the neighbouring Linux installation that went from bad to worse and eventually became unusable. This acknowledgement comes from someone who has always begrudgingly used Windows.

Win2k is probably my favorite OS ever. I found it very easy to meld to my liking with good app compatibility up until around 2010. Running that with Office 2000/2004 I was crunching massive Excels like it was nothing. Ran a lot better than XP on a lot of machines at the time. XP is very good, but requires better hardware (especially needs a lot of RAM) and seemed a bit more prone to crashing. I was running 2000 on Pentium III systems with 256 or 512MB of RAM and that felt great, anything faster it screams on. I still use it to this day at work running Mach2 with some CPUs as low as 500MHz.

In the OS X realm, Panther was very close to this level of stability but I lament the inferior Classic mode and lack of hardware/software support compared to Tiger. In general a lot of pre-Yosemite OS X versions were very stable. The earliest Tiger versions for Intel were pretty buggy and Lion never felt very good, but otherwise things ran well. I'm still using Mavericks at home and it's great. Never had good luck with Linux long-term, even for servers.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Win2k is probably my favorite OS ever. I found it very easy to meld to my liking with good app compatibility up until around 2010. Running that with Office 2000/2004 I was crunching massive Excels like it was nothing. Ran a lot better than XP on a lot of machines at the time. XP is very good, but requires better hardware (especially needs a lot of RAM) and seemed a bit more prone to crashing. I was running 2000 on Pentium III systems with 256 or 512MB of RAM and that felt great, anything faster it screams on. I still use it to this day at work running Mach2 with some CPUs as low as 500MHz.

Much of the drastic improvement between Win2K and the GUI atop DOS versions of Win9x was due to Microsoft hiring David Cutler to work on the NT line. It actually could've been even better had Cutler and his people not been hamstrung in many areas by Microsoft.

I'm still using Mavericks at home and it's great.

Without a doubt. I'm using Mavericks on my Mac Pro as it's the last compatible version of macOS that isn't affected by the infuriating bug that prevents my USB 3.0 PCIe card from working in Yosemite and El Capitan. I'm not missing out in terms of software either because much of what I currently run on other machines works with Mavericks - including new stuff that's been created within our community.

Never had good luck with Linux long-term, even for servers.

Me too. It has never been a success for me as a desktop replacement for Windows or supplement to macOS, unfortunately. The only scenario where its been faultless on a daily basis was on a headless PC which was dedicated to running a hardware firewall solution.

 

[Amethyst1]

For what it's worth, Windows NT 3.51 is perhaps the most stable operating system ever created.

A funny tidbit is that there was an early beta of the Explorer shell that would come in NT 4 for 3.51 (and even 3.5 IIRC).

Lack of software support rendered this largely moot however, so it is almost never talked about.

Office 97 runs on it, so do e.g. early versions of Mozilla software. Some software that “requires” NT 4 can be coaxed to run on 3.51 so I’d say support isn’t that bad given its short lifetime, although it obviously depends on what you need/want to run. I’d say NT 3.x is a bit like Rhapsody in that a very powerful/reliable OS is hidden beneath an “old-fashioned” UI.

 

[VivienM]

I was looking back to 2003 when HDMI products first came to market. Then wondered why Apple did not put it into Macs with year 1 of Intel Macs.

HDMI is a consumer electronics standard, not a computer industry standard.

In the mid-2000s, the computer industry standard was VGA and DVI, and things were starting to go towards DisplayPort.

Lenovo did not put an HDMI output on their business laptops until 2016's T460/T560/etc models. The previous year's models had mini-DP and they sold you a little mini-DP to HDMI dongle. I think they may have had VGA too.

PC enthusiast video cards until, oh, 2012 or so, came with a hefty complement of DVI, a DVI to VGA adapter in the box, some DisplayPort, and maybe one HDMI.

What happened is a couple of things:
1) Conference rooms in offices switched to using TVs with HDMI input rather than projectors with VGA or S-video, so... to the extent the primary purpose of the monitor port on a docking-capable business laptop is plugging into things while travelling, that suggested HDMI made more sense
2) El-cheapo monitors, the kind sold at Worst Buy, started offering HDMI inputs.
3) El-cheapo PC laptops started coming with an HDMI port and nothing else
4) HDMI started being capable of something other than 1920x1080 TV resolutions, but only maybe in the mid-2010s
5) People started to plug in consumer laptops into TVs, apparently. (It's something I've never done, but hey, I'm an old guy...)

So HDMI, unfortunately, has somehow become somewhat of a computer standard, and we have this ugly mess in 2023 with both DisplayPort and HDMI. DisplayPort has better/newer features for computer use, HDMI somehow keeps inserting itself where it shouldn't be, and everybody is confused.

Keep in mind that a standard "good" monitor in the mid-late 2000s was a 1920x1200 24" LCD. Apple sold one, Dell sold one, etc. You can't drive that resolution with earlier HDMI standards. That monitor was replaced by 2560x1440 27"s, which again HDMI can't drive, and which again Apple/Dell/etc sold tons of, and most 24" monitors mostly got their bottom 10% pixels chopped off and became 1920x1080 in the early 2010s.

 

[VivienM]

Much of the drastic improvement between Win2K and the GUI atop DOS versions of Win9x was due to Microsoft hiring David Cutler to work on the NT line. It actually could've been even better had Cutler and his people not been hamstrung in many areas by Microsoft.

Dave Cutler was hired and tasked with creating a serious operating system in the late 1980s. The problem is that what he created required hardware that was unaffordable outside the server/workstation market until the early 2000s. Look at RAM prices alone - 4MB of RAM in 1995 was CAD$250, and NT basically from the beginning always needed an absolute minimum of 12-16MB.

The entire reason Win9x was created was to migrate the DOS/Win16 application base to Win32, compatible with NT, while having those applications run on affordable systems while waiting for Moore's Law to do its thing. Then once affordable hardware became able to run NT, Microsoft unified the two families with XP. There were other operating systems (e.g. OS/2, which had essentially perfect compatibility with Win16 applications) floating around, and I don't think Microsoft wanted to gamble on DOS/Win3.x as its 'mainstream' platform for 6 more years while waiting for NT-capable hardware to get cheaper, not to mention that NT sucks at running DOS software, so getting people away from DOS software towards Win32 software was important for the eventual goal of NT adoption.

It's important to remember that the reason most desktop operating systems in the 1990s were lousy (and Mac OS 9 definitely deserves its inclusion on that list) is not that people didn't know how to build serious, reliable operating systems. The problem is that they couldn't build serious, reliable operating systems that ran on affordable hardware... and had 'good enough' backwards compatibility with the existing software base for that affordable hardware that had been designed around unserious operating systems in the early-mid-1980s.