If there was no OS X, would you be an Apple user?

[weev]

Reading all these posts I feel like I've been left sitting in the station.

Y'see, I still use 9.2 to do web and graphic design. My graphite 500mhz imac is well up for the job and the OS does what it needs to do.

I've not used XP and I've played with OS X (even ran it on my machine for a while but a bit slow). It's nice, yes, but I can look forward to using it one day when I buy a new mac, maybe the new 970, who knows, don't need a new computer now, want yes, need no.

I've only ever used macs since I bought a Plus in the late 80s. I guess I really don't know what I'm missing

 

[ibjoshua]

i'm a long time mac user and would still be trudging along with OS9 if necessary.

i_b_joshua

 

[Bear]

This is a good question an dprobably would make a good poll of the day.

I'm not sure what I would have done without OS X, I've only ever run OS X on the Macs I bought last year.

I possibly would have been forced to Macs & OS 9 to get away from Microsoft and windows.

As it was, making the switch to OS X was wonderful. I know Unix very well, so I had no problems with that piece. Photoshop is the most extensively used piece of commercial software I own. (Not counting what comes with OS X.) Which sort of dictates having a PC or a Mac.

 

[bbarnhart]

About a year ago I decided that I needed a new computer (my mac is very old and is painful to use). I was going to build an AMD based PC. Why was I going to switch from a lifetime of Apple computers to a PC? I use PC's at work (developer) and I find them no trouble at all and they are very inexpensive.

But...

Mac OS X is just so great. We also have an iBook and I've installed Mac OS X on it, but my desktop would not run X. Or would it? After discovering XPostfacto and installing it on my old 8500 I was set.

But...

It is still slow. However, the price difference between a new dual 1.25 PowerMac and a similarly configured PC was about $600. But, the PC did not run Mac OS X and to me that was very important.

I mean, why use a computer if it doesn't run Mac OS X.

 

[Pablo]

Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
I would never have switched without OS X. There's no doubt at all about it. I don't like OS9 at all, but think OS X is just so wonderful. I know many people who are currently thinking about switching - not because of the ad campaign, but because of X.

Same here. I'm thinking about switching, pretty much due to OS X. I started out on Macs (~15 years ago), but left it for Windows 3.1. About the time XP came out, I started looking for an alternative OS, as I was becoming more and more displeased with the way MS is headed.

I tried various versions of Linux, and while it was fun tinkering, I spent all my time getting things to work and never any time actually using it as a desktop OS. Add to that the fact that there's no way to get many programs I need to work (Quicken, other financial software, etc). I wanted a desktop OS (not MS) that just worked...and I didn't (and don't) see Linux as being a viable alternative...for anytime in the forseeable future. Perhaps for servers, but not for a desktop.

So then I learn about OS X, and after playing with it a little, and seeing it in action, I'm very encouraged. Add to that the fact that it's backed by Apple and I'm eager to get my feet wet.

Now, if I could just get an updated 15" PowerBook, or convince myself that I need a 17" PB (especially that I could get it sooner)...which is starting to happen.

 

[PieMac]

As much as I love my Macs (iBook and iMac flat panel screen), I hate OS 9 and would take XP over it any day.

Too, I just can't imagine the newer (especially in the last 2 years or so), Apple computers running anything but 10.0 and up....one compliments the other so perfectly....the design of the computer itself is a work of art. The very few times that I've had to boot into 9...well, it looks just foreign on either one of my Macs...it just doesn't belong.

I've had nothing but Jaguar running on my iBook since last summer and I plan to do the same with my iMac next time I do a clean install. Thank goodness everything I run is now Jaguar compatible!

 

[Jaykay]

Yeah i have to say i love OS X but seeing that the first mac i had was when my father bought one with just the motherboard, ya had to make yor own case.

So i know id still be using 9 seeing by know they probably would have seriously ugraded i by now, eh?

 

[Das]

Well, a better question would be if you would like OSX without the suck feature.

I've used macs primarily in 9, so I would have still been a mac nut either way, although probably without an addiction to minimizing everything in sight.

 

[hesdeadjim]

I got my first Mac with OS 9, and I was very happy with it. I didn't like some of the little things about it, but it was less problematic than Windows. So, I would still use Macs without X though.

Now, if I had to go back to 9 now, that is another question. I would probably never go back. A quote from my GF who was a PC user until this year , "My professor has a PowerBook G4 in OS 9, and every time he boots up, I'm like Nooooooo! It just looks unusable." This was the same person who was upset when I updated my G3 iMac to OS X.

 

[hesdeadjim]

Originally posted by Das
Well, a better question would be if you would like OSX without the suck feature.

I've used macs primarily in 9, so I would have still been a mac nut either way, although probably without an addiction to minimizing everything in sight.

I like suck, but it slowed down my computer quite a bit. Maybe that was just my experience.

 

[hesdeadjim]

Originally posted by john123
Well I guess from a marketing standpoint, OS X is good.

I don't think I'm alone in demanding speed speed and more speed, though. See, lots of people complain about crashes with OS 9, but that doesn't happen very much to me. Sure it happens occasionally, and I have to restart...but I almost never lose any work. And the time I lose in restarting is far, far less than the time I lose waiting for OS X to do something with its GUI. Yes, OS X is far superior in true multitasking, but the reality of the matter is that most of us don't do true multitasking. I see all kinds of people "testing out the new Macs" in Apple stores by playing a DVD and letting iTunes go and running some other process in the background.

If I'm gonna listen to music, I'm gonna listen to music. If I'm gonna watch a movie, I'm gonna watch a movie. And if I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work. I might even combine work with music if I'm in a particularly daredevil mood, but I swear, if you were my college roommate and you sat down at your desk and starting playing songs in iTunes while watching the Matrix or something...well, something bad would happen.

Most of us use our Macs to do simple things, one task at a time. We run a filter in Photoshop, we do some work in iMovie...we rarely do multiple user-oriented things simultaneously. And that's why, for most of us, OS 9 is snappier.

And I also prefer the OS 9 fonts. I simply can't stand those "smoothed" fonts...if you have a PowerBook, look at the lower cased Ls and Is in the menu bar. That vertical band of reddish pixels that's an artifact of font smoothing positively drives me nuts. I far prefer the "pixely" OS 9 fonts that are at least clear and readable. It also gives me more screen real estate -- try making the font for your desktop items in OS X the same size as the default Geneva 10 in OS 9 and see how readable it is with that white-outlined-with-black nonsense.

Bottom line, I value performance over pretty. And over features sometimes, too. I can understand why sysadmins may love OS X...but for Joe User, who really compares between the two, I don't. Ultimately, I fault Apple for not giving people like me the customization options to make our fonts and windows like they were in OS 9, or to eliminate the dock. All that GUI nonsense slows down my machine (and I'm on a PowerBook 1Ghz with the 64MB video card, to boot!) and makes me a rather unhappy camper.

So there's my opinion.

There is a difference between watching a movie and playing iTunes at the same time and actually multitasking. I surf the web (both safari and chimera), on iChat, check my email in both Mail and Entourage, run Word, run Excel, run preview, have system preferences open, and maybe Photoshop 5.5 in classic all at the same time. Mind you, I'm working in Photoshop, Word, Excel, iTunes, and surfing all at the same time (well I switch apps, but as I run a photoshop filter, I work on Excel worksheet for example). That would have never been possible in OS 9 despite what others might tell you. Hell, I had trouble running both Word and Excel at the same time, which I do at least 2 or 3 times a week.

 

[ExoticFish]

my switching story

i was always one of those ignorant windows users that was 100% against anything Mac. then as my knowledge of computers grew i quickly realized that windows just sucked, so i switched to Linux. I still kept windows around for games (and still do), but my dual boot machine was mostly running Linux. then the TiBook came about and i just started to drool all over myself. i mean, how sweet did that thing look??? by then i wasn't quite so against Mac but i didn't really care about OS 9. When OS X came out i was so stoked. my main desktop was Linux and i loved it, but OS X? absolutely amazing. I got an old 233MHz G3 and played with X and i was hooked. I bought my 667 DVI TiBook and have since upgraded to a 1GHz Ti. But now that I have used it, i don't mind OS 9 at all, no where near as good as X, but it's alright.

 

[john123]

Originally posted by hesdeadjim
There is a difference between watching a movie and playing iTunes at the same time and actually multitasking. I surf the web (both safari and chimera), on iChat, check my email in both Mail and Entourage, run Word, run Excel, run preview, have system preferences open, and maybe Photoshop 5.5 in classic all at the same time. Mind you, I'm working in Photoshop, Word, Excel, iTunes, and surfing all at the same time (well I switch apps, but as I run a photoshop filter, I work on Excel worksheet for example). That would have never been possible in OS 9 despite what others might tell you. Hell, I had trouble running both Word and Excel at the same time, which I do at least 2 or 3 times a week.

(1) That is *not* true multitasking. That's a process that you the user are using in the foreground and a bunch of background processes. When developers talk about preemptive multitasking, they are talking about the situation I talked about in my first post -- multiple user-driven "foreground" processes.

(2) I do exactly what you are describing every day on my Mac in OS 9. AIM, IE, Word, Excel, graphics program(s), and iTunes are open 99% of the time, and on average, there are about three other programs open as well. All at the same time. No problems...

Maybe I'm blessed, or maybe you people just are doing weird stuff with your Macs.

 

[leprechaunG4]

Multitasking refers to a system's ability to manipulate multiple processes at one time. Both foreground and background processes are included. Multitasking does NOT mean a multiuser environment, though such and environment would require greater multitasking capabilities it is not the definition of multitasking. Now back to the topic of this thread. Would I have ever purchased a MAC without OS X? Heck No! I hadn't touched an Apple since the IIgs of my childhood. Apple has always had nice hardware, but the OS's have been total junk. Former MAC OS's offered no real control over the system, no command line to get to. Too user friendly is a big problem if you are a computer networking major like myself. I can't be happy with just pretty little pictures and wizards. OS 9 and previous were like giant barriers between the user and the machine. Since OS 10 and later are based on the greatest OS ever designed (Unix based) they finally can take advantage of their incredible hardware. There is now a command line, a Unix command line! My networking blood couldn't be happier. Result. Last night I ordered my first MAC, a 12" Powerbook G4 with superdrive

 

[john123]

No one referred to a multi-user environment in the first place....

Anyway, I always have to chuckle at how many people accept an OS that is dog slow with blurry fonts just because it's "built on UNIX." Kudos to Apple's marketing department.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if Apple rebranded Windows XP under its own name. I suspect there'd be lots of users who'd flock to buy it, crying out, "This is so much better than a PC!"

 

[edesignuk]

Nope, I wouldn't. OS 10.1 is what really did it for me. I had a 400Mhz Powermac G4 (AGP) with OS 9 but I rarely used it. Then one day I thought I'd give OS X a go, and boy am I glad I did. I was so impressed I went out and bought myself a new machine to run it on! Now I rarely use my PC.

 

[caveman_uk]

I bought my first ever Mac (Clamshell iBook 466 SE) to run the OS X Public Beta. Without OS X I would not have even considered buying a Mac. Before I was a hardcore Linux user (I am still a Linux user) and was looking for a laptop that would run Linux well. The iBook seemed to be about as good as the PC competition in that respect (but was the cheapest DVD playing laptop I could get in the UK at the time). But it was OS X that sealed the deal. I would now never buy a non-Mac laptop, although I am still an x86 desktop person.

That's pretty much me too. I would never have bought a mac at all if it still had OS9. I was a Linux user (still use it on my servers) and was amazed to find an OS with the Unix underpinning without the hamfisted GUIs. I've still got an x86 desktop - though I only really play games on it - I may as well get a PS2. I'm not sure whether I'd get a desktop mac. Maybe I'll upgrade to a powerbook in a years time when the ibook starts creaking...

 

[leprechaunG4]

Originally posted by john123
No one referred to a multi-user environment in the first place....

Anyway, I always have to chuckle at how many people accept an OS that is dog slow with blurry fonts just because it's "built on UNIX." Kudos to Apple's marketing department.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if Apple rebranded Windows XP under its own name. I suspect there'd be lots of users who'd flock to buy it, crying out, "This is so much better than a PC!"

Sorry misread the multiple user-driven part. Or misinterpreted what you where saying. As for the Unix being a marketing ploy, please. If you understand the core of an OS, then you realize the vast greatness of Unix over the OS 9 platform. To complain about a fuzzy font seams rather foolish when you consider everything else gained.

And as for the fuzzy font here's a quote from another thread here by another member, MacBandit:

"I've never heard of a complaint about jaggies in OSX. OSX has AA built into the system and usually people confuse the smoothed fonts with blurred fonts and complain that there screen seems to be fuzzy. The AA settings can be turned up and down or off for that matter."

 

[john123]

Originally posted by leprechaunG4
Sorry misread the multiple user-driven part. Or misinterpreted what you where saying. As for the Unix being a marketing ploy, please. If you understand the core of an OS, then you realize the vast greatness of Unix over the OS 9 platform. To complain about a fuzzy font seams rather foolish when you consider everything else gained.

And as for the fuzzy font here's a quote from another thread here by another member, MacBandit:

"I've never heard of a complaint about jaggies in OSX. OSX has AA built into the system and usually people confuse the smoothed fonts with blurred fonts and complain that there screen seems to be fuzzy. The AA settings can be turned up and down or off for that matter."

Regarding the core, I don't see what else is "gained." Well, not for me anyway. I don't run an Apache server on my Mac. I'm like most users -- I do the usual productivity apps with some leisure work. I can see the huge advantage of UNIX in a networking environment, and for sys admins and net admins, it's probably great. But for folks like me, who buy new Macs because we love speed, 9 and the latest and greatest hardware is a dream.

And yes, I know how to adjust antialiasing. That doesn't change anything in the menubar, however. It also doesn't affect global settings a lot of the time -- you need something like TinkerTool to do that. And TinkerTool just doesn't get it "right" -- it mushes letters together, unlike 9 where they are spaced correctly. And yes, I've tried changing the menubar and other fonts with Silk, and no, it doesn't make a difference to me.

 

[yzedf]

windows to linux to OS X

Many people I know went from Windows 98 to RedHat 6 to 7 to OS X.

I am in the minority that is still using Linux (Mandrake 9.1b3). This is only because I don't have the scratch saved yet for my new ibook/powerbook.

Without OS X, I would still be preaching the aspects of Linux

OS X gives me the CLI that I have learned to use in the past 3 years, but with a nice GUI, and lots more commercially available programs, that work.

Plus my PowerShot S200 works brilliantly with iPhoto 2, unlike gPhoto 2

 

[yzedf]

Originally posted by john123
(1) That is *not* true multitasking. That's a process that you the user are using in the foreground and a bunch of background processes. When developers talk about preemptive multitasking, they are talking about the situation I talked about in my first post -- multiple user-driven "foreground" processes.

Maybe I'm blessed, or maybe you people just are doing weird stuff with your Macs.

Ecactly. Burning a cd while checking email and surfing Safari style etc etc.

OS 9 was timeshare, "you get 1 sec, you get 2 sec, and you need 130 sec" (avail proc time)

OS X is "you get 10%, you get 10%, and you need 70%" (avail proc power)

 

[medea]

yes, I was planning on making the move over to macs before I knew much about OS X, when I did make the transition OS X just made it that much sweeter.

 

[bryanc]

Apple ][ -> DOS -> Win -> Linux -> OS X -> ?

I cut my teeth on an Apple ][, but when I had to start buying my own computers, the PCs where just *so* much cheaper, that was the only viable option.

So I languished for two decades in the realm of Redmond OS'es.

I had a brief affair with OS/2, and then jumped on the Linux bandwagon, with high hopes that some useable desktop software would become available. I still hope to see a viable Linux desktop system emerge in the PC world, but when OS X appeared, it was obviously everything I had hoped Linux would be...a unix-based OS with a beautiful GUI (yet still providing a CLI) and loads of great professional-quality applications. I was hooked and bought at TiBook as soon as I could.

From what I've read in this thread, OS X is largely responsible for the Apple Renaissance.

 

[charboneau]

OS X is incredible. I can probably count on one hand the times I've been in 9 since I got my iBook in June.

I've used Windows 95, 98, NT at work, and didn't like them. 2000 I actually kind of liked. XP is 2000 with a lot of unnececessary crap.

The price is right on Intel/AMD boxes. If it weren't for X, I might very well be running 2000 and trying to wrap my non-geek mind around Linux. Primarily out of price concern. The 9 interface is nice, but the stability/performance isn't so hot. I'd still be using my old Mac with 9 though.

 

[icetraxxg5]

MacOS (9) is far behind even windows 95 because it didn't have very good multitasking, crashed more then windows (haha, believe it or not), and didn't manage memory worth crap. Believe it or not MacOS 9 and anything earlier is stuck in the 80's. MacOS X walks over Windows and Windows XP in most areas and looks SOO Much better.