
An OS 9 odyssey: Why some Mac users won’t abandon 16-year-old software - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/an-os-9-odyssey-why-do-some-mac-users-still-rely-on-16-year-old-software/
======
makecheck
They are 100% correct about the spatial Finder; 15 years later and what the
current OS has is still laughable compared to some of the gems of the Classic
Finder. A few years back Steve Jobs had the audacity to describe some Cocoa
rewrite as a “whole new Finder” and I got excited only to realize it was still
garbage. You sort of have to experience the Classic Finder to understand just
how wrong the modern Finder really is. From small details (like EVERY window
remembering _exactly_ how you arranged it) to not having to wonder what will
happen when you click something, not to mention the pop-up tab windows from
8.5+.

Also, to this day I don’t quite understand why Apple went so far away from
Platinum. Today’s toolbar icons and buttons are downright _ugly_ compared to
the UI that was achieved with far fewer colors on Classic Macs. They “almost”
had it when 10.5 Leopard managed to unify most of the OS and apps but then
they started fiddling again.

While I do like the “vibrancy” effect in parts of the current OS, even that is
overdone (scrolling under toolbars, really?). It would have been better to
combine the vibrancy technology with more professional user interface elements
reminiscent of Classic.

~~~
duaneb
> From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged
> it)

This—along with the rest of the 2d layout—is my absolute least favorite aspect
of the finder. If I could completely disable that (along with the .DS_store
and __MACOSX absurdities) and force everything to use three-column layout, I
would in a heartbeat. It's just a recipe to PREVENT easy access to your
data—how can they allow dragging icons out of the view or overlapping each
other? You can't even "reload" to reset their location, and people can even
send you ZIPPED FILES where the locations are broken. Coverflow is even worse
for usability. I have no idea how people can work with either icons or no
ability to switch up the sorting on demand—I don't think I've used my desktop
except as basically a "tmp" folder for screenshots in years. Why not just use
launchpad as the desktop? Does anyone actually use their desktop to store
often accessed files, or is it just a replacement for ~/Documents at this
point?

I wish they would give ANY love to the finder at this point. I don't care how
it's written; it's gotten steadily less usable with every iteration.

~~~
wangchow
And you can't even snap windows left-and-right like in other OS's. Apple is
too caught up on trying to be that anti-establishment-use-different-key-
combos-than-the-standard-and-forget-about-standardized-ports sort of workshop.
They'd rather do it different than do it practical as it's done in Windows and
Linux (well, depending on the Window manager). :)

~~~
rsfinn
Since the Macintosh predates Windows and Linux, it's arguably the Macintosh
that set the standard and the others that are anti-establishment. :-)

Seriously, Apple is very unlikely to change the keyboard defaults to match
Windows, since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-
time Mac users.

Edit: Long-pressing the green zoom button in El Capitan lets you move the
window left or right to a half-full-screen view -- not exactly what you
probably have in mind, but a reasonable approximation.

~~~
sangnoir
> since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-time Mac
> users.

As if that has ever stopped them (see: Final Cut "Pro" X)

------
pumblechook
Personal reason: in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of
the timeless concepts of software usability. It is becoming much more
difficult now to separate platform convention from actual user tested,
researched UX. In the old Apple machines they used to be one in the same, so I
find it very useful to often compare old design to new (where applicable) in
order to suss out any differences and investigate them. Many times we've
simply gotten used to less usable interfaces because we upgraded and didn't
think twice, and the old machines can be a useful sanity check.

Edit: when I mean separating platform convention from user-tested UX, I mean
that there are some pretty obvious times when platform UX conventions haven't
been user tested (or were implemented despite negative user testing results).
The most obvious one to me is iOS's flat buttons. I write iOS apps and try to
do as much user testing on them as possible, and I've found this to be by far
the most frequent struggle for users - discerning which things are pressable
and which aren't.

~~~
jeromenerf
> in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless
> concepts of software usability.

Maybe you are right on this. Maybe this is why I feel nostalgic of pixelartish
BeOS, QNX Neutrino, maybe MacOS9 / *Step and even plan9 rio/acme or IRIX.

My UX in terms of usability and style seem to cycle: 0. get inspiration, 1.
comfort, 2. fatigue, 3. back to 0 and realize the previously inspiring thing
is now obsolete.

Sad thing, in 30 years, I have cycled a lot more with "computer interface"
domain than I have with congas and cameras, some of my favourites having been
produced in the late 80s / early 90s.

Software do not age well, yet, and there isn't much chance to keep them
running, even if their features, concepts and styles are still relevant to a
significant user base. That being said, I use OS, terminals and text editors
whose concepts take roots in the 60s :)

As the discussion above focused on macos Finder, I miss the now unmaintained
Rox Filer the same way.

------
Jerry2
After using MacOSX for a decade, I've been using Linux exclusively for 3 weeks
now... after my rMBP was stolen and I can't afford a new Mac right now.

Of all the software that I used on a Mac, I have to say that I miss the Finder
the most. I've tried every file manager available on Linux (you name it, I've
probably tried it) and I can't find anything that's even close to Finder.
Nautilus and Nemo are the closest but they are both buggy and are missing a
ton of features that I loved in Finder. Everything else just doesn't have the
polish or is just missing features that make using Finder such a joy.

I remember when I complained about "Classic Finder" and then about missing
features in "Cocoa Finder" after the massive rewrite. Looking back, those
small issues and warts are nothing when you compare it to what's available on
other OSes.

Anyway, to appreciate the genius and polish of using Finder, just spend few
weeks with other OSes and see how much you'll miss it :)

~~~
copperx
Agreed.

The ability to drag and drop a file or folder into a file dialog is absolutely
brilliant, and one of the things I miss the most when I'm on Windows or Linux.

I have no idea why other systems haven't adopted that. Do they really expect
us to awkwardly navigate the filesystem every time we open or save a file?

~~~
Kadin
I _thought_ you could get a similar behavior in Windows by dragging a folder
into the path bar at the top of the 'Save' modal window. (I don't have a
Windows machine or VM handy at the moment to test it, though.) You can
definitely achieve a similar behavior by Ctrl-C'ing a directory and then
Ctrl-V'ing into the File Name text box; the result populates the File Name
with the copied directory's path. (Being able to get a folder's full path by
copying it and pasting into a textarea is actually pretty nice, and arguably
more useful than the Mac convention of grabbing the basename.)

Since Apple screwed up the Open/Save dialogs a couple of updates back, I've
actually come to appreciate the Windows open/save browser more by comparison.
Being able to manipulate files from within Open/Save is a fairly neat trick,
as is the ability to pull in remote files from within Open by pointing to a
URI. I still can't exactly love Windows as an OS taken as a whole, but Apple's
changes haven't improved things.

~~~
mistersquid
> Since Apple screwed up the Open/Save dialogs a couple of updates back, I've
> actually come to appreciate the Windows open/save browser more by
> comparison. Being able to manipulate files from within Open/Save is a fairly
> neat trick, as is the ability to pull in remote files from within Open by
> pointing to a URI. I still can't exactly love Windows as an OS taken as a
> whole, but Apple's changes haven't improved things.

Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) allows users to manipulate the file system from
Open/Save dialogs. Right/ctrl-clicking a file will reveal additional options.

I don't think it's possible to put in an arbitrary URI, but if you have a
remotely mounted volume you can navigate to those files.

From my limited understanding, being able to download a file from an arbitrary
URI by invoking an Open/Save dialog seems potentially troublesome, but does
seem kinda neat in principle.

------
donretag
I know I will be in the minority and say that I hated Macs before OSX. Good
riddance.

Most importantly the lack of true multi-tasking as highlighted in the article.
Even Windows 95 performed before. Doing software development was a chore.
Never liked the Mac UI, even in OSX. The lack of focus-on-hover is still today
a major pain for me. Even Windows has focus-on-hover. Hate the single menu bar
on top. Yes, even after all these years using Macs, I still do not like it.

However, I just love the hardware and the fact that you can get closer to
Linux (important as a dev) than you can on Windows.

~~~
jaza
Have to agree: I've used Macs sporadically for over 20 years (never by
choice), and I've never liked the UI. I too hate the single menu bar, and I've
also discovered that many recent converts to Mac actually don't understand its
behaviour, that the single menu bar metamorphoses between system - app1 - app2
- system dropdowns, depending on the active window. That, and the fact that
pushing the red 'x' button in the corner doesn't close an app (just hides it,
only file - quit actually closes it), is exactly the same on OS9 and OSX, and
it irks me the same.

------
jonah
My friend, San Francisco photographer Adrian Mendoza[1], keeps a couple
PowerMacs around to run graphics software that never made the OS X
transition[2]. It's interesting that certain kinds of art production[3] is
becoming harder and harder because the tools are obsolete.

[1]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/amenfoto/)

[2] Predominantly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai%27s_Power_Tools)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928](https://twitter.com/Amenfoto/status/765045151852924928)

~~~
boobsbr
I remember having a Kai's Power Tools CD in my 386/486 days. Don't remember if
it came bundled with my SB16 multimedia kit or with something else.

------
amyjess
I have classic Mac OS running in emulators (BasiliskII and SheepShaver)
because:

a) I enjoy the nostalgia (I grew up with Macs as a kid and didn't get a PC
until I was 12-13)

b) I find the underlying technology extremely fascinating (resource forks
especially)

c) there are a lot of old Mac-only games that are a lot of fun (Power Pete!
Spin Doctor! Slick Willie... though my emulator doesn't like that one. Plus a
bunch of random games from the sampler CDs I used to collect as a kid.)

I'd never, ever use classic Mac OS as a daily driver again, but it's a lot of
fun for me to play with it every once in a while.

~~~
ashark
I miss After Dark. A handful of the screensavers (four, I think?) are
available for OSX, but only through some Japanese site with a distribution and
payment system that's not immediately confidence-building compared to other
solutions on the modern web. It's reminiscent of shareware, which I guess is
kind of appropriate but doesn't make me more likely to hand them my CC number.

~~~
zachberger
I miss the flying toasters.

------
fern12
That was a nice trip down memory lane. I still have fond memories of zipping
through the MacAddict magazine forums on Camino. And downloading a dozen
freeware apps I didn't need through VersionTracker. Nowadays, I avoid the App
Store as much as possible, it gives me so much eye strain.

~~~
amyjess
Do you remember the sampler CDs that used to come with CD-ROM Today magazine
in the mid 90s? They had all sorts of random games and other stuff that I had
so much fun with as a kid. One of the first things I did once I got my
emulators set up was to hunt down those CDs again...

~~~
fern12
Yep, I used to get CDs with my monthly issue of MacAddict. Those were a
highlight for me. I still remember when I discovered Glenn's Games. I felt
like I'd hit the jackpot.

------
orionblastar
Yeah I have Basilisk II running MacOS 8.1 that a friend of mine had to
recompile because the libraries they used for it are out of date. It has IE
4.0 but the certificates have expired so it won't load most websites. Nobody
seems to be targeting the older PowerMacs for Web Browsers and other Internet
apps.

I used to use it for safe web browsing because Windows viruses don't infect it
and the web browser is so old it won't run the new stuff for the latest
version of IE.

~~~
Karunamon
This is kind of a harebrained theory of mine that I'm not sure it's possible
to test: are you _more_ safe on very, very obsolete platforms because the
chances of stumbling onto malware that'll target you is almost nonexistent?

If so, there's an argument for doing your day to day web browsing in
SheepShaver running Classilla.. if not for the dealbreaking lack of support
for any security better than SSLv3 (hopelessly broken).

~~~
amyjess
I remember hearing that, at one point, there were some secure government sites
that ran everything on classic Mac OS because it was one of the only operating
systems that had no CLI and as such weren't vulnerable to someone getting
console access and going to town.

Never verified that story, though.

~~~
protomyth
I'm not sure if its the same story but the US Army once used Mac OS for some
of its web servers because they were judged the most secure. I cannot remember
what third party web server they were using.

~~~
orionblastar
I used to work as a federal contractor in 1996-1997. The Army did switch to
MacOS for web servers. I'm not sure what Mac web server they used. They tried
Windows that got hacked, and they ran Linux but didn't always update it and it
got hacked as well. I think they ran some stuff as Root in Linux. The MacOS
security model was different from Linux or Windows and supposed to be more
secure.

Of course social engineering meant that people can call their help desk and
pretend to be someone working on the server to get the password reset. No
security software is going to stop a social engineering attack. Also after
people get their password reset they forget to change it and leave it
"password" and other easy to remember passwords. So weak passwords mean
someone can get in without using an exploit but a password dictionary attack.

~~~
protomyth
And here's the article
[https://tidbits.com/article/5552](https://tidbits.com/article/5552)

"The compelling aspect of this story is that as a result of the break-in, the
U.S. Army has switched the machines that serve the Army's home page from
Windows NT-based PCs to Power Macintosh G3s running WebSTAR from StarNine
Technologies."

[edit:] I do love the speculation at the end on if Mac OS X Server will be as
good security-wise as Mac OS.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
A lot of Finder hate here, and I agree, it's a piece of shit. Forget about it.

Get Path Finder[1], you won't regret it. I have no affiliations, I'm just an
over zealot fan.

1\.
[http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/](http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/)

Edit: fixed a word

~~~
cyberferret
Thanks for the heads up on this. Looks like a neat replacement. I like that it
has Git integration etc. all built in. The "Drop Stack" feature seems like a
killer one (for me). I've lost count of the number of times I have copied
image or icon files from several subfolders into one destination project
folder. Drop Stack may mean the end of having multiple Finder windows or tabs
open...

------
combatentropy
Even the 1984 Macintosh was snappy in its user interface: when you clicked a
menu it opened instantly, when you dragged a window it always moved
instantaneously.

Working with Windows even 20 years later was disappointing. You click the
Start menu, and waited. Finally it appeared. You hovered over a menu item and
waited. Finally its submenu appeared.

~~~
cpeterso
I recently switched back to Windows after using OS X exclusively for about
five years. Windows has the ergonomics and aesthetics of a U-Haul. :)

I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without breaking
everything. All the controls and settings are so persnickety and janky, built
upon strata of earlier generations that are still in the way. There are so
many little things Microsoft could do to streamline the user experience and
make it feel solid without alienating existing users, but they just keep
adding more to the stew or throwing curve balls like Metro.

~~~
toast0
> I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without
> breaking everything.

With the keyboard. The UI changes, and the mouse handles move around, but the
keyboard shortcuts still work (mostly). After using a Mac for work for almost
5 years, it still annoys me the amount of things you can't easily do without
the mouse.

~~~
cpeterso
That's a good point. I worked at Microsoft, back during Windows 2000, and
engineering management would encourage "no mouse" days to identify UI that was
not keyboard friendly.

------
agumonkey
The look and feel of OS 9 is still working today. And I wasn't a Mac user so
no hard nostalgia feeling (compared to a Wintel box). Ironic that I was so
into hyper fluid dynamic UI (css3 or other stacks) now I'm finding myself
missing Win 3 / OS 9 "fixed function pipeline".

~~~
PeCaN
BeOS and OS 9 were well designed. I feel like we've sort of lost our way about
what made those OSes good, replaced it with very “showy” graphic design.
Operating systems should be a tool for information and communication, not a
modern art exhibit.

------
justinator
I'm surprised that they didn't talk to writers that just want to write a novel
without all the distractions of a modern MacOs experience.

~~~
chris_7
Okay, but using an OS without memory protection to achieve this seems
dangerous. What if a buggy program accidentally blows up their work? (do they
somehow install version control?)

~~~
jfb
You became conditioned to the state of the system. You would save before known
problematic operations; you would have comprehensive backups. You adapted to
the misfeatures of the underlying software. It's not much different, from a UX
perspective, than when I was learning Unix and "rm -rf . [A-Z]*" was
infuriatingly chalked up as "a learning experience".

------
mattkevan
Good riddance. These nostalgia pieces forget what flaky pieces of junk OS 8
and 9 actually were. Even Apple knew that they were stop-gaps, papering over
the cracks until they could get a new system out the door.

7.5.5 was pretty solid though - it ran happily on our Mac Plus from nearly a
decade earlier. However I've still got a Bondi iMac running 9.2 and every time
I start it up I'm glad those days are long gone.

Remember extension conflicts? I do. Having to manually remove all the
extensions and put them back one-by-one, rebooting each time, to find the two
(or more) which didn't like each other was a total pain.

Have you zapped the P-RAM? Did you re-bless the system folder? Cargo cult
computer maintenance.

Getting a reliable TCP IP stack working? Good luck with that.

The fear of an application crash (I'm looking at you IE 5) taking down the
whole system and losing work. Cross your fingers and hope you can still save
after a force quit.

The ability for users to move or delete key files in the System folder. What
fun.

------
Applejinx
I run the DSP plugin company airwindows.com and have continued to support PPC
machines, though I don't think it extends back to OS 9. Recently added Mac and
PC VST (I'm told the backward compatibility on Windows tends to reach back
farther: from my experiences in XCode I can believe it).

I'm understandably very curious whether there even is any DAW that can use the
PPC Mac VST support I've been including in the new plugins :)

------
dasil003
My friend got an Apple IIGS in 1986 and kept it going almost this long (until
about 2000 if I recall). He had it upgraded to the gills with 8MB RAM, and the
TransWarp GS accelerator card. It definitely was a parallel universe from Mac
OS where there were amazing graphics and sound capabilities that didn't start
to land on Mac OS until the mid-90s.

------
kalleboo
While we're all on the nostalgia kick - I only recently learned that parts of
the System 7.1.1 source code had leaked a few years ago (notably the Toolbox
stuff that went in ROM). That stuff was a fascinating read. Seeing source
comments signed by Andy Herzfeld, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn and Larry Kenyon and
dating back to before the Mac was even released (and lining them up with
folklore.org stories) was amazingly nostalgic.

Here's a changelog line from the SystemSounds.r Rez resource file many of you
might recognize the story behind...

    
    
        <3>	 3/28/91	DTY	Change the name of “Xylophone” to “Sosumi”.

~~~
yuhong
It is basically the source of the SuperMario ROM from the first PowerPC Macs I
think.

------
jsight
It is funny that they love the spatial finder so much. Remember when Gnome did
this with Nautilus? It was not a popular decision at the time.

Although it obviously did have a few very vocal proponents.

~~~
digi_owl
I seem to recall that Windows File Explorer could do spacial as well. The
concept only really work when you have a folder depth of 2-3 nested folders
tops. After that you start getting so many windows on the screen it becomes
like a dropped deck of cards.

~~~
jsight
It might have had that, although I seem to remember it not remembering window
placement correctly. That was a long time ago, though, so I could have the
details wrong.

~~~
WorldMaker
So far as I recall Windows 3 was the only one that actually tried to be
spatial. Windows 1 and 2 were essentially tiling window managers on the
opposite side of the spectrum, and Windows 95's Explorer intentionally was not
spatial. There was the brief period 98 to ME that Explorer was sometimes
spatial, but that seemed more an accident of Explorer's "Active" phase than
intentional.

------
OJFord

        > He couldn't log in to his Ars e-mail
    

That's unfortunate! (For British [Commonwealth?] readers, at least.)

------
kawera
Hardware support is also one of the reasons to keep using OS9. I still use it
on a 1998 Powermac almost every week as my drum scanner requires a custom PCI
card and an app that ties everything together. Its vendor went under long ago
and so no one to port their app to OSX. Works like a charm, with original
keyboard and mouse.

------
peterburkimsher
I'm downgrading to iTunes 10.6.3 on Mac OS 10.5.8, the last version to work on
PPC. Unfortunately I have to reimport all my music since 2012.

I held out at iTunes 10.7 for a long time because I don't want to lose USB
sync of contacts and calendars.

My dad recently offered me an old PPC Mac Mini, and I hope I can get it to
sync my iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3. It is possible to downgrade iOS using
Odysseus, and I expect to keep this obsolete system for a while.

Apple had an ecosystem from 2001 (Quicksilver G4 running 10.5.8) to 2014
(iPhone 4S). That's 13 years, half my lifetime. iSync would "just work".
Internet access is not always reliable enough for me to trust the cloud, and I
prefer to manage my own Digital Hub.

I used some Platinum themes for about a year. It looks beautiful on Retina;
there's so much space. Eventually I realised that my icon cache had grown to
over 3GB though, so I removed them. I'm keeping an eye on the old versions
though, just in case I get the urge to downgrade further at a later date.

~~~
m_mueller
Why do you want PPC? I'm thinking 10.6.x on the last Intel mac with
Snowleopard support would be an 'upgrade' to your usecase.

Btw. what I miss most is the glory days of OSX Preview. This thing, I could
just throw at it whatever I wanted and it would handle it without choking.
Nowadays I have to force quit that damn thing more than I use it, just because
I load some largish PNG. As a student this thing was the absolute killer
feature for my mac, because I could put together conclusion papers way faster
and in much higher quality than anything possible on Windows. Rectangular Text
snippets being vector scalable after pasting into Pages and images keeping
their original quality was just a godsend [1].

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/slstJ](http://imgur.com/a/slstJ)

~~~
astrange
Preview shouldn't be falling over ever, even if PNG is a fairly inefficient
format for partial loading. File a bug at
[https://bugreporter.apple.com](https://bugreporter.apple.com) or with
Feedback Assistant.

~~~
m_mueller
Well.. is bug reporting at Apple less of a black hole nowadays?

~~~
astrange
I mean, being able to read the bug tracker for an open-source project has
never made my life any better.

------
lukeh
Recording studios with Harrison Series 12s are still stuck on very old 030s
for their automation...

------
_acme
I still do my writing in the OpenDoc word processor WAV.

~~~
Applejinx
Oh my God, I remember that term. I used to do all my web browsing in Cyberdog.
Working in OpenDoc I got used to nothing having splash screens, and it was
like a glimpse of a future that never happened…

