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Today Mac OS X is as old as the Classic Mac OS
Thom Holwerda 2018-05-23 Mac OS X 18 Comments
Here's a bit of numerology for you. Today marks 17 years, one month, and 29 days since Mac OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001. That's a strangely odd number – 6269 days – but it also happens to be the exactly length of time between January 24, 1984 (the launch of the original Macintosh) and March 24, 2001.
In other words, today the Mac's second operating system era, powered by Mac OS X (now macOS) has been in existence as long as the first era was.
Time is a weird thing, and it truly doesn't feel like OS X is that old.
Apparently my sister is as old as me now because she is now 29 and I was 29, six years ago … WAT?
Anyway, Classic MacOS was total crap by even Windows 2000 standards.
I've been running MacOSX and now MacOS since Tiger. It has been a nice gradual improvement with a nice *nix base.
For my uses we have a good package manager for *nix stuff (brew) and everything else works fine these days.
Drumhellar
Lacking preemptive multitasking and protected memory, Classic MacOS was total crap even by Windows 95 standards.
Sure I didn't encounter classic MacOS until 2003 ish.
It's incredible how Apple managed to sell such an outdated prehistoric OS for so long… I used OS9 as my main system until 2004 or so (early OSX versions crawled in my G3).
Yes, OS9 was crap and a crying shame from a technological point of view… but to me It was the best OS ever created because it was blazing fast and had an unique look!! (and most games required OS9 too haha)
ssokolow
It reminds me of what ESR said in The Art of UNIX Programming (published in 2003) when comparing and contrasting UNIX and MacOS.
He goes into copious detail on the strengths and weaknesses of various OSes' native programming cultures, but the relevant bits boil down to:
UNIX programming culture emphasizes producing high-quality under-the-hood architecture but leaves UI as an afterthought.
Classic MacOS programming culture emphasizes producing high-quality UIs, but leaves what goes under the hood as an afterthought.
If you want to poke through it, he offers an online copy on his website:
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
phti
Windows 95, 98 and ME didn't have protected memory too.
malxau
I know this claim is everywhere on the Internet, but I really don't know where it came from.
Win 3.1 uses protected mode but has a shared address space across all processes. This means that one process can still clobber another process' memory.
Win32, from its executable format up, depends heavily on private address spaces and page protections. A win32 binary specifies its initial virtual offset and this is typically not relocatable, so every executable is placed in the same VA range. It specifies which ranges of memory contain readonly data, which contain writable data, which contain uninitialized data, and depends on this being provided.
Win9x, without a security model, does allow a process to just read another process memory but doing so required going through a dedicated debugging API because that memory is not directly addressable from the reading process. So it's true that 9x didn't provide private memory in a security sense, but it did ensure that an application couldn't accidentally trash another application's memory.
But I think the origin of this claim is people observing that 16 bit applications still share an address space on 9x, allowing one 16 bit process to observe another 16 bit process memory. This isn't because the kernel doesn't provide memory protection – it's being asked to emulate a platform that didn't provide memory protection. NT originally did the same thing, although later releases allowed the user to specify when creating a 16 bit process whether it should share a 16 bit runtime or create a new runtime for that 16 bit process.
This is fundamentally, factually wrong.
dnebdal
It's more like how I'm older today than my parents were when I was born: OS X is older today than classic was back at its launch.
Put another way, OS X has now been a supported option for longer than the classic-only period lasted. Which feels a bit weird – classic seemingly lasted forever while I remember the OS X launch. I guess I'm just old.
NotKyon
Maybe it doesn't feel like OS X is that old because it's still half the age of its predecessor. 🤔
Mr. Dee
I bought a PowerBook G4 Titanium last month off Ebay. It came with Restore discs for Mac OS 10.1.1 and 9.2. It originally had Jaguar installed too, which I also have the original discs for (how nice of the original owner), but I factory restore it with 10.1.1 and 9.2 just to go back in time.
I remember the first time I saw Mac OS X (was on ZDNet TV's The Screen Savers). I was shocked an operating system could look like that – beautiful! Photo realistic icons, the 'lickable' blue Aqua wallpaper – even Redhat 7.2 had a knockoff wallpaper at the time similar to it.
Then there was the Dock, Magnification, lifesaver window controls, that pinstripe UI. As much as I was diehard Windows, I wanted that. Sadly, I could never afford a Mac or ask my dad to buy one because it was a 'Mac'. It felt like a platform that was at the time incompatible with the rest of the world.
But I kept desiring one for a long time and of course, Apple kept refining it year after year. Then the switch to Intel happened, but of course owning a Mac still remained out of reach due to affordability. I did take a detour and built a hackintosh in '06 just to be able to fulfill that need of wanting to use OS X on the cheap, but I was never satisfied.
I eventually ended up buying a Mac in 2015 and so much more, have it all really: iPhone X, iPad Pro etc. But, this nostalgic period between my last year of high school and what seemed like infancy of new competition between Microsoft and Apple was exciting; especially with Windows Longhorn hoping to deliver similar innovation.
17 years later, I picked it up for $77, a crying shame from the original $2000 back in 2001. Albeit, there seems to be an issue with LVDS cable, but for a little bit of the past I can look back on and play with, its fun. Hope I get my iPod Classic soon to get the full experience of when your iPod mounded on the desktop; I even reinstalled the original iTunes 1.1 release with the 3 notes.
What is particularly important for me owning this is the understanding how much Mac OS 10.0/10.1 links the past with the present and future of where the platform is going.
Although I could emulate it, I wanted to have that link natively in a tangible way. To insert that disc, mount it, install apps. If I could get a G3 PowerBook, I probably would load it up with NeXTStep release before it became what is 'Mac OS X'.
Its amazing how after 17 years, macOS remains so consistent. It really has reached a zenith and its basically refinements going forward. But, this codebase sure has gotten a workout from its origins at NeXT and yes likely refactored a million times over to where we are. But thats what makes it so special, its living code and playing with these snapshots natively is still important for those who care.
I am sure the next platform change is around the corner where we see macOS embrace ARM and begin to look more like its offspring, iOS and embrace new behavior such as Touch, Pencil and act like a desktop OS.
Vistaus
You picked it up for $77 dollars while the original price was $2000? I always hear a lot of people (esp. from the Apple community) say that Apple products have a lot of residual value, even the ones >15 years old. So I think you got really lucky…
A lot of ThinkPads that used to cost 4000$ when they were new now go for 50$ or so. Nothing unusual here.
It's unusual in the fact that a lot of Apple people keep saying how much residual value Apple products have, even when they're >15 years old.
Yeah, I'm afraid that's bullshit. ThinkPad with "butterfly" keyboard today has more value than any old Apple laptop.
Its a PowerBook G4 Titanium 667 MHz. You can't do much with it beyond listen CDs and watch DVD's in 2018. If your demands are not high, you could install older versions of Adobe and Microsoft software. I actually have Photoshop 6 and Illustrator 9 installed in 9.2; and I'm waiting on OS X versions I bought off Ebay. Got a copy of Design Collection for $80.
laffer1
Mac OS X is just NeXTSTEP with a better UI and some modern improvements. So if you consider it's 1990 tech, then that changes things quite a bit.
Certainly with a more familiar UI, but I'm not sure if better…
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