Un-Switchers: Still Using OS 9

[bousozoku]

While there are good reasons to use Mac OS 8.x, 9.x, they don't apply to me. Anyone in the graphic design industry is slowly moving toward Mac OS X as specific hardware drivers and applications become available. (It's only been 4 years!)

Considering that I was telling Apple to ditch their Mac OS underpinnings back when System 7 was in beta test, I couldn't get away soon enough. Copland and Gershwin were looking like dreams but, like dreams, you wake up to reality. Mac OS X provided a variety of answers with which I'm pleased but didn't expect: GUI and UNIX shells being able to handle the same tasks. It isn't a single-minded operating system. There is no clear vision and it's definitely less stable than it should be but it's more stable than System 7.x, Mac OS 8.x, or 9.x for me.

Should everyone grab onto Mac OS X and leave the past in the past? It's not necessary to do that, especially if you have a machine that is now part of the past. However, if you don't endeavour to change, you'll be part of the past as well.

 

[wdlove]

I used Mac OS 9 until the end of January. To me it was a very stable system. It was my wife that kept after me to switch. Now that I'm on X, no regret or looking back.

 

[Thomas Veil]

I really wish Apple would implement some type of transition program, maybe some price incentive or something to get businesses to switch to X, cuz at this point, OS 9 is hurting their reputation and the reputation of Macs as a reliable alternative. People who don't know any better are thinking OS 9 is all the Mac has to offer, which is so incredibly false.

I can vouch for this. I went to work for a facility that had several Windows computers and one Mac with OS 9, and of course, the boss disliked the Mac because OS 9 kept crashing so much.

Recently, he took the leap and upgraded to OS 10.3, and he's much happier with our Mac. He may not be a fan yet, but he's not complaining about it any more. And the other people in our office are impressed by features such as the dock, Font Book, Expose, etc.

Personally, I'd never go back to OS 9. Having been forced to use it at work for the last year, and having OS X at home, I can tell you that OS 9 is better left a fond memory than a present-day operating system.

 

[rueyeet]

How do you suggest making it any easier?

Two things occur to me right off the bat:

• An application similar to Move2Mac, or the G5's Migration tool.....Apple makes it easier for Windows users or users of previous versions of OS X to move to another Mac than they do for longtime Mac users still on OS 9.
• Price incentives, at least for enterprises, for OS X--if not also for the hardware to run it on.

The problem of moving all one's files and settings and favorites and such to a new Mac, for one, has been mentioned more than once at LowEndMac.

 

[LarryC]

I see many threads like this one on different boards, but unlike the others, you guys have made this a thoughtful discussion. I have a 500 MHz G3 iMac that I've upgraded with a 120GB HD and 1GB of RAM. I have my HD partitioned into two equal parts, and I have OS 9.2.2 on one partition and OS X version 10.3.4 on the other. Both OS's run just great on my three-year old iMac, but I have to admit that I simply prefer OS 9 which is what I'm using right now. I've often thought of upgrading to a new eMac, but I've been wondering if I could still use some of my favorite apps such as SpellCatcher 8 and Grammarian 2 in the classic mode?

 

[peharri]

Only way to get in if OS X has a problem

The only reason I use OS 9, as someone who switched to Mac for OS X, is so I can get in and fix things if OS X stops booting* without necessarily having to do a complete OS reinstall or do everything from a half-functional command line.

It'd be nice if Apple could provide a bootable OS X disk with a functional Finder.

* which has happened before, sometimes my fault, sometimes just wierd things happening. The former is because I have a keyboard I prefer to use that doesn't have a Windows/Command key, so I recompile Darwin's USB keyboard driver to make left-ALT that key. Sometimes the updated driver works fine, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, I generally can't get in, OS X crashes on boot and safe mode doesn't work because the keyboard driver is no longer functional.

Every OS X update tends to wipe out my updated driver, so I have to repeat the process with the latest Darwin code. What I guess I need to do is make my change more configurable and then submit it back to Apple

 

[sockeatingdryer]

I never understood why everyone was kvetching along the lines of "OS 9's so unstable." It never was very unstable to me. Sure, the occasional hitch, but not much being in the way of serious. And my system resources never were gobbled up, per say. But that's just me.
It just seems that the interface of OS 9 was... well, more along the lines of Apple in terms of it being minimalist and simplistic. I mean, Aqua's great and brushed metal has grown on me, but OS 9 seemed snappier because there wasn't all that excess candy to worry the graphics card with, I guess. Also, the size of installation seemed a tad smaller...

 

[Mehmet]

I HATED OS 9. with a passion.

Seriously before os X, i used to HATE macs, just because of my dads print shop where we would have nonstop crashes and freezes with our quicksilver g4. Oh man did i hate it.. And there was this annoying mac zealot who would always blame it on our hardware but yet would not tell us how to go about fixing it.

some app would crash, you would try to force quit, but OOPS! you can't force quit you idiot, I have to crash now! Extension problems up the wazoo, everything was super annoying. And that mac zealot didn't make it any better with his annoying talk about how mac's are superior to pc's because they have no problems. I would say that today, but back then? nuh-uh.

After installing os x..... ahhhh.. now this is what a computer should feel and act like. No problems whatsoever.

 

[Bedawyn]

You can turn off font smoothing in System Preferences, which may help with the resolution thing. It won't help with the overall rounded look of Aqua, but may help for readability.

I've already tried this, and I'm afraid it doesn't help. If it has any effect, it's too small to be noticeable. This is actually a huge, huge problem for me with OS X, since most of what I do on the computer is text-based rather than graphic. And using the lower resolution doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it bearable (while simultaneously cutting down the number of apps I can use). After much much searching, I've found a few other people who have the same problem, but I'm still desperately searching for any way to alleviate it. I think I've seen mention of an app or two that might let me change the system font sizes, thus making the higher resolution usable, but I'm not comfortable enough with UNIX to want to go messing around in the innards. So I will quite happily welcome any and all suggestions on this front (including any reassurance that I can mess around in the innards without screwing other things up).

As for the look, I'm just waiting for ShapeShifter to get to the point Kaleidoscope was, with enough themes for real variety, and I'll be fine.

Consider your user home directory the equivalent of 9's non-System space. You can do ANYTHING in your home directory,

I just went up to Panther, and I am trying just this this time around. Previously, I had my disk partitioned, because I like to keep Apple official files separate from other official files and my own files. It helps a bit, but it still feels like I'm working on a small cleared space on the desk rather than on an actual clean desk.

 

[rueyeet]

It helps a bit, but it still feels like I'm working on a small cleared space on the desk rather than on an actual clean desk.

Good description....lessening that feeling is probably why icons for Home are featured so prominently in the Finder. Coming from a DOS/Windows background, I can hardly even conceive of being able to put anything anywhere on a computer, so that's not something I'll probably ever understand in the same way as someone who's used to it, but I can see your point.

Though I think Spotlight is going to change a lot of how we work with files, if it works as advertised. Anyone who doesn't want to have to worry about where their files are will no longer have to.