> OS 8 and 9 were unreliable at using the internet because unlike Windows or Linux it was not a 32 bit OS with real memory protection.
This isn't my recollection at all, although the lack of protected memory on "Classic Mac OS" means that you would've personally experienced unreliable anything if you were also running poorly-written extensions or other software on your system.
System 7 (1991) was the first 32-bit version of Classic Mac OS, and Internet Explorer for Macintosh was very advanced for its time. Classic Mac OS had a healthy browser ecosystem which also included Cyberdog, iCab, Netscape, Opera, and WannaBe (a text browser).
Woz has an interesting section in his book "iWoz" regarding System 7 stability before/after Internet Explorer was installed. A fresh install of System 7 would operate just fine, but as soon as IE was installed, weird things would happen. It's definitely worth reading if you haven't already.
"That first day I used iCab instead of IE, I had no crashes. Not a single one. Hmm."
"I could never convince Apple. This was such a big lament for me at the time. I couldn’t convince anyone that it wasn’t the Mac OS that was at fault. Then one day Gil Amelio told me that Apple—in addition to avoiding excess production and inventory and keeping expenses down—was going to buy a new operating system."
I wonder if he was experiencing instability due to Code Fragment Manager instead of IE itself? Mac IE was even late shipping for 68K Macs due to problems with CFM-68K.
"Finally, Internet Explorer has been hit by the CFM-68K bug. Microsoft was on the cutting edge in adopting the Code Fragment Manager for 68K Macs, and due to the well-known bug in CFM support on 68K Macs, Internet Explorer is currently only available for PowerPC-based Macs. Apple should have this bug fixed soon, though, and Microsoft plans on releasing a 68K version at that time." — https://www.macobserver.com/reviews/ie3.shtml
CFM-68K was infamously unstable until version 4.0 shipped in April 1997, and even the PowerPC-native version saw a bunch of improvements around that time, so this lines up with a 1996/1997 timeframe in iWoz if one ignores the anachronistic iCab story:
"In late November 1996, Apple announced a bug in the CFM-68K Runtime Enabler extension. This bug could cause random crashes and hangs, resulting in application instability and potential loss of data. Because of the potential seriousness of these problems, Apple recommended that customers disable the extension. Also, Mac OS 7.6 would prevent the extension from loading. Mac OS 7.6 does support the the 4.0 version of the extension." — https://macgui.com/kb/article/502 (May 1997)
Seems like they conflated 32-bit with lack of memory protection.
(Tangent: IIRC there were Macs where the CPU had a 32 bit pointer width but you could only use 24 bits of address space. And sometimes software would work on this assumption and break with a full 32 bits. But that's neither here nor there.)
But in addition to lack of memory protection, cooperative multi-tasking was also a big problem. It was a pretty common experience to see something do intense work rendering a progress bar and the rest of the system would slow down. IIRC this made having something like a web browser open sometimes painful.
> Classic Mac OS had a healthy browser ecosystem which also included Cyberdog, iCab, Netscape, Opera, and WannaBe
Ehh...
Cyberdog was never widely used. It depended on the OpenDoc framework, which most users didn't even have installed, and was only available as a beta for a year or so. It was never a serious contender.
iCab was a latecomer -- it was released in 1999, long after most of the mainstream browsers. It was used by a few people, but was never particularly popular either.
I have never even heard of WannaBe. Based on what I see online, it looks pretty obscure.
Having fully indexed instantaneous search for my emails in 1996 was absolutely living in the future.
Especially if you subscribed to a lot of mailing lists and went looking for information on something specific that you knew you had read, but didn't know where.
Yes. It was a sad day when I had to move on from it. Curious as to other applications which were way ahead of the curve (and the hardware) which could be remade today & fly.
This isn't my recollection at all, although the lack of protected memory on "Classic Mac OS" means that you would've personally experienced unreliable anything if you were also running poorly-written extensions or other software on your system.
System 7 (1991) was the first 32-bit version of Classic Mac OS, and Internet Explorer for Macintosh was very advanced for its time. Classic Mac OS had a healthy browser ecosystem which also included Cyberdog, iCab, Netscape, Opera, and WannaBe (a text browser).