About This Computer
September 17, 2016 12:36 AM Subscribe
I have at least two OS 9 machines here at the house, I doubt I'll ever get rid of either of them. One runs stamp collecting software, I put WAY too much time inputting the collection and the data-base won't translate to anything newer....
posted by HuronBob at 3:25 AM on September 17, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by HuronBob at 3:25 AM on September 17, 2016 [7 favorites]
recently i bought an imac g3, 640mg ram at a thrift store, for 20 bucks - it was running os x tiger - i quickly discovered that it was ok for midi but classic mode doesn't run midi worth a damn - went to the os 9 lives site and now i can boot up os 9 from a usb drive - kind of slow, but at least old midi stuff works
then there's the imac 8.1 i bought last weekend for 200 bucks, running el capitan - my windows machines are like what the hell is this thing?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:31 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
then there's the imac 8.1 i bought last weekend for 200 bucks, running el capitan - my windows machines are like what the hell is this thing?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:31 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Thanks for posting this, I thought the sadness was only contained to the PC world, with places that still have to run MS-DOS because of legacy hardware and expensive custom systems that are impossible to replace.
Instead I now know the sadness is universal.
posted by MikeWarot at 4:11 AM on September 17, 2016 [14 favorites]
Instead I now know the sadness is universal.
posted by MikeWarot at 4:11 AM on September 17, 2016 [14 favorites]
Of course, I note bitterly that for the main Mac innovation to be marketing, Apple would have to still market Macs…
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [19 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [19 favorites]
I bought one Macbook. Apple updated the OS so it won't run on my Macbook, turning it into a brick that can't even run iTunes. That ends my relationship to Apple, beyond their phones. Good riddance to a company that thinks "Designed by Apple in California" is a salient point.
posted by Goofyy at 4:46 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Goofyy at 4:46 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Back in the roaring nineties I wrote custom software for interfacing with custom software written for a DNA slab-gel electrophoresis sequencing machine thingy that ran on OS 9, and the only really enjoyable part of that was getting to use CodeWarrior. Good times.
posted by the painkiller at 4:57 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by the painkiller at 4:57 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Too much complaining about Apple as it is now and not enough talk about ye olde OS 9!
One of the things I enjoy doing during a break at work is to look at our log analyzer's results for visitors using odd or old systems. On any given day I still see about a dozen unique visitors on OS 9 and I've long wondered who these people were and frankly how they were even browsing the modern web. I'll assume now these are the hobbyists the article mentions and good for them. It isn't any stranger than running some rare linux distro on say a raspberry pi. But I hope people who are stuck with OS 9 due to legacy software aren't connecting to the open internet. I shudder to think of the security issues where things haven't been patched in over a decade.
posted by boubelium at 5:02 AM on September 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
One of the things I enjoy doing during a break at work is to look at our log analyzer's results for visitors using odd or old systems. On any given day I still see about a dozen unique visitors on OS 9 and I've long wondered who these people were and frankly how they were even browsing the modern web. I'll assume now these are the hobbyists the article mentions and good for them. It isn't any stranger than running some rare linux distro on say a raspberry pi. But I hope people who are stuck with OS 9 due to legacy software aren't connecting to the open internet. I shudder to think of the security issues where things haven't been patched in over a decade.
posted by boubelium at 5:02 AM on September 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
I don't use OS 9, but I do use Windows XP, because I have a perfectly good computer that runs just fine with it. Until that computer dies, I will keep using it (which will be a while - it's an Asus Eee PC, and they were delightfully build, like cute tanks).
I hate planned obsolescence.
posted by jb at 5:15 AM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
I hate planned obsolescence.
posted by jb at 5:15 AM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
I shudder to think of the security issues where things haven't been patched in over a decade.
On the other hand, they're benefiting from being a tiny target base running on a system most modern malware writers don't even know how to write exploit code for. I imagine sophisticated nation state level actors like the US and Russia have a few 0 days for OS 9 hidden away from back in the day, but while I wouldn't personally put an OS 9 system online at this point, I suspect they're at less risk than someone using IE with Flash and Java on a Windows system.
OS 9 barely has any CVEs, it's that old and discarded.
I hate planned obsolescence.
Windows XP was supported for nearly 13 years, which is almost forever for a specific OS version. Supporting it was expensive and was actively holding back development of important features, not the least of which were badly needed security improvements. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
posted by Candleman at 5:33 AM on September 17, 2016 [31 favorites]
On the other hand, they're benefiting from being a tiny target base running on a system most modern malware writers don't even know how to write exploit code for. I imagine sophisticated nation state level actors like the US and Russia have a few 0 days for OS 9 hidden away from back in the day, but while I wouldn't personally put an OS 9 system online at this point, I suspect they're at less risk than someone using IE with Flash and Java on a Windows system.
OS 9 barely has any CVEs, it's that old and discarded.
I hate planned obsolescence.
Windows XP was supported for nearly 13 years, which is almost forever for a specific OS version. Supporting it was expensive and was actively holding back development of important features, not the least of which were badly needed security improvements. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
posted by Candleman at 5:33 AM on September 17, 2016 [31 favorites]
I always liked OS9. It was certainly preferable to OSX at the beginning of the new OS's life,and it still had Easter eggs. I don't miss dicking-around with extensions, or having Photoshop take down the whole machine once in awhile, though.
I'm a very similar sort of person when it comes to OSX. I've held at 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) for seemingly ever now. It's rock-solid, stable, and unobtrusive.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:35 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm a very similar sort of person when it comes to OSX. I've held at 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) for seemingly ever now. It's rock-solid, stable, and unobtrusive.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:35 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
I used to work at a university art gallery that depended upon a vinyl cutter for all of it's in-gallery signage. It was a big, expensive thing, and could only be run off this one mac running OS 9. As the resident nerd, I was put in charge of it. I don't even know how they got that device working, the official site had no mention of an OS 9 version and the XP version was more than the yearly budget.
Stuff like that is a good reason to use an old OS on whatever hardware. Also note: it's a very rare reason.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:40 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Stuff like that is a good reason to use an old OS on whatever hardware. Also note: it's a very rare reason.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:40 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
I always liked OS9. It was certainly preferable to OSX at the beginning of the new OS's life.
Yeah, I specifically remember being told something like "don't upgrade to OS 10.0, it will burn your computer down." I think I held out on OS 9 until Jaguar came along, but then I succumbed to the latest hotness. Seeing all of these screenshots is a nice nostalgia trip to my college days, playing Ambrosia shareware games on my PowerPC.
Of course, I note bitterly that for the main Mac innovation to be marketing, Apple would have to still market Macs…
The Mac Pro hasn't been updated in 1,000 days
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:42 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I specifically remember being told something like "don't upgrade to OS 10.0, it will burn your computer down." I think I held out on OS 9 until Jaguar came along, but then I succumbed to the latest hotness. Seeing all of these screenshots is a nice nostalgia trip to my college days, playing Ambrosia shareware games on my PowerPC.
Of course, I note bitterly that for the main Mac innovation to be marketing, Apple would have to still market Macs…
The Mac Pro hasn't been updated in 1,000 days
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:42 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I wrote custom software for interfacing with custom software
Hah. I've had that experience. It's quite a bit like being at a dinner table where no two people speak the same language, so you have to go (e.g.) English -> French -> German -> Russian.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:56 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Hah. I've had that experience. It's quite a bit like being at a dinner table where no two people speak the same language, so you have to go (e.g.) English -> French -> German -> Russian.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:56 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
"Planned obsolescence" is apparently what it's called nowadays when something fails to last until the heat death of the universe, I guess? Sandpaper, toothbrushes, dish sponges, etc. all fall victim to "planned obsolescence" too, apparently
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [27 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [27 favorites]
It's not the custom exploits I worry about as much with unpatched systems connected to the web, it's the automated exploits that concern me.
Anyway - who has the sweetest OS9 screenies?
posted by oceanjesse at 6:05 AM on September 17, 2016
Anyway - who has the sweetest OS9 screenies?
posted by oceanjesse at 6:05 AM on September 17, 2016
Remember the Control Strip? It was like a little seatbelt!
I guess haters shall hate, but the rMBP is basically exactly what I always wished a laptop would be, so I guess I don't really care a whole lot about the pace of innovation at the moment.
posted by snofoam at 6:07 AM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
I guess haters shall hate, but the rMBP is basically exactly what I always wished a laptop would be, so I guess I don't really care a whole lot about the pace of innovation at the moment.
posted by snofoam at 6:07 AM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
Apple updated the OS so it won't run on my Macbook, turning it into a brick that can't even run iTunes.I know I'm going to regret asking but … what happened to the existing OS and iTunes it was already running? From your description, that means that Macbook was made 8+ years ago, which seems like a fairly reasonable run.
posted by adamsc at 6:08 AM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
Sheeit, I'd still be running System 7 if I could.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
I think that the idea cheap audio production stuff makes an OS 9 downgrade compelling on some level. I love the idea of using an OS 9 machine as part of a synthesis rig. I think it would be fun to explore that rabbit hole.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:18 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 6:18 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I still have Windows XP as a boot option on my home laptop (along with Windows 7 and Ubuntu) because when i got it I had a USB audio interface that wouldn't work with anything more recent, and a ton of esoteric 32-bit only music software. I eventually got a new interface and replaced the software bit by bit and haven't booted to XP in over a year (when I wanted to migrate over an old multi track project).
OS 9 on the other hand? That's just a turd, a crashing, freezing, non-preemptively multitasking turd. I did a digital humanities masters around 2003 when many of that university dept's machines for Photoshop etc were still OS 9 and I ended up giving up and doing my project work on a Windows machine.
OS X saved the Mac by making it a stable, powerful BSD variant under the hood. My last few jobs have been in bioinformatics, and cat modelling (the bad kind of cats) and it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that me and many of my colleagues would do our work on Macs, but here we are.
posted by kersplunk at 6:19 AM on September 17, 2016 [12 favorites]
OS 9 on the other hand? That's just a turd, a crashing, freezing, non-preemptively multitasking turd. I did a digital humanities masters around 2003 when many of that university dept's machines for Photoshop etc were still OS 9 and I ended up giving up and doing my project work on a Windows machine.
OS X saved the Mac by making it a stable, powerful BSD variant under the hood. My last few jobs have been in bioinformatics, and cat modelling (the bad kind of cats) and it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that me and many of my colleagues would do our work on Macs, but here we are.
posted by kersplunk at 6:19 AM on September 17, 2016 [12 favorites]
They really really really need to update the Mac Pro.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:31 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 6:31 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
“Remember when I told you to not update our old iPhone 4 to the latest OS because it would make it sluggish and slow. Well, be sure to run that last update for your iPad Mini 2. Next week they'll announce a new OS. It's at that same stage. We can no longer safely update to the new OS because it'll just turn it into a brick. Ignore that little red icon that says you have an update waiting and it'll continue to work for a few more years.”
~ conversation I had with my sister two weeks ago
posted by Fizz at 6:41 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
~ conversation I had with my sister two weeks ago
posted by Fizz at 6:41 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Huh. On my iPad mini 2, iOS 10 runs at least as fast as 9. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:43 AM on September 17, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:43 AM on September 17, 2016 [12 favorites]
Unless this is one of those "smartphones are an ideal breeding ground for superstitions" things, like when I see someone swipe swipe swipe away the items listed in the app switcher and my body burns with the flames of a thousand Well Actuallies
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:47 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:47 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
You know what was great, or maybe not great, depending on whom you ask? Pre-10 Mac OS. We should have a thread about that sometime!
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:48 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:48 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
I wish the article had done some tests on the audio latency claims to see if they were true. I remember working with a touring musical sometime in the very late 90s/very early 00s and their backing music was mostly played from a custom Linux system that was triggered by a keyboard player. I asked why they were using Linux (which was still fairly fringe at the time) and they said it was selected for low latency compared to Mac OS or Windows.
I can understand their point that Finder feels sluggish compared to OS 9, but the multitasking doesn't necessarily favor updating the UI for file browser as much as it does the audio.
It's not the custom exploits I worry about as much with unpatched systems connected to the web, it's the automated exploits that concern me.
Someone still has to write the automated exploits though. There just weren't many vulnerabilities published for OS 9. A cursory check doesn't show anything in the network stack that was published, so they'd have to target the web browser or e-mail clients that people are using, and that's an awful lot of work for minor payoff unless you know there's a high value target that you can get with it.
posted by Candleman at 6:50 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
I can understand their point that Finder feels sluggish compared to OS 9, but the multitasking doesn't necessarily favor updating the UI for file browser as much as it does the audio.
It's not the custom exploits I worry about as much with unpatched systems connected to the web, it's the automated exploits that concern me.
Someone still has to write the automated exploits though. There just weren't many vulnerabilities published for OS 9. A cursory check doesn't show anything in the network stack that was published, so they'd have to target the web browser or e-mail clients that people are using, and that's an awful lot of work for minor payoff unless you know there's a high value target that you can get with it.
posted by Candleman at 6:50 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
I have at least two OS 9 machines here at the house, I doubt I'll ever get rid of either of them. One runs stamp collecting software, I put WAY too much time inputting the collection and the data-base won't translate to anything newer....
This, and the other stories of old proprietary software that you just can't give up, like that absurd DNA synthesis story in the article with software that only works on System 7.5, drive me nuts. I find the creepy dude annoying but RMS was right. Software should be free!
p.s. it would be nice to have a post about Apple stuff without it devolving into an "Apple is terrible and only good at marketing" cryfest
posted by dis_integration at 6:52 AM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
This, and the other stories of old proprietary software that you just can't give up, like that absurd DNA synthesis story in the article with software that only works on System 7.5, drive me nuts. I find the creepy dude annoying but RMS was right. Software should be free!
p.s. it would be nice to have a post about Apple stuff without it devolving into an "Apple is terrible and only good at marketing" cryfest
posted by dis_integration at 6:52 AM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
This whole topic is just endlessly fascinating to me. It took about 15 minutes of tweaking config.sys to completely remove any notion of nostalgia for the "good old days" of back when computers were unstable, cryptic, and just generally awful.
I do not miss device drivers being a part of my life.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
I do not miss device drivers being a part of my life.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
Also, Apple II ProDOS just got its first update in 23 years.
posted by acb at 7:26 AM on September 17, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by acb at 7:26 AM on September 17, 2016 [17 favorites]
Software should be free!
Well it's not. And even if it were, updating an old program to new hardware is expensive in time. (Unless you can find someone to upgrade your particular needs for free)
This was the reason for System/360, and even then there were companies running 2025's in 1401 mode and 360/65's in 7074 mode. So its been going on for a long time.
posted by MtDewd at 7:28 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well it's not. And even if it were, updating an old program to new hardware is expensive in time. (Unless you can find someone to upgrade your particular needs for free)
This was the reason for System/360, and even then there were companies running 2025's in 1401 mode and 360/65's in 7074 mode. So its been going on for a long time.
posted by MtDewd at 7:28 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Reading through the comments got me to thinking about a different OS/9 by Microware, which ran on the Radio Shack Color Computer and did amazing things on primitive hardware.
You could have 2 users, both getting real time response, one over an emulated bit-banging serial port, with a single sided floppy disk drive and 128k of RAM.
posted by MikeWarot at 7:33 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
You could have 2 users, both getting real time response, one over an emulated bit-banging serial port, with a single sided floppy disk drive and 128k of RAM.
posted by MikeWarot at 7:33 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's also worth noting that some old laptops jut won't update to newer OS, no matter what. I have an old MacBook from 2008, and I can't update it, which sucks, because so many programs simply won't even run or offer an option for it. And I'm not going to just get rid of it, it's a perfectly functional laptop. Can't deal with Facebook, but handles Metafilter just fine!
posted by corb at 7:58 AM on September 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by corb at 7:58 AM on September 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
This, and the other stories of old proprietary software that you just can't give up, like that absurd DNA synthesis story in the article with software that only works on System 7.5, drive me nuts.
My favorite example of this was an episode of How It's Made a few years ago about, IIRC, player piano rolls. Anyway, their production line was managed by an Apple ][. Gonna be a bad, bad day when that beast finally dies.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:11 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
My favorite example of this was an episode of How It's Made a few years ago about, IIRC, player piano rolls. Anyway, their production line was managed by an Apple ][. Gonna be a bad, bad day when that beast finally dies.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:11 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
like when I see someone swipe swipe swipe away the items listed in the app switcher and my body burns with the flames of a thousand Well Actuallies
I do it because when I'm app switching I don't really want every app on my phone on the list. I know the two most recent are first, but the scrolling is sometimes wonky, so I keep it tidy.
I was mad two machines were made dead end gigs overnight (PPC)
Ok, well Apple announced the switch to Intel from PPC in 2005, their whole line of Macs was Intel by the end of 2006, and OS X supported PPC processors up until Snow Leopard in 2009. Three years isn't exactly overnight.
I still use my old ilamp g4 in my classroom with OS X, and it's still chugging away just fine. The kids draw on it mostly. I occasionally get parents asking if they can buy it, but I love that thing.
posted by Huck500 at 8:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I do it because when I'm app switching I don't really want every app on my phone on the list. I know the two most recent are first, but the scrolling is sometimes wonky, so I keep it tidy.
I was mad two machines were made dead end gigs overnight (PPC)
Ok, well Apple announced the switch to Intel from PPC in 2005, their whole line of Macs was Intel by the end of 2006, and OS X supported PPC processors up until Snow Leopard in 2009. Three years isn't exactly overnight.
I still use my old ilamp g4 in my classroom with OS X, and it's still chugging away just fine. The kids draw on it mostly. I occasionally get parents asking if they can buy it, but I love that thing.
posted by Huck500 at 8:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I have an iMac running OS9 upstairs. I think it still runs, been a while since I've turned it on. Those were ideal cat shelves, I had a cat that loved sitting on top of it when it was warm.
I forget, did the Oscar the Grouch extension still work on System 9 or did that cease working with System 8?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:27 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I forget, did the Oscar the Grouch extension still work on System 9 or did that cease working with System 8?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:27 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Oh, the spatial Finder. Damn, how I miss that. Having every folder contained in its own window, which appeared exactly in the place on the screen where you last put it, every time... It created the association of a file system folder being a physical space where you put things, and you could expect to find that folder in the place you left it when you went looking for it the next time. It was a nice little bit of trickery that made navigating a computer file system feel much more natural. I miss that.
I also miss being able to play American McGee's Alice, which I only have for OS 9.
posted by hippybear at 8:36 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
I also miss being able to play American McGee's Alice, which I only have for OS 9.
posted by hippybear at 8:36 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
I have an old Titanium PowerBook, which runs MacOS 9. It usually sits in a bookshelf, alongside other old laptops, though I occasionally fire it up when I need to access old Cubase VST 5 projects from around 2000-2005.
I wish that there was a PowerPC Mac emulator around that was sufficiently powerful/realistic to run 15-year-old audio software, including copy-protected plugins, on modern hardware.
posted by acb at 8:44 AM on September 17, 2016
I wish that there was a PowerPC Mac emulator around that was sufficiently powerful/realistic to run 15-year-old audio software, including copy-protected plugins, on modern hardware.
posted by acb at 8:44 AM on September 17, 2016
Huh. On my iPad mini 2, iOS 10 runs at least as fast as 9. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
I guess I'm just at that point where I'm growing afraid of updates because I've seen older devices slow down with some past updates to a newer OS that cannot handle them, thus forcing me to upgrade to a new device.
posted by Fizz at 8:51 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess I'm just at that point where I'm growing afraid of updates because I've seen older devices slow down with some past updates to a newer OS that cannot handle them, thus forcing me to upgrade to a new device.
posted by Fizz at 8:51 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Up until a few years ago I kept a G4 around to run VectorWorks, a weird but wonderful CAD program that evolved from Mac-only German software called MiniCAD. Vectorworks is still around, but now is a $900 "subscription," so I can sympathize with a lot of the legacy software concerns in the article. Now I run a slightly more recent version in an XP virtual machine, but I still miss how direct and snappy the old MacOS felt. Printing is what finally forced me to change. I was FTPing into the G4 from a Windows machine on my network just to obtain the CAD files to print since there were no drivers for the Mac.
posted by werkzeuger at 8:55 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by werkzeuger at 8:55 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Software should be free!
Speaking now as someone who pays his bills, earns health insurance, and feeds his children with money earned from software development, I am very very glad that all of it is not.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
Speaking now as someone who pays his bills, earns health insurance, and feeds his children with money earned from software development, I am very very glad that all of it is not.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
I'm a very similar sort of person when it comes to OSX. I've held at 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) for seemingly ever now. It's rock-solid, stable, and unobtrusive.
I can't give this enough amen.
Snow Leopard is a testament to the fact that the software industry is full of incentives to actively make a product worse. There's no sense in which any successor is better, and there are several in which each of them is unqualifiedly worse. Why couldn't Apple be at least smart enough to not mess with it?
I'm still running it on one machine, and I'd never stop if it weren't starting to get to the point where 10.9 or higher is required by most software... including Chrome, now, and I'm not willing to take the risk of using a browser that isn't receiving updates.
Though I might make an exception for OS 9. Or A/UX.
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I can't give this enough amen.
Snow Leopard is a testament to the fact that the software industry is full of incentives to actively make a product worse. There's no sense in which any successor is better, and there are several in which each of them is unqualifiedly worse. Why couldn't Apple be at least smart enough to not mess with it?
I'm still running it on one machine, and I'd never stop if it weren't starting to get to the point where 10.9 or higher is required by most software... including Chrome, now, and I'm not willing to take the risk of using a browser that isn't receiving updates.
Though I might make an exception for OS 9. Or A/UX.
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I was stuck on 10.6.8 for a long time but am using 10.8.5 for the last couple of years. I can't say the new OS's are bad, they may be great, it's just that I lose compatibility with software every time I update and I don't really see anything I need or even want from the new OS's. I don't know that that's Apple's fault, that's the way of tech. I just switched computers and realized I can't authorize my favorite daily use utility because the company went out of business a few years ago. RIP You Control.
Every time I go back to OS9 I'm shocked at how it doesn't seem as slow and old as I expect. Hopefully I can get my old machines set up again soon.
posted by bongo_x at 9:32 AM on September 17, 2016
Every time I go back to OS9 I'm shocked at how it doesn't seem as slow and old as I expect. Hopefully I can get my old machines set up again soon.
posted by bongo_x at 9:32 AM on September 17, 2016
MikeWarot i spent an unhealthy amount of time with os/9 configuring different boots and learning what the heck re-entrant meant. and it helped me fail a coding assignment because the basic-09 environment wouldn't allow code formatting how to professor wanted it. (and also i was avoiding thinking about how great my friends amiga was but that's a different story)
posted by lescour at 9:39 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lescour at 9:39 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Sheeit, I'd still be running System 7 if I could.
7.5 was the shit.
posted by brundlefly at 9:51 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
7.5 was the shit.
posted by brundlefly at 9:51 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Add me to the list of 10.6.8 die-hards. I've got all my music stuff built around three Mac minis and a Mac Pro; Logic 9, so on.
Mostly everything just works and keeps on working; unlike my 10.10 laptop which is a mostly-new turd in comparison. And I don't have to re-buy thousands of dollars in software. It can talk to my (now obsolete) iPhone 5s, though, while not ruining the (already bad) iTunes music experience on the Real Computer.
There's also a 10.5 G4 laptop that has a bunch of astronomy software and telescope control stuff on it. It would still be on 10.4; but one day in...2008 or 2009; an update to the Airport base station firmware tickled a bug in the wifi driver causing a kernel panic.
There does exist an OS9 G3 blue-and-white with a really old version of protools and CD mastering software, and a (for the time) shockingly expensive audio card, but I haven't powered it up in ages. ... No one makes CDs anymore. :/
The upgrade treadmill is a pointless waste.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 9:56 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Mostly everything just works and keeps on working; unlike my 10.10 laptop which is a mostly-new turd in comparison. And I don't have to re-buy thousands of dollars in software. It can talk to my (now obsolete) iPhone 5s, though, while not ruining the (already bad) iTunes music experience on the Real Computer.
There's also a 10.5 G4 laptop that has a bunch of astronomy software and telescope control stuff on it. It would still be on 10.4; but one day in...2008 or 2009; an update to the Airport base station firmware tickled a bug in the wifi driver causing a kernel panic.
There does exist an OS9 G3 blue-and-white with a really old version of protools and CD mastering software, and a (for the time) shockingly expensive audio card, but I haven't powered it up in ages. ... No one makes CDs anymore. :/
The upgrade treadmill is a pointless waste.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 9:56 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I know this thread is supposed to be about OS 9, but I just wanted to say that I rue the day I upgraded my MBP off of Lion. It's almost unuseably slow at this point, I guess I'm looking at a reset to factory soon.
posted by wintermind at 9:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by wintermind at 9:59 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
"recently i bought [...] 640mg ram at a thrift store"
I only buy loose powdered ram at licensed drugstores. You never know if it's been cut and stretched with milk powder at less reputable places until you go home and try to use it.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:10 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
I only buy loose powdered ram at licensed drugstores. You never know if it's been cut and stretched with milk powder at less reputable places until you go home and try to use it.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:10 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
I couldn't get past the manually-set per-app memory management in the pre-OSX Macs I had exposure to.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
My Honda Accord is 19 years old and still runs fine. I have to actually *turn my head* when I put it in reverse, but I'm OK with that.
posted by twsf at 10:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [14 favorites]
posted by twsf at 10:13 AM on September 17, 2016 [14 favorites]
Honestly, nostalgia for old computing is mostly awful and seriously viewed through rose tinted glasses. Whether it's OSes or games, going back you realise how fucking clunky things were. IRQ conflicts and BSODs in OSes, or game interfaces that decided the only way to interact with anything was clicking tiny buttons and savescumming was expected.
Every time I hear people complain about modern games or OSes I challenge them to go back and replay something like xcom or use an old OS as a daily driver. That usually breaks the spell.
posted by Ferreous at 10:17 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
Every time I hear people complain about modern games or OSes I challenge them to go back and replay something like xcom or use an old OS as a daily driver. That usually breaks the spell.
posted by Ferreous at 10:17 AM on September 17, 2016 [10 favorites]
I'm still not sure I quite understand some of the angst regarding older OS'es and software dependent on them and associated hardware. Some number of years ago it became quite clear, at least at the graphic arts/video production houses I worked in/with, that maintaining workflows meant leaving old "tools" in place, not abandoning them just because newer machines/OS'es became available. Hence, my DVD production workflow, before I got out of the biz, looked like this:
- Sonic Creator w/ dedicated encoding/preview hardware under OS 9.2.2 on a Graphite G4
- Aja Io for video capture/editing w/ Final Cut under OS 10.4 (I think) on an aluminum G5
- Archiving/mastering software w/ DLT on SCSI on the same aluminum G5
- CinemaCraft MPEG2 encoder software on some crappy PC running XP
I also keep a Ti PowerBook G4 around that will dual boot into OS 9.2.2 so I can run Videodelic.
None of these machines are vulnerable because I only use them for specific purposes. I don't surf the web or read email on them. I boot them to do a specific task for which they are perfectly suited.
I liken the whole situation to owning some beloved and mostly reliable tools for woodworking or perhaps some camping equipment purchased when things were made to last. Sure, there are newer possibly fancier things on the market but what's the point of getting "new" if "old" does the job reliably?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:35 AM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
- Sonic Creator w/ dedicated encoding/preview hardware under OS 9.2.2 on a Graphite G4
- Aja Io for video capture/editing w/ Final Cut under OS 10.4 (I think) on an aluminum G5
- Archiving/mastering software w/ DLT on SCSI on the same aluminum G5
- CinemaCraft MPEG2 encoder software on some crappy PC running XP
I also keep a Ti PowerBook G4 around that will dual boot into OS 9.2.2 so I can run Videodelic.
None of these machines are vulnerable because I only use them for specific purposes. I don't surf the web or read email on them. I boot them to do a specific task for which they are perfectly suited.
I liken the whole situation to owning some beloved and mostly reliable tools for woodworking or perhaps some camping equipment purchased when things were made to last. Sure, there are newer possibly fancier things on the market but what's the point of getting "new" if "old" does the job reliably?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:35 AM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
My experience updating Intel macs to newer OS versions is pretty good, honestly - but I never install anything when it first comes out.
posted by atoxyl at 10:44 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 10:44 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
the … enjoyable part of that was getting to use CodeWarrior
This article hit me like a Proustian madeleine in a lot of ways, but especially this one. I had really forgotten how much I missed CodeWarrior. What a pleasure it was to use such good software to make software — and also, in retrospect, what a completely nuts, bonkers, "how did that ever happen" kind of business arrangement for Apple not to own its own OS's preferred development tools.
posted by RogerB at 10:46 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
This article hit me like a Proustian madeleine in a lot of ways, but especially this one. I had really forgotten how much I missed CodeWarrior. What a pleasure it was to use such good software to make software — and also, in retrospect, what a completely nuts, bonkers, "how did that ever happen" kind of business arrangement for Apple not to own its own OS's preferred development tools.
posted by RogerB at 10:46 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
challenge them to go back and replay something like xcom
also - bad example!
posted by atoxyl at 10:48 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
also - bad example!
posted by atoxyl at 10:48 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Let me also add: for apps that really benefited from OS and HW upgrades, like Photoshop, we of course purchased new machines loaded them to the gills with RAM.
That said: I'm writing this on the most recent rMBP w/ a subscription to CC and find that running my copy of "musty old" Photoshop CS3 is a freakin' dream. Does EVERYTHING I want it to do. And very very fast.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:49 AM on September 17, 2016
That said: I'm writing this on the most recent rMBP w/ a subscription to CC and find that running my copy of "musty old" Photoshop CS3 is a freakin' dream. Does EVERYTHING I want it to do. And very very fast.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:49 AM on September 17, 2016
Yes, everything under the hood in OS X/macOS is better than the classic Mac OS, but there was quite a bit of user interaction elegance thrown out when NeXT took over. The loss of a spatial Finder still frustrates me, OS X Finder is so counter-intuitive in comparison. Also, I miss creator codes. File extensions and UTIs can't compare.
"The hallmarks of NeXT’s UI design are extravagant attention to cosmetic appeal, and nearly no attention whatsoever to actual usability. " — John Gruber, believe it or not. Still an element of truth to that today.
posted by action man bow-tie at 11:04 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
"The hallmarks of NeXT’s UI design are extravagant attention to cosmetic appeal, and nearly no attention whatsoever to actual usability. " — John Gruber, believe it or not. Still an element of truth to that today.
posted by action man bow-tie at 11:04 AM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Can we have a moment of silence for BeOS?
posted by bongo_x at 11:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 11:12 AM on September 17, 2016 [16 favorites]
There is one thing I miss re:OS8-9...Kai's Power Tools. How those never made the leap to OSX is a mystery.
Custom themes were fun, too. Drawing Board ftw.
One thing I miss from OS9 is being able to open any application with a voice command. I regularly used it at my old job. My mornings often began with me saying "Open Illustrator" to my Mac and it would come up. The set-up was quick and easy.
Apparently, OSX is only now getting around to this level of flexibility. Older versions of OSX had voice control, but it was only for a pre-set bunch of commands for functions within the OS (like Empty Trash), and not to control third-party apps. If there is a way to set-up "Open Illustrator" in Snow leopard, I've yet to figure it out.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:36 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Custom themes were fun, too. Drawing Board ftw.
One thing I miss from OS9 is being able to open any application with a voice command. I regularly used it at my old job. My mornings often began with me saying "Open Illustrator" to my Mac and it would come up. The set-up was quick and easy.
Apparently, OSX is only now getting around to this level of flexibility. Older versions of OSX had voice control, but it was only for a pre-set bunch of commands for functions within the OS (like Empty Trash), and not to control third-party apps. If there is a way to set-up "Open Illustrator" in Snow leopard, I've yet to figure it out.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:36 AM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Can we have a moment of silence for BeOS?
as a perennial victim of Linux Desktop GUIs, I don't understand why someone doesn't just rebuild Gnome 3 or KDE as a clone of BeOS or OS 9. I mean, you wouldn't have to think, just figure out how to copy feature for feature., exploit all that dead UI/UX engineering.
I've never really used BeOS but OS 9 is the closest I've seen to a GUI which is actually consistently engineered so that you stop thinking about what you are doing. It's as close to using a computer as if you were using an actual "desktop" as anyone got...
It's still amazing to me that the NeXTStep "dock" still survives. it's one of the more obviously hare-brained UNIXland GUI ideas, that makes even less sense on 16:9 screens. It's one of those things that I installed on FooStep at some point in the 90s and thought, this is annoying. it gets in the way of my windows. autohide is even more annoying. it gets unreadable if too many applications are "docked" it's dynamic, which means i'm never sure what or where something is, etc. basically it makes the oldschool windows start menu look good. but Ubuntu decided to build their whole multi-platform user interface around it!
posted by ennui.bz at 11:40 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
as a perennial victim of Linux Desktop GUIs, I don't understand why someone doesn't just rebuild Gnome 3 or KDE as a clone of BeOS or OS 9. I mean, you wouldn't have to think, just figure out how to copy feature for feature., exploit all that dead UI/UX engineering.
I've never really used BeOS but OS 9 is the closest I've seen to a GUI which is actually consistently engineered so that you stop thinking about what you are doing. It's as close to using a computer as if you were using an actual "desktop" as anyone got...
It's still amazing to me that the NeXTStep "dock" still survives. it's one of the more obviously hare-brained UNIXland GUI ideas, that makes even less sense on 16:9 screens. It's one of those things that I installed on FooStep at some point in the 90s and thought, this is annoying. it gets in the way of my windows. autohide is even more annoying. it gets unreadable if too many applications are "docked" it's dynamic, which means i'm never sure what or where something is, etc. basically it makes the oldschool windows start menu look good. but Ubuntu decided to build their whole multi-platform user interface around it!
posted by ennui.bz at 11:40 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
It's still amazing to me that the NeXTStep "dock" still survives. it's one of the more obviously hare-brained UNIXland GUI ideas, that makes even less sense on 16:9 screens
While we're at it, can we admit that 16:9 screens kind of suck for smaller form factors? I love my MacBook Air, but I do covet the extra height offered by the iPad Pro's 4:3 display. The PowerBook G4 displays were still available 4:3... hell, even 16:10 would be better.
posted by action man bow-tie at 12:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
While we're at it, can we admit that 16:9 screens kind of suck for smaller form factors? I love my MacBook Air, but I do covet the extra height offered by the iPad Pro's 4:3 display. The PowerBook G4 displays were still available 4:3... hell, even 16:10 would be better.
posted by action man bow-tie at 12:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Windows XP was supported for nearly 13 years, which is almost forever for a specific OS version. Supporting it was expensive and was actively holding back development of important features, not the least of which were badly needed security improvements. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
this being one of those things that folks born before say 1965 (ie: me and my contemporaries) will always find hard to swallow ... that notion of a technological change so inevitable (and fast) that there's an intrinsic argument for not really bothering to " ... build things to last". It just goes against how we were raised.
"Planned obsolescence" is apparently what it's called nowadays when something fails to last until the heat death of the universe, I guess? Sandpaper, toothbrushes, dish sponges, etc. all fall victim to "planned obsolescence" too, apparently
My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year.
posted by philip-random at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
this being one of those things that folks born before say 1965 (ie: me and my contemporaries) will always find hard to swallow ... that notion of a technological change so inevitable (and fast) that there's an intrinsic argument for not really bothering to " ... build things to last". It just goes against how we were raised.
"Planned obsolescence" is apparently what it's called nowadays when something fails to last until the heat death of the universe, I guess? Sandpaper, toothbrushes, dish sponges, etc. all fall victim to "planned obsolescence" too, apparently
My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year.
posted by philip-random at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
recently i bought an imac g3, 640mg ram at a thrift store, for 20 bucks
Hah. Hah! I remember paying $50 per megabyte back in the early 90s. I can only imagine what computing power and prices are going to look like in another twenty-odd years.
Also:
Can we have a moment of silence for BeOS?
Lord, yes. I never had a chance to use it myself, and thus never got any real experience with using the GUI, but I wrote a paper on it for my long-ago operating system theory and design class, and under the hood it was sweet. The main thing I remember is one of the demos--it was fast and fluid enough to draw a 3d cube and simultaneously play a separate video on each face, and this was in the mid-90s. Awesome.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Hah. Hah! I remember paying $50 per megabyte back in the early 90s. I can only imagine what computing power and prices are going to look like in another twenty-odd years.
Also:
Can we have a moment of silence for BeOS?
Lord, yes. I never had a chance to use it myself, and thus never got any real experience with using the GUI, but I wrote a paper on it for my long-ago operating system theory and design class, and under the hood it was sweet. The main thing I remember is one of the demos--it was fast and fluid enough to draw a 3d cube and simultaneously play a separate video on each face, and this was in the mid-90s. Awesome.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year.
Just retired my 09 MacBook because the plastic was cracked, it still worked fine. Currently using an 08 aluminum MacBook and it works and looks great. I use an 08 MacPro for all my heavy work.
posted by bongo_x at 12:12 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Just retired my 09 MacBook because the plastic was cracked, it still worked fine. Currently using an 08 aluminum MacBook and it works and looks great. I use an 08 MacPro for all my heavy work.
posted by bongo_x at 12:12 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I've owned 3 Macs. The first was a bubble iMac, it lasted for 10 years. The second was a top of the line iMac, it lasted for 10 years. I now have another top of the line iMac. I expect it to last for 10 years.
One thing that constantly astounds other computer users I talk to is how long my computers last. Maybe you just got a bad one? Because most Apple hardware out there keeps on chugging for basically a decade before it gives out, in the anecdotal experience I have myself and have heard from others.
posted by hippybear at 12:15 PM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
One thing that constantly astounds other computer users I talk to is how long my computers last. Maybe you just got a bad one? Because most Apple hardware out there keeps on chugging for basically a decade before it gives out, in the anecdotal experience I have myself and have heard from others.
posted by hippybear at 12:15 PM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
Maybe you just got a bad one? Because most Apple hardware out there keeps on chugging for basically a decade before it gives out,
yup, I probably just bought a lemon, which happens with anything that is mass-produced. Every now and then, you get a "problem child". What I didn't get from Apple was any acknowledgment that this was the case. As is, I'd bought the extended warranty (fortunately) but that ran out after three years and the box in question kept having issues, so no decade for me.
I've been in the world Windows ever since. Certain levels of incompetence are easier to take at one-third the cost.
posted by philip-random at 12:23 PM on September 17, 2016
yup, I probably just bought a lemon, which happens with anything that is mass-produced. Every now and then, you get a "problem child". What I didn't get from Apple was any acknowledgment that this was the case. As is, I'd bought the extended warranty (fortunately) but that ran out after three years and the box in question kept having issues, so no decade for me.
I've been in the world Windows ever since. Certain levels of incompetence are easier to take at one-third the cost.
posted by philip-random at 12:23 PM on September 17, 2016
The main thing I remember is one of the demos--it was fast and fluid enough to draw a 3d cube and simultaneously play a separate video on each face, and this was in the mid-90s. Awesome.
That wasn't a trick either. I went to a demo and later had it installed and did it myself. At a time when it was a struggle to play 1 video on most computers I could open several and run them flawlessly.
posted by bongo_x at 12:31 PM on September 17, 2016
That wasn't a trick either. I went to a demo and later had it installed and did it myself. At a time when it was a struggle to play 1 video on most computers I could open several and run them flawlessly.
posted by bongo_x at 12:31 PM on September 17, 2016
If there's one thing the Baldur's Gate modding community has taught me, it's that there's far more latent engineering talent out there in the ambient ether than there ever was at the company that actually built the damn thing in the first place. Given a few curmudgeons for whom bugs, love of the product, and a seething sense of abandonment are personal affronts, you could eventually end up with a solid piece of software decades after the company itself has forgotten that it ever made it.
Which is really the long way around of saying godspeed, you beautiful fucking maniacs. *salute*
posted by Brie Fantasy at 12:36 PM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
Which is really the long way around of saying godspeed, you beautiful fucking maniacs. *salute*
posted by Brie Fantasy at 12:36 PM on September 17, 2016 [11 favorites]
My Honda Accord is 19 years old and still runs fine. I have to actually *turn my head* when I put it in reverse, but I'm OK with that.
Do you leave your checkbook on the dashboard? Are you insured if someone steals the car, smashes it into a convenience store with a thousand other stolen accords, and threatens the store owner to do it again unless a ransom is paid? Do people jimmy the window open, rekey all the locks on your car, and demand you pay them in small unmarked bills for the new key?
This is a taste of what OS patches aim to prevent when you drive your computer on the internet. And we believe nobody would buy software designed to favor complete correctness and safety over time saving features. Because it would be so feature devoid, and ten years old upon release. And I doubt any Unsafe At Any Agile Velocity manifesto would stir Congress into passing the liability laws that prevent Honda from operating similarly.
posted by pwnguin at 12:37 PM on September 17, 2016 [15 favorites]
Do you leave your checkbook on the dashboard? Are you insured if someone steals the car, smashes it into a convenience store with a thousand other stolen accords, and threatens the store owner to do it again unless a ransom is paid? Do people jimmy the window open, rekey all the locks on your car, and demand you pay them in small unmarked bills for the new key?
This is a taste of what OS patches aim to prevent when you drive your computer on the internet. And we believe nobody would buy software designed to favor complete correctness and safety over time saving features. Because it would be so feature devoid, and ten years old upon release. And I doubt any Unsafe At Any Agile Velocity manifesto would stir Congress into passing the liability laws that prevent Honda from operating similarly.
posted by pwnguin at 12:37 PM on September 17, 2016 [15 favorites]
There are several industrial systems I designed in the early 1990's which have been running continuously since the original MSDOS computers were installed. Converted them all to Windows NT 4.0 in the late 90's with the 32-bit version of VB4. (The original implementations used Microsoft Series 100 Basic, a lean compiler written for a non-PC compatible early 80's clone and therefore hardware agnostic, although it required using assembly language to do anything real with the hardware. For me this was a feature not a bug.) Converted them all to XP and VB6 by 2004. Haven't since touched any of the software, although they are all running on Windows 7/8/10 now. VB6 without plugins has had great longevity, although I've coded all the fancy stuff (like serial ports) to the Windows API. There was one bug that required an update when Server 2008 and Windows 7 came out, where Microsoft stopped initializing a data structure for the serial port. File access and networking stuff works flawlessly, even under Wine on Linux and OSX. We have had to move from Comtrol Rocketport to Digi Edgeport USB serial ports, but this didn't affect the software.
13 years isn't really a lot of time for an industrial system. Many of these things cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to engineer and the computer is really a very small part of it, and state of the art performance is not required. What is required is compatibility so that new hardware can be installed when the old hardware fails. Industrial suppliers like PLC manufacturers have historically been pretty good about maintaining backward compatibility, but lately I have heard a lot of complaints that they aren't doing that any more and old hardware isn't supported either for maintenance or replacement. This is a very expensive state of affairs for an industrial facility, because an old system going down doesn't just mean money to re-engineer the obsolete system, it means down time for the entire plant.
I increasingly get pushback when I tell IT people I'm planning to build their spiffy new system in VB6. When they ask why I haven't moved to .NET I ask how many systems they built in 1992 are still running. VB6 is clunky and limited by modern standards but it is sufficient and it is a mature product that really doesn't need support any more; it Just Works. It's much better integrated with Windows than .NET and it's very unlikely that Microsoft will break the core functionality any time soon because significant bits of Windows itself are written in VB6. Unlike, for example, .NET version 1.0 which will not run at all on a Windows 8+ box, and often can't be converted to a later version of .NET without a lot of custom recoding.
What I have seen in 40 years of working with computers is that the upgrade cycle is much more powerfully driven by marketing considerations than actual technological need. Yes, it's amazing that modern computers can play and record video, and maybe getting those functions right required some jiggering of older functions that were getting in the way. But there are still lots of places where you don't need to play or record video, but you do need to run a program that was written in 1988 and the developer is out of business or dead, and you just need the functionality. In the 1960's and 1970's computer manufacturers understood this and put a lot of effort into backward compatibility. This is a core principle in the story told in Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. Hewlett-Packard did not obsolete the ageing core memory based 2100 series until they had semiconductor RAM that could be battery backed, allowing them to continue supporting "power fail auto restart" which was needed by so many embedded systems of the day.
Nowadays though nobody seems to care. Even manufacturers like Allen-Bradley whose core customer base all care about this stuff aren't catering to their needs. And as for Microsoft, I hated them when their great sin was writing slow bug-ridden shitty 8-bit BASIC interpreters none of which were compatibile with one another. If they have learned anything since 1975, it's how to get ever worse.
posted by Bringer Tom at 12:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [22 favorites]
13 years isn't really a lot of time for an industrial system. Many of these things cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to engineer and the computer is really a very small part of it, and state of the art performance is not required. What is required is compatibility so that new hardware can be installed when the old hardware fails. Industrial suppliers like PLC manufacturers have historically been pretty good about maintaining backward compatibility, but lately I have heard a lot of complaints that they aren't doing that any more and old hardware isn't supported either for maintenance or replacement. This is a very expensive state of affairs for an industrial facility, because an old system going down doesn't just mean money to re-engineer the obsolete system, it means down time for the entire plant.
I increasingly get pushback when I tell IT people I'm planning to build their spiffy new system in VB6. When they ask why I haven't moved to .NET I ask how many systems they built in 1992 are still running. VB6 is clunky and limited by modern standards but it is sufficient and it is a mature product that really doesn't need support any more; it Just Works. It's much better integrated with Windows than .NET and it's very unlikely that Microsoft will break the core functionality any time soon because significant bits of Windows itself are written in VB6. Unlike, for example, .NET version 1.0 which will not run at all on a Windows 8+ box, and often can't be converted to a later version of .NET without a lot of custom recoding.
What I have seen in 40 years of working with computers is that the upgrade cycle is much more powerfully driven by marketing considerations than actual technological need. Yes, it's amazing that modern computers can play and record video, and maybe getting those functions right required some jiggering of older functions that were getting in the way. But there are still lots of places where you don't need to play or record video, but you do need to run a program that was written in 1988 and the developer is out of business or dead, and you just need the functionality. In the 1960's and 1970's computer manufacturers understood this and put a lot of effort into backward compatibility. This is a core principle in the story told in Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. Hewlett-Packard did not obsolete the ageing core memory based 2100 series until they had semiconductor RAM that could be battery backed, allowing them to continue supporting "power fail auto restart" which was needed by so many embedded systems of the day.
Nowadays though nobody seems to care. Even manufacturers like Allen-Bradley whose core customer base all care about this stuff aren't catering to their needs. And as for Microsoft, I hated them when their great sin was writing slow bug-ridden shitty 8-bit BASIC interpreters none of which were compatibile with one another. If they have learned anything since 1975, it's how to get ever worse.
posted by Bringer Tom at 12:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [22 favorites]
You can use computers and not go on the internet. That's what I did with these computers at the time, and they still do the job they were intended for. You can use an old computer and not keep all your most valuable information on it.
posted by bongo_x at 12:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 12:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
I know this thread is supposed to be about OS 9, but I just wanted to say that I rue the day I upgraded my MBP off of Lion. It's almost unuseably slow at this point, I guess I'm looking at a reset to factory soon.Along with the more obvious features, Apple's been really focused on refining macOS's guts for the last few releases.* Because of a slew of incremental internal improvements, a recent version of macOS is going to be noticeably faster, give you longer battery life, and be more secure. I've been using Sierra for a few months, and IMHO you might as well wait a bit longer for that.
(*My bet is that the OS team has been preparing for the leap to ARM, which explains the intense focus on internals. I was at Apple during a CPU transition, and it smells like that's happening again. For example, it explains the unusually-long product update cycle.)
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 1:02 PM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
You people who miss BeOS know about Haiku, right?
Personally I too miss the UI consistency of the old Mac OS. Have never found anything as predictable or discoverable since.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Personally I too miss the UI consistency of the old Mac OS. Have never found anything as predictable or discoverable since.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:45 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Stuff like that is a good reason to use an old OS on whatever hardware. Also note: it's a very rare reason.
I dunno, almost every (academic science) lab I've been in has at least one instrument/computer pair that's a decade or two old and enough operating systems back that it's offline-only. In my current lab, we keep several spare moribund Windows NT and Windows 95 computers around for parts, in case our ancient monsters die in a way that's repairable with a hardware transplant. I'd wager than you're going to run into this in any field where you have very expensive instrumentation that has a computer interface, particularly when the norm is smaller companies (or other economic entities like individual labs) which have trouble budgeting for upgrades and replacements except when absolutely necessary.
posted by ubersturm at 1:46 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I dunno, almost every (academic science) lab I've been in has at least one instrument/computer pair that's a decade or two old and enough operating systems back that it's offline-only. In my current lab, we keep several spare moribund Windows NT and Windows 95 computers around for parts, in case our ancient monsters die in a way that's repairable with a hardware transplant. I'd wager than you're going to run into this in any field where you have very expensive instrumentation that has a computer interface, particularly when the norm is smaller companies (or other economic entities like individual labs) which have trouble budgeting for upgrades and replacements except when absolutely necessary.
posted by ubersturm at 1:46 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I still have a G4 Cube with OS 9 on it, but it doesn't get much use anymore. I have a Macintosh SE/30 with System 7.1 that still gets almost daily use - I was playing a game of Crystal Quest on it a few minutes ago just before checked MeFi and saw this post. Someday I would like to get an ethernet card for it so I can try it out online - just for the heck of it.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:57 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:57 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I just got finished replacing all the electrolytic capacitors on my Lisa 1's CPU, I/O, and memory boards. Still got the twiggy drives, the PSU, and the video board left to do. Other than that, it's been chugging along.
posted by tss at 2:02 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by tss at 2:02 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
We still use Mac OS9! Our expensive microscope camera is abandon-ware, and the last piece of software that works with it only works on OS9.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 2:32 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 2:32 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Software should be free!
To quote (Mefi’s Own) Steve Wozniak, “Information should be free, but your time should not.”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:36 PM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
To quote (Mefi’s Own) Steve Wozniak, “Information should be free, but your time should not.”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:36 PM on September 17, 2016 [9 favorites]
Huh, it just occurred to me that Mac OS X (now macOS 10, admittedly) has now been around for as long as pre-10 Mac OS was.
No real wisdom in this. It's just one of those "huh, weird" things, like realizing that Maude Flanders has now been a dead character for longer than she was an alive one.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:39 PM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
No real wisdom in this. It's just one of those "huh, weird" things, like realizing that Maude Flanders has now been a dead character for longer than she was an alive one.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:39 PM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
but you do need to run a program that was written in 1988 and the developer is out of business or dead, and you just need the functionality.
This is “badly planned obsolescence”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
This is “badly planned obsolescence”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Honestly, I’d be curious about programming languages written with the assumption that they should eventually be replaced.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:41 PM on September 17, 2016
posted by Going To Maine at 2:41 PM on September 17, 2016
Hey, I'll replace my Powerbook 150 as soon as Apple comes out with another screen that's fully readable in direct sunlight, and a fast little word processor to run on it.
I was disappointed when I tried a SSD in my Pismo, it didn't seem to speed it up at all.
Fortunately my Palm OS PDA is rock solid.
We've come a long way from guys competing about "Mine is bigger and faster ....."
posted by hank at 2:45 PM on September 17, 2016
I was disappointed when I tried a SSD in my Pismo, it didn't seem to speed it up at all.
Fortunately my Palm OS PDA is rock solid.
We've come a long way from guys competing about "Mine is bigger and faster ....."
posted by hank at 2:45 PM on September 17, 2016
I know this thread is supposed to be about OS 9, but I just wanted to say that I rue the day I upgraded my MBP off of Lion. It's almost unuseably slow at this point, I guess I'm looking at a reset to factory soon.This is usually a sign of hardware degradation or an application problem. I'd start by checking Activity Monitor to see what the system is doing and whether there's something like a process running continuously. One very common problem I've seen is that doing an OS upgrade causes Spotlight to reindex everything, which can make people think it'll always be slow or, worse, hit something like a corrupt file or pending drive failure which may have existed for months but will be blamed on the update.
posted by adamsc at 2:55 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
http://i.imgur.com/mZFsJyk.png
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:02 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:02 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
OMG CRYSTAL QUEST I MISS YOU AND YOUR STORM OF SOUND EFFECTS OMG
posted by hippybear at 3:08 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 3:08 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
Tell that to Canonical or Redhat.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:15 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Tell that to Canonical or Redhat.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:15 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've got mixed feelings about Apple now.
LoveOS X macOS, not impressed with their hardware offerings.
Hmm, don't like Swift all that much either.
What *do* I like about Apple??
Their app frameworks, I guess. macOS itself is still several years ahead of Windows 10, easily, except Window's CLR is pretty cool -- and Xamarin being acquired by MSFT is actually making this more available on macOS.
When my 2008 MBP died in late 2014 and my 2006 Mac Pro followed several months later I was without a Mac for the first time since the 80s. I bit the bullet and punted $600 on a Z97 homebrew PC and have been running 10.10, 10.11, and now 10.12 on it for over a year.
Best of both worlds, or almost, nVidia just needs to ship those Pascal drivers . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:16 PM on September 17, 2016
Love
Hmm, don't like Swift all that much either.
What *do* I like about Apple??
Their app frameworks, I guess. macOS itself is still several years ahead of Windows 10, easily, except Window's CLR is pretty cool -- and Xamarin being acquired by MSFT is actually making this more available on macOS.
When my 2008 MBP died in late 2014 and my 2006 Mac Pro followed several months later I was without a Mac for the first time since the 80s. I bit the bullet and punted $600 on a Z97 homebrew PC and have been running 10.10, 10.11, and now 10.12 on it for over a year.
Best of both worlds, or almost, nVidia just needs to ship those Pascal drivers . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:16 PM on September 17, 2016
This is “badly planned obsolescence”
Well, this is reality. Many industrial processes run on custom or one-off hardware, and the temptation to move them to PC's has always been intense because of the initial cost savings. But you need to be able to keep running them when the computer fails in 15 years.
True story: There was a [redacted] European company that made a very expensive complicated industrial food sorting machine from about 1986 to 1995. This $40,000 machine was 20 feet long, weighed about 300 pounds mostly in the form of stainless steel, and was operated by a custom computer board that featured a 6502 CPU. The software was, of course, all proprietary and burned into ROM. It had IIRC about six circuit boards, each of which cost around USD$3,000 to replace and which had to be ordered from Europe because nobody in the US stocked them.
In 1998 they sent a dear john letter to all their customers sadly announcing that they didn't feel like supporting the (infamously and brutally expensive) electronics any more, so they might as well start looking to source new machinery. Not just the controller -- the whole $40,000 shooting match. The old one would presumably end up in the big pile of stainless steel crap that seems to form behind most food processing plants.
In 2001 I rejiggered a commodity US-made industrial scale to control this machine, reverse engineering its functionality and actually making it more powerful than the original hardware. Everything else about the machine was basic machine shop parts -- air cylinders, bearings, belts, rollers, and so on. But none of it works without the computer. We sold a couple of hundred retrofits to those people, until the commodity machine WE were using was obsoleted by its manufacturer in 2008.
So I rejiggered their new replacement, which was pretty different under the hood, to do the same thing and we sold a few of those. That machine is now EOL and the one replacing it is so completely different I don't think it can run the process.
In this case we had the advantage of a little economy of scale, because there are quite a few of these machines so we can spread the months of labor it took me to write 11,000 lines of 80186 assembly language around to enough customers to make it palatable. But I know of many other systems that are truly one-off. In 2005 I visited a manufacturer who was still using a video system based on Windows 3.1 to perform a critical spotting process on an assembly line. They will use that computer until it fails and can't be replaced, and then their line will go down. They know it will happen. But nobody wants to absorb the pain until it is absolutely, finally necessary.
This is reality. This is a market which only a few niche players are trying to service, and they keep getting undermined by their own suppliers. There are places where a computer that will still be operable in 40 years would be worth a large premium if anyone offered it. And there used to be companies that did that, but not so much any more.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:21 PM on September 17, 2016 [20 favorites]
Well, this is reality. Many industrial processes run on custom or one-off hardware, and the temptation to move them to PC's has always been intense because of the initial cost savings. But you need to be able to keep running them when the computer fails in 15 years.
True story: There was a [redacted] European company that made a very expensive complicated industrial food sorting machine from about 1986 to 1995. This $40,000 machine was 20 feet long, weighed about 300 pounds mostly in the form of stainless steel, and was operated by a custom computer board that featured a 6502 CPU. The software was, of course, all proprietary and burned into ROM. It had IIRC about six circuit boards, each of which cost around USD$3,000 to replace and which had to be ordered from Europe because nobody in the US stocked them.
In 1998 they sent a dear john letter to all their customers sadly announcing that they didn't feel like supporting the (infamously and brutally expensive) electronics any more, so they might as well start looking to source new machinery. Not just the controller -- the whole $40,000 shooting match. The old one would presumably end up in the big pile of stainless steel crap that seems to form behind most food processing plants.
In 2001 I rejiggered a commodity US-made industrial scale to control this machine, reverse engineering its functionality and actually making it more powerful than the original hardware. Everything else about the machine was basic machine shop parts -- air cylinders, bearings, belts, rollers, and so on. But none of it works without the computer. We sold a couple of hundred retrofits to those people, until the commodity machine WE were using was obsoleted by its manufacturer in 2008.
So I rejiggered their new replacement, which was pretty different under the hood, to do the same thing and we sold a few of those. That machine is now EOL and the one replacing it is so completely different I don't think it can run the process.
In this case we had the advantage of a little economy of scale, because there are quite a few of these machines so we can spread the months of labor it took me to write 11,000 lines of 80186 assembly language around to enough customers to make it palatable. But I know of many other systems that are truly one-off. In 2005 I visited a manufacturer who was still using a video system based on Windows 3.1 to perform a critical spotting process on an assembly line. They will use that computer until it fails and can't be replaced, and then their line will go down. They know it will happen. But nobody wants to absorb the pain until it is absolutely, finally necessary.
This is reality. This is a market which only a few niche players are trying to service, and they keep getting undermined by their own suppliers. There are places where a computer that will still be operable in 40 years would be worth a large premium if anyone offered it. And there used to be companies that did that, but not so much any more.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:21 PM on September 17, 2016 [20 favorites]
is being able to open any application with a voice command
I did this, in Japanese ("TAMINARU WO HIRAITE") no less, on macOS 10.12 a couple of days ago . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:25 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I did this, in Japanese ("TAMINARU WO HIRAITE") no less, on macOS 10.12 a couple of days ago . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:25 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well, this is reality. Many industrial processes run on custom or one-off hardware, and the temptation to move them to PC's has always been intense because of the initial cost savings. But you need to be able to keep running them when the computer fails in 15 years.
Oh no - I’m not trying to say that this isn’t reality. It sounds like a fundamental clash in design philosophies, playing out in industrial systems (and quite a few other places).
posted by Going To Maine at 3:33 PM on September 17, 2016
Oh no - I’m not trying to say that this isn’t reality. It sounds like a fundamental clash in design philosophies, playing out in industrial systems (and quite a few other places).
posted by Going To Maine at 3:33 PM on September 17, 2016
I have one extremely-mission-critical app that requires Java 6. The developer isn't updating the app anymore, and there is absolutely nothing similar available for Mac OS. I'm also dedicated to using Adobe CS 5 for the rest of my years. I'm currently happily motoring-along with Snow Leopard. How far up the Mac OS foodchain can I safely update a late-2009 iMac and not have usability issues?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:38 PM on September 17, 2016
posted by Thorzdad at 3:38 PM on September 17, 2016
Tell that to Canonical or Redhat
Sure, if you've got enough people paying enough money for support you can keep things going a bit longer. But it gets awfully hard to keep a meaningful level of support going for very long.
posted by wotsac at 3:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sure, if you've got enough people paying enough money for support you can keep things going a bit longer. But it gets awfully hard to keep a meaningful level of support going for very long.
posted by wotsac at 3:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
My eeePC runs Window 7 fine. I also have a 19 year old Chevy half ton, a 30 year old Amiga 1000, and a 33 year old C64 that run great too.
posted by rfs at 3:59 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by rfs at 3:59 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've seen working toasters from the 1950s, too! It's remarkable what happens when a given form of technology stops improving.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Many large format audio mixing consoles run automation software from the 90's. They'll have Pro Tools as well of course, but you'd be surprised how many people don't use that for mixing. The biggest, most expensive studios in the world depend on keeping 25 year old computers and software working. And store the mix information on floppy disks.
posted by bongo_x at 4:27 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 4:27 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
that notion of a technological change so inevitable (and fast) that there's an intrinsic argument for not really bothering to " ... build things to last".
The counterpoint is that things like computers are upgradable and changeable after the consumer buys them in ways that products in the 60s just weren't. There were a few products that you could add daughterboards to and the like, but mostly you got what you got, so it made sense that it had to last a while. Even if I rejiggered a Neve 1272 to be more like a mic preamp, it would still fundamentally be an amplifier. With DSP, my processor can be reverb, or a compressor, or flange, or whatever waveform transformations that someone has seen fit to turn into code.
The tradeoff of the limitless possibilities a general purpose computer offers is that they will have flaws that need to be fixed and at a certain point backwards compatibility can make the product monstrous enough that significant changes are needed that will leave the old versions behind.
In the 1960's and 1970's computer manufacturers understood this and put a lot of effort into backward compatibility.
Sure. When machines cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars (in today's dollars), there's a lot more expectation that they keep running. But the computer revolution that really changed the world was cheap computers, which need to have relatively short expiration dates to keep the costs down.
You mean the ones that offer 5 and 7 years of lifecycle support respectively? (Yes, Redhat has offered extended support on some versions beyond that, but it's limited in scope and time and not cheap. Microsoft did the same thing with XP and 2K3.)
posted by Candleman at 4:48 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
The counterpoint is that things like computers are upgradable and changeable after the consumer buys them in ways that products in the 60s just weren't. There were a few products that you could add daughterboards to and the like, but mostly you got what you got, so it made sense that it had to last a while. Even if I rejiggered a Neve 1272 to be more like a mic preamp, it would still fundamentally be an amplifier. With DSP, my processor can be reverb, or a compressor, or flange, or whatever waveform transformations that someone has seen fit to turn into code.
The tradeoff of the limitless possibilities a general purpose computer offers is that they will have flaws that need to be fixed and at a certain point backwards compatibility can make the product monstrous enough that significant changes are needed that will leave the old versions behind.
In the 1960's and 1970's computer manufacturers understood this and put a lot of effort into backward compatibility.
Sure. When machines cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars (in today's dollars), there's a lot more expectation that they keep running. But the computer revolution that really changed the world was cheap computers, which need to have relatively short expiration dates to keep the costs down.
It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.Tell that to Canonical or Redhat.
You mean the ones that offer 5 and 7 years of lifecycle support respectively? (Yes, Redhat has offered extended support on some versions beyond that, but it's limited in scope and time and not cheap. Microsoft did the same thing with XP and 2K3.)
posted by Candleman at 4:48 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I have a few (okay, nine or ten) old Macs that are probably still running OS 9 (or 8 or maybe 7?) but everytime I think of getting one out to play with, I wonder where I will put the giant monitors and such.
Now, this little 9" black and white Mac Classic, on the other hand, has all the 4Mb of RAM it needs to run Fool's Errand and all the old Infocom text adventure games, and takes up a comfortably small corner of the desk.
(I also found a Newton MessagePad and Palm Pilot IIIe while cleaning up the other day. I need a bigger attic with a live-in librarian.)
posted by rokusan at 4:53 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Now, this little 9" black and white Mac Classic, on the other hand, has all the 4Mb of RAM it needs to run Fool's Errand and all the old Infocom text adventure games, and takes up a comfortably small corner of the desk.
(I also found a Newton MessagePad and Palm Pilot IIIe while cleaning up the other day. I need a bigger attic with a live-in librarian.)
posted by rokusan at 4:53 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I still have a Newton and a Visor and a Palm Pilot somewhere and had several over the years, but I've never had a smart phone. I don't know what that means. I think by the time hand held devices could do all things I was already over it.
posted by bongo_x at 4:58 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by bongo_x at 4:58 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Computers run software on hardware, and most of that vintage hardware will die soon. its very difficult to replace one SMT part when you have an exact match; how do you replace caps that aren't made any longer, and have no new-old stock?
posted by infinitewindow at 4:58 PM on September 17, 2016
posted by infinitewindow at 4:58 PM on September 17, 2016
Oh, Fool's Errand... You ate so much of my life 25 years ago... I heart you.
posted by hippybear at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
You mean the ones that offer 5 and 7 years of lifecycle support respectively
Yes.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:31 PM on September 17, 2016
Yes.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:31 PM on September 17, 2016
I wonder where I will put the giant monitors and such
Every once in awhile I regret giving away my Amiga 3000 and then I think of the monitor it requires and the regret goes away.
posted by juiceCake at 5:39 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Every once in awhile I regret giving away my Amiga 3000 and then I think of the monitor it requires and the regret goes away.
posted by juiceCake at 5:39 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Anyway I have an old GMac that is like forty pounds of heavy and 0.5 cubic feet of garage-taking-up, so if anyone reading this thread wants it pls let me know.
posted by infinitewindow at 5:40 PM on September 17, 2016
posted by infinitewindow at 5:40 PM on September 17, 2016
Hmm, don't like Swift all that much either.
Not to derail too much, but I'd be curious to hear why. I like Swift a lot, and most of my programmer colleagues and friends (who work with iOS or OS X) agree. Sure, it's not perfect, but no programming language is.
posted by primethyme at 5:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Not to derail too much, but I'd be curious to hear why. I like Swift a lot, and most of my programmer colleagues and friends (who work with iOS or OS X) agree. Sure, it's not perfect, but no programming language is.
posted by primethyme at 5:40 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Another true story: Weigh-Tronix designed the WI-110 weight indicator in 1981 around the TMS9981 microprocessor and its support chip family. It had a few peripherals, such as a setpoint output card, a serial output card, and a then state of the art Binary Coded Decimal parallel output card. I was given to understand that the firmware was coded in Forth.
They continued to make that indicator until 1997. At some point they switched to the TMS9995 but the same peripheral boards still worked and you could replace a 1981 main board with a 1995 main board and all the rest of the electronics would Just Work.
The only reason they stopped making the WI-110 was that Texas Instruments discontinued the microprocessor family. This meant there was no practical way to make a new main board that would support the old form factor and peripherals, and so they kind of gave up.
So they came out with a new state of the art instrument with much better electronics, the WI-127. It shipped with a "WI-110 compatibility mode" which was supposed to ensure that the old stuff could still be supported. But in fact it wasn't compatible at all; in particular the serial data outputs didn't match the WI-110, which had a very particular protocol, and there was no way to get it to match. There was no support for BCD which was highly obsolete but also heavily used in a lot of high-speed systems which were built when serial UART's were still a hundred bucks a pop. And the setpoint electrical interface was completely different and the adapter, which only allowed 3 setpoints instead of the WI-110's ten, was very expensive.
We had literally thousands of WI-110's in the field in 1997. It was a venerable, trusted, reliable, and well known design. A lot of expensive stuff had been built around it. The chaos caused by its sudden discontinuation lasted well into the new century. It made my company a fair bit of money but also lost us some disillusioned customers.
In 1995 I was fond of saying the way WT maintained the WI-110 was a model for how industrial equipment should be supported. Yes, it got to be ridiculously expensive for what it was, a two thousand dollar computer that couldn't hold a candle to an Apple ][. But the people who used and needed them were happy to pay for them because all their support systems Just Worked with it.
Unfortunately, nobody, even WT, does that any more for even half the time they supported the WI-110.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
They continued to make that indicator until 1997. At some point they switched to the TMS9995 but the same peripheral boards still worked and you could replace a 1981 main board with a 1995 main board and all the rest of the electronics would Just Work.
The only reason they stopped making the WI-110 was that Texas Instruments discontinued the microprocessor family. This meant there was no practical way to make a new main board that would support the old form factor and peripherals, and so they kind of gave up.
So they came out with a new state of the art instrument with much better electronics, the WI-127. It shipped with a "WI-110 compatibility mode" which was supposed to ensure that the old stuff could still be supported. But in fact it wasn't compatible at all; in particular the serial data outputs didn't match the WI-110, which had a very particular protocol, and there was no way to get it to match. There was no support for BCD which was highly obsolete but also heavily used in a lot of high-speed systems which were built when serial UART's were still a hundred bucks a pop. And the setpoint electrical interface was completely different and the adapter, which only allowed 3 setpoints instead of the WI-110's ten, was very expensive.
We had literally thousands of WI-110's in the field in 1997. It was a venerable, trusted, reliable, and well known design. A lot of expensive stuff had been built around it. The chaos caused by its sudden discontinuation lasted well into the new century. It made my company a fair bit of money but also lost us some disillusioned customers.
In 1995 I was fond of saying the way WT maintained the WI-110 was a model for how industrial equipment should be supported. Yes, it got to be ridiculously expensive for what it was, a two thousand dollar computer that couldn't hold a candle to an Apple ][. But the people who used and needed them were happy to pay for them because all their support systems Just Worked with it.
Unfortunately, nobody, even WT, does that any more for even half the time they supported the WI-110.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
why someone doesn't just rebuild Gnome 3 or KDE as a clone of BeOS or OS 9
IIRC a big part of the appeal of BeOS was not just the UX design but also how responsive and "fast" it felt given the hardware, and how well it accomplished things like low-latency sound. Even on comparatively much beefier hardware X11 starts to feel frustratingly clunky pretty quickly, and getting low-latency audio out of your average Linux distribution is a total pain in the butt (because it's not really built to do that naturally). BeOS relied heavily on asynchrony and multithreading, which apparently was both a blessing and a curse, because it was a pain to code for, relatively speaking. Now, to me at least, it seems pretty prescient.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:35 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
IIRC a big part of the appeal of BeOS was not just the UX design but also how responsive and "fast" it felt given the hardware, and how well it accomplished things like low-latency sound. Even on comparatively much beefier hardware X11 starts to feel frustratingly clunky pretty quickly, and getting low-latency audio out of your average Linux distribution is a total pain in the butt (because it's not really built to do that naturally). BeOS relied heavily on asynchrony and multithreading, which apparently was both a blessing and a curse, because it was a pain to code for, relatively speaking. Now, to me at least, it seems pretty prescient.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:35 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
And store the mix information on floppy disk
Which is why there are now quite a few companies out there making industrial-grade floppy drive emulators which are compatible with old machines. I have one in my 1982 ti-99/4a peripheral expansion box because I got tired of trying to source 5.25 DD disks.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:44 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Which is why there are now quite a few companies out there making industrial-grade floppy drive emulators which are compatible with old machines. I have one in my 1982 ti-99/4a peripheral expansion box because I got tired of trying to source 5.25 DD disks.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:44 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
[the dock] it's one of the more obviously hare-brained UNIXland GUI ideas, that makes even less sense on 16:9 screens. It's one of those things that I installed on FooStep at some point in the 90s and thought, this is annoying. it gets in the way of my windows
Yeah the first thing you should do is move it to the side. Where it's fine & good actually.
posted by fleacircus at 8:00 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yeah the first thing you should do is move it to the side. Where it's fine & good actually.
posted by fleacircus at 8:00 PM on September 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Windows XP was supported for nearly 13 years, which is almost forever for a specific OS version. Supporting it was expensive and was actively holding back development of important features, not the least of which were badly needed security improvements. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
That computer was bought maybe 2-3 years before support ended; they were selling computers with XP until the end. I didn't expect MS to support a 13-year old product, but a product they had sold me a very short time earlier.
That said, it runs perfectly well, except for that annoying pop-up window reminding me that it's not supported.
posted by jb at 8:26 PM on September 17, 2016
That computer was bought maybe 2-3 years before support ended; they were selling computers with XP until the end. I didn't expect MS to support a 13-year old product, but a product they had sold me a very short time earlier.
That said, it runs perfectly well, except for that annoying pop-up window reminding me that it's not supported.
posted by jb at 8:26 PM on September 17, 2016
I miss OS 9 pretty much not at all. I waited to upgrade to OS X until 10.2 because printing is important in the printing business, and I had to run Classic mode for a long time. I had TypeStyler files I need to be able to open, & Adobe took their damn sweet time about rolling Streamline into Illustrator as the Trace option. (Frankly, Trace still isn't as good, though at CS 5 it started to get useful).
But as far as booting it? I don't care to. I do have to keep a PPC machine around, currently a 1.67 PowerBook G4 running 10.5.8 so I can use my Nikon CoolscanV, which you will pry from my cold, dead hands. It has all the Applied Science Fiction plugins (Digital ROC, ICE...) that make the software unique & wonderful. I have a dual 1.25 tower in the garage that I will rehabilitate if the PB dies. The scanning must go on.
In the "modern" world, my 2008 Mac Pro is parked at 10.9 & chews up Logic Pro X like a champ, & handles a 25,000 item Lightroom collection pretty well, too. Not bitching at all. Very solid piece of hardware. Never goes down.
Just finally upgraded my 2012 13" MBP (DVD drive) to OS 10.11 last week- it's running it fine, but yeah, all the notifications & things that go boing are godawful distracting when I'm trying to focus on what the hell a client means in an email.
I do kinda miss themes a little bit. I kinda don't miss troubleshooting extensions whatsoever.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:31 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
But as far as booting it? I don't care to. I do have to keep a PPC machine around, currently a 1.67 PowerBook G4 running 10.5.8 so I can use my Nikon CoolscanV, which you will pry from my cold, dead hands. It has all the Applied Science Fiction plugins (Digital ROC, ICE...) that make the software unique & wonderful. I have a dual 1.25 tower in the garage that I will rehabilitate if the PB dies. The scanning must go on.
In the "modern" world, my 2008 Mac Pro is parked at 10.9 & chews up Logic Pro X like a champ, & handles a 25,000 item Lightroom collection pretty well, too. Not bitching at all. Very solid piece of hardware. Never goes down.
Just finally upgraded my 2012 13" MBP (DVD drive) to OS 10.11 last week- it's running it fine, but yeah, all the notifications & things that go boing are godawful distracting when I'm trying to focus on what the hell a client means in an email.
I do kinda miss themes a little bit. I kinda don't miss troubleshooting extensions whatsoever.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:31 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I still use OS 9! Not on a daily basis, and not for "real work," but I still use HyperCard for some personal projects.
posted by modernserf at 9:49 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by modernserf at 9:49 PM on September 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Windows XP was supported for nearly 13 years, which is almost forever for a specific OS version. Supporting it was expensive and was actively holding back development of important features, not the least of which were badly needed security improvements. It's not economically viable to support operating systems indefinitely.
Yeh yeh yeh whatev...
Windows XP still used by large number of companies in Eastern Europe
UK government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support
Simple Hack Gives Windows XP Users 5 More Years Of Support
Microsoft built something that worked, worked well, and people were happy and satisfied using it. By people, I mean Microsoft customers. Customers who would have been ecstatically happy to pay an annual service fee–like the nations listed above–to be able to continue to use their XP machines.
Bare in mind, when Microsoft really, really (but not really) ended support for XP, a third of the United States was still using XP. Do you have any idea how many XP machines just got dumped because of Microsoft's decision?
And by dumped I mean in the garbage. Most computer users don't even know how to change RAM. Work arounds for continuing to use 32-bit machines (which still run extraordinarily well) to watch YouTube videos, check email and Facebook, and use Office are outside the scope of most user's technical experience. SO THE MACHINES WENT INTO THE GARAGE OR GARBAGE.
How do I know most of this? Because I run a program which sends computer work stations to schools in other countries. So I watched this whole thing play out–and still watch it play out–first hand. Microsoft was really just over people using the software they used to sell (Office) that now they rent annually.
Like jb said, I hate planned obsolescence but let's admit that this is where capitalism has led us to at the moment. It didn't have to go this way, regardless that XP was supported for 13 years, but it did. When people say don't be sucky what they mean is do the opposite of how Microsoft played their customers, the world, and the future. But hey maybe one day the future will dig up all those XP machines that got ditched and discover 30 million oh-well garbage dump time capsule hard drives from that time the Microsoft dinosaur hit the planet with a market-contrived asteroid and pretended to extinct XP.
And I say pretended because it's nearly 2017 and like it or not there are plenty of machines still running XP in the US today. Which is a message to all product-selling, customer loyalty-wanting corporations: When people do use your product and just want to keep using it, when you have something new you want them to buy put some extra effort in ways to be less sucky.
posted by Mike Mongo at 6:25 AM on September 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
Yeh yeh yeh whatev...
Windows XP still used by large number of companies in Eastern Europe
UK government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support
Simple Hack Gives Windows XP Users 5 More Years Of Support
Microsoft built something that worked, worked well, and people were happy and satisfied using it. By people, I mean Microsoft customers. Customers who would have been ecstatically happy to pay an annual service fee–like the nations listed above–to be able to continue to use their XP machines.
Bare in mind, when Microsoft really, really (but not really) ended support for XP, a third of the United States was still using XP. Do you have any idea how many XP machines just got dumped because of Microsoft's decision?
And by dumped I mean in the garbage. Most computer users don't even know how to change RAM. Work arounds for continuing to use 32-bit machines (which still run extraordinarily well) to watch YouTube videos, check email and Facebook, and use Office are outside the scope of most user's technical experience. SO THE MACHINES WENT INTO THE GARAGE OR GARBAGE.
How do I know most of this? Because I run a program which sends computer work stations to schools in other countries. So I watched this whole thing play out–and still watch it play out–first hand. Microsoft was really just over people using the software they used to sell (Office) that now they rent annually.
Like jb said, I hate planned obsolescence but let's admit that this is where capitalism has led us to at the moment. It didn't have to go this way, regardless that XP was supported for 13 years, but it did. When people say don't be sucky what they mean is do the opposite of how Microsoft played their customers, the world, and the future. But hey maybe one day the future will dig up all those XP machines that got ditched and discover 30 million oh-well garbage dump time capsule hard drives from that time the Microsoft dinosaur hit the planet with a market-contrived asteroid and pretended to extinct XP.
And I say pretended because it's nearly 2017 and like it or not there are plenty of machines still running XP in the US today. Which is a message to all product-selling, customer loyalty-wanting corporations: When people do use your product and just want to keep using it, when you have something new you want them to buy put some extra effort in ways to be less sucky.
posted by Mike Mongo at 6:25 AM on September 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
I like Swift a lot, and most of my programmer colleagues and friends (who work with iOS or OS X) agree.
my dayjob now is mostly TypeScript and C# . . .
The former is an evolved JS while C# has a decade-plus of rather good development behind it.
Swift is kinda like Dart in that it's close to JS but still its own little world -- and it needs another ~5 years of features to get to the general functionality of C#.
Not a fan of the optionals, just adds a lot of noise to everything.
Telerik's NativeScript (TypeScript to iOS (!)) is interesting to me but I guess not there yet, and Xamarin's stuff has always been attractive to me and seems to be getting good enough to move onto.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:38 AM on September 18, 2016
my dayjob now is mostly TypeScript and C# . . .
The former is an evolved JS while C# has a decade-plus of rather good development behind it.
Swift is kinda like Dart in that it's close to JS but still its own little world -- and it needs another ~5 years of features to get to the general functionality of C#.
Not a fan of the optionals, just adds a lot of noise to everything.
Telerik's NativeScript (TypeScript to iOS (!)) is interesting to me but I guess not there yet, and Xamarin's stuff has always been attractive to me and seems to be getting good enough to move onto.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:38 AM on September 18, 2016
Windows XP still used by large number of companies in Eastern Europe
The business practices of companies in Eastern Europe are not necessarily safe. If you haven't noticed, Russian (and other) hackers have been having a field day in the former Soviet Union. Would you suggest that it's safe to dump pollutants into rivers just because some Eastern European companies do so?
Simple Hack Gives Windows XP Users 5 More Years Of Support
The level of patching that MS is doing for what is designed as an embedded OS does not mean that it's protected for the ways that consumers use it.
Customers who would have been ecstatically happy to pay an annual service fee–like the nations listed above–to be able to continue to use their XP machines.
I'd suggest that you're wildly overestimating the will of people to pay money for support. Also, that paid support wasn't "just like before but for money" level support, it was a limited number of high importance patches with no SLA.
this is where capitalism has led us to at the moment.
Yes. It is indeed tragic that people need to be paid to do development work. How many Linux distributions that were released in 2001 have patches available today? It's open source and freely available, after all, and has a small army of paid and volunteer people working on it. Debian Woody came out after XP did in 2002. And ... was EOLed in 2006.
Trying to retrofit things like ASLR and the sandbox improvements of IE 7+ into XP would have been prohibitively expensive. Do you have experience with the kernel and security changes that occurred after XP? A lot of things changed under the hood that consumers are blissfully unaware of but have made them significantly more secure. If you think the randsomware epidemic is bad right now, it would be much worse without them.
And frankly, consumers need to step up and start taking some responsibility for being informed. Microsoft ceased licensing XP in 2008 except to netbooks, which ended in 2010, which was timed to be a year after Windows 7 shipped (basically acknowledging that Vista had significant problems).
I'm all in favor of sensible reuse of computer parts, but there also comes a time that the power draw of older equipment makes it not worth it, especially if it's being sent to a developing nation where power is limited. An old P4 or early Core2Duo can be replaced in many cases with a Raspberry Pi, which runs on a fraction of the power required by the CPU alone on ancient XP era systems.
they were selling computers with XP until the end.
No, they weren't. The last time Microsoft licensed XP to a manufacturer was 2010.
posted by Candleman at 12:27 PM on September 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
The business practices of companies in Eastern Europe are not necessarily safe. If you haven't noticed, Russian (and other) hackers have been having a field day in the former Soviet Union. Would you suggest that it's safe to dump pollutants into rivers just because some Eastern European companies do so?
Simple Hack Gives Windows XP Users 5 More Years Of Support
The level of patching that MS is doing for what is designed as an embedded OS does not mean that it's protected for the ways that consumers use it.
Customers who would have been ecstatically happy to pay an annual service fee–like the nations listed above–to be able to continue to use their XP machines.
I'd suggest that you're wildly overestimating the will of people to pay money for support. Also, that paid support wasn't "just like before but for money" level support, it was a limited number of high importance patches with no SLA.
this is where capitalism has led us to at the moment.
Yes. It is indeed tragic that people need to be paid to do development work. How many Linux distributions that were released in 2001 have patches available today? It's open source and freely available, after all, and has a small army of paid and volunteer people working on it. Debian Woody came out after XP did in 2002. And ... was EOLed in 2006.
Trying to retrofit things like ASLR and the sandbox improvements of IE 7+ into XP would have been prohibitively expensive. Do you have experience with the kernel and security changes that occurred after XP? A lot of things changed under the hood that consumers are blissfully unaware of but have made them significantly more secure. If you think the randsomware epidemic is bad right now, it would be much worse without them.
And frankly, consumers need to step up and start taking some responsibility for being informed. Microsoft ceased licensing XP in 2008 except to netbooks, which ended in 2010, which was timed to be a year after Windows 7 shipped (basically acknowledging that Vista had significant problems).
I'm all in favor of sensible reuse of computer parts, but there also comes a time that the power draw of older equipment makes it not worth it, especially if it's being sent to a developing nation where power is limited. An old P4 or early Core2Duo can be replaced in many cases with a Raspberry Pi, which runs on a fraction of the power required by the CPU alone on ancient XP era systems.
they were selling computers with XP until the end.
No, they weren't. The last time Microsoft licensed XP to a manufacturer was 2010.
posted by Candleman at 12:27 PM on September 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'd just like to pop in and mention that I still have my Apple II, and a MacPlus both of which still run. Neither of which has had an update since the 1980s. You kids and your newfangled modern OS.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:21 PM on September 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:21 PM on September 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
Customers who would have been ecstatically happy to pay an annual service fee–like the nations listed above–to be able to continue to use their XP machines.
Given that, in my own experience at least, XP's long life span was caused in no small part specifically by users' unwillingness to spend more on or indeed even pay any real attention to the workings of their computers, this strikes me as… unlikely? I could be way off base. Who knows?
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:32 PM on September 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
Given that, in my own experience at least, XP's long life span was caused in no small part specifically by users' unwillingness to spend more on or indeed even pay any real attention to the workings of their computers, this strikes me as… unlikely? I could be way off base. Who knows?
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:32 PM on September 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
I have a variety of macs from a MacPlus up to a dual-G5 tower, most of which are kept for the sentimental value. I do however have 3 different systems running 10.4 just so that I have multiple redundancy for running Adobe CS1. Is anybody getting rid of a Quadra 950?
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:38 PM on September 18, 2016
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:38 PM on September 18, 2016
Sure, it's not perfect,but no programming language is.
posted by juiceCake at 9:08 PM on September 18, 2016
posted by juiceCake at 9:08 PM on September 18, 2016
I really liked Snow Leopard, too. It was the goatee-Spock version of 10.2.8.
And 7.5 was great (for the early 90s). I miss Oscar in the trash.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:38 PM on September 18, 2016
And 7.5 was great (for the early 90s). I miss Oscar in the trash.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:38 PM on September 18, 2016
I just got rid of a Quadra 800. I have a laser printer and kb (that awesome Apple extended kb Apple made in the early 90s) that I'm giving away.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:49 PM on September 18, 2016
posted by persona au gratin at 11:49 PM on September 18, 2016
Aww, man, I can't believe I missed this thread when it was still hopping... now no one will ever get to see my story about the half-billion dollar company where I worked for almost a decade, whose flagship product was a heavily-modified HyperCard stack contorted to the very limits of the two-decade-old product's capabilities. When they dropped PPC support, Apple never bothered writing a port of HyperCard for Intel hardware (because who still uses fucking HYPERCARD?), so my office had a basement full of old OS9 and PPC-era OSX 10.2 machines, which got replenished from Ebay every so often as the editorial staff's machines died of old age. By the time they finally replaced it (I want to say... 3 years ago? 4?), the existing hardware was failing faster than they could find vintage replacements, and the IT folks had a lot of worried faces when they looked at the converging trend lines.
Did I mention that this was a half-billion dollar company? Wacky antiquated hardware is everywhere.
posted by Mayor West at 5:14 AM on September 19, 2016 [8 favorites]
Did I mention that this was a half-billion dollar company? Wacky antiquated hardware is everywhere.
posted by Mayor West at 5:14 AM on September 19, 2016 [8 favorites]
It can talk to my (now obsolete) iPhone 5s,
Hang on, the iPhone 5s is supported by iOS 10 (even the 5 is supported), and it's a 64-bit device so very likely to be supported by 11 if not 12. How is it obsolete?
(Compare to the average Android phone, where if you're still getting software updates 6 months after you bought it you're doing well)
posted by grahamparks at 5:25 AM on September 19, 2016
Hang on, the iPhone 5s is supported by iOS 10 (even the 5 is supported), and it's a 64-bit device so very likely to be supported by 11 if not 12. How is it obsolete?
(Compare to the average Android phone, where if you're still getting software updates 6 months after you bought it you're doing well)
posted by grahamparks at 5:25 AM on September 19, 2016
If I had an older desktop Mac I would totally install OS9 - just to be able to play the original Deus Ex. That was a great game.
posted by jammy at 8:18 AM on September 19, 2016
posted by jammy at 8:18 AM on September 19, 2016
/This is usually a sign of hardware degradation or an application problem
Updating my 2010 Mac Mini from 10.6 to 10.9 made it slow immediately and forever. Upping the RAM to 8 GB did nothing.
I had a similar experience updating an iPhone 4 to iOS 7.
I still use the Mini, as a Plex server. It works well as a server (as well as you can expect Plex to work), but I try to keep my interactive use of it to a minimum.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:09 AM on September 19, 2016
Updating my 2010 Mac Mini from 10.6 to 10.9 made it slow immediately and forever. Upping the RAM to 8 GB did nothing.
I had a similar experience updating an iPhone 4 to iOS 7.
I still use the Mini, as a Plex server. It works well as a server (as well as you can expect Plex to work), but I try to keep my interactive use of it to a minimum.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:09 AM on September 19, 2016
now no one will ever get to see my story about the half-billion dollar company where I worked for almost a decade, whose flagship product was a heavily-modified HyperCard stack contorted to the very limits of the two-decade-old product's capabilities.
I want to know what this product was.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:01 AM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
I want to know what this product was.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:01 AM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
I want to know what this product was.
Well... I hesitate to call them out directly, though I guess it's water under the bridge now that they've migrated to a cutting-edge Microsoft Sharepoint ecosystem. *rictus grin*
This company was in other ways very up to date on their hardware, despite the rather glaring choice they made to devote several man-years worth of DBA and developer time to coming up with a database replication model that worked via materialized views and a web app that knew when it could trust the local database and when it couldn't, despite the monstrous licensing fees they paid (and still pay, AFAIK) to Oracle for their database-without-full-replication product.
Anyway. Yes. Very up to date on other matters, my former employer was. By its apex, that HyperCard stack had enough plaintext stored in it that it wouldn't fit on the largest commercially-available hard drive available when HyperCard was first released.
posted by Mayor West at 11:59 AM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well... I hesitate to call them out directly, though I guess it's water under the bridge now that they've migrated to a cutting-edge Microsoft Sharepoint ecosystem. *rictus grin*
This company was in other ways very up to date on their hardware, despite the rather glaring choice they made to devote several man-years worth of DBA and developer time to coming up with a database replication model that worked via materialized views and a web app that knew when it could trust the local database and when it couldn't, despite the monstrous licensing fees they paid (and still pay, AFAIK) to Oracle for their database-without-full-replication product.
Anyway. Yes. Very up to date on other matters, my former employer was. By its apex, that HyperCard stack had enough plaintext stored in it that it wouldn't fit on the largest commercially-available hard drive available when HyperCard was first released.
posted by Mayor West at 11:59 AM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
Maybe I've just had exceptional luck with Apple products — especially Macs — but in my own experience I've definitely not had lost performance from OS updates. A friend of mine who used to work for Apple actually once told me that they have an internal rule that newer versions of operating systems should run faster on the same hardware.*
*in the last couple of years, I've heard the iOS team has required some employees to use older iPhones as their daily-use phones, to help keep them from forgetting about older hardware. Of course, iOS device hardware has been improving at a rate akin to the desktop computer industry in the late nineties, while the Mac line is mature enough that they've just stopped updating the hardware (grumble grump), so.
Granted, I've never owned a Mac Mini, etc. etc. edge cases, so my mileage may vary. Generally, though, if a computer gets Really Slow in my experience, it's usually been a sign of hard disk failure.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:45 PM on September 19, 2016
*in the last couple of years, I've heard the iOS team has required some employees to use older iPhones as their daily-use phones, to help keep them from forgetting about older hardware. Of course, iOS device hardware has been improving at a rate akin to the desktop computer industry in the late nineties, while the Mac line is mature enough that they've just stopped updating the hardware (grumble grump), so.
Granted, I've never owned a Mac Mini, etc. etc. edge cases, so my mileage may vary. Generally, though, if a computer gets Really Slow in my experience, it's usually been a sign of hard disk failure.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:45 PM on September 19, 2016
"I think their only real innovation has been in marketing for several years."
Literal, actual, LOL.
I don't think Apple's guilty of "planned obsolescence" on this (or, really, any other) front. They're just not especially interested in maintaining the kind of forever-legacy-support that has hamstrung the Windows world. I'm glad of that.
Even so, though, when they made a leap, they kept up backwards compatibility for a while. OS X kept a "Classic" mode around until 10.4, which was 4 years after the shift to OS X -- and of course you could just stay at Tiger for a few years after that, if you weren't quite done with the OS 9 app in question. Rosetta allowed Intel Macs to run PPC code between 10.4 and the last rev of 10.6. In both cases, vendors and users had plenty of time to plan their transition off the older platforms.
I switched to the Mac in 1999 or so because, while Win98 and OS9 were both kinda crashy, the overall usability of the Mac was WAY better, and the Mac laptops could do amazing things like "sleep without crashing." Plus, they booted faster. As I was an Office docs kind of guy at the time, there was nothing really holding me in Windows.
Then the crash happened, and I found myself coding again -- but in a LAMP-y way, and OS X happened right at the right time. A commercial OS with actual apps AND a delicious Unixy center? Sign me up!
"It just goes against how we were raised. "
Nah. It's just that the digital world has *always* moved super fast. People within it understand that; people outside it don't. We're actually at a bit of a stasis point now; a 4- or 5-year-old computer isn't worthless in 2016, but 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, 3-4 years was a HELL of a long time for any laptop to survive. A desktop would live a little longer, because you could upgrade it in pieces.
"My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year."
You were REALLY hard on it, or you got a lemon, because in my 20 years of laptop computing the only vendor to rival Apple's build quality and durability (outside of purpose-built things like Panasonic Toughbooks) is classic-era IBM Thinkpads.
"Maybe I've just had exceptional luck with Apple products — especially Macs — but in my own experience I've definitely not had lost performance from OS updates."
Me either. Typically, it's a speed bump.
But I never take the first rev, either.
posted by uberchet at 4:01 PM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
Literal, actual, LOL.
I don't think Apple's guilty of "planned obsolescence" on this (or, really, any other) front. They're just not especially interested in maintaining the kind of forever-legacy-support that has hamstrung the Windows world. I'm glad of that.
Even so, though, when they made a leap, they kept up backwards compatibility for a while. OS X kept a "Classic" mode around until 10.4, which was 4 years after the shift to OS X -- and of course you could just stay at Tiger for a few years after that, if you weren't quite done with the OS 9 app in question. Rosetta allowed Intel Macs to run PPC code between 10.4 and the last rev of 10.6. In both cases, vendors and users had plenty of time to plan their transition off the older platforms.
I switched to the Mac in 1999 or so because, while Win98 and OS9 were both kinda crashy, the overall usability of the Mac was WAY better, and the Mac laptops could do amazing things like "sleep without crashing." Plus, they booted faster. As I was an Office docs kind of guy at the time, there was nothing really holding me in Windows.
Then the crash happened, and I found myself coding again -- but in a LAMP-y way, and OS X happened right at the right time. A commercial OS with actual apps AND a delicious Unixy center? Sign me up!
"It just goes against how we were raised. "
Nah. It's just that the digital world has *always* moved super fast. People within it understand that; people outside it don't. We're actually at a bit of a stasis point now; a 4- or 5-year-old computer isn't worthless in 2016, but 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, 3-4 years was a HELL of a long time for any laptop to survive. A desktop would live a little longer, because you could upgrade it in pieces.
"My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year."
You were REALLY hard on it, or you got a lemon, because in my 20 years of laptop computing the only vendor to rival Apple's build quality and durability (outside of purpose-built things like Panasonic Toughbooks) is classic-era IBM Thinkpads.
"Maybe I've just had exceptional luck with Apple products — especially Macs — but in my own experience I've definitely not had lost performance from OS updates."
Me either. Typically, it's a speed bump.
But I never take the first rev, either.
posted by uberchet at 4:01 PM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
It just goes against how we were raised. "
Nah. It's just that the digital world has *always* moved super fast. People within it understand that;
Oh, I get it having worked in the biz. But it still goes against how I was raised. But such is change. It applies to values as much as to technology. Speaking of which ...
"My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year."
You were REALLY hard on it, or you got a lemon,
Given that I've owned five Windows boxes since 1999 and have never had a hardware issue that required a trip to the shop, I'm pretty sure it was a lemon. Which as I said above, I accept. These things happen in the realm of mass production. What I don't accept is Apple's refusal to replace the box. They just kept fixing it until was out of warranty.
posted by philip-random at 6:09 PM on September 19, 2016
Nah. It's just that the digital world has *always* moved super fast. People within it understand that;
Oh, I get it having worked in the biz. But it still goes against how I was raised. But such is change. It applies to values as much as to technology. Speaking of which ...
"My one experience with Mac hardware (Macbook 08) was that they didn't even build it to last the calendar year."
You were REALLY hard on it, or you got a lemon,
Given that I've owned five Windows boxes since 1999 and have never had a hardware issue that required a trip to the shop, I'm pretty sure it was a lemon. Which as I said above, I accept. These things happen in the realm of mass production. What I don't accept is Apple's refusal to replace the box. They just kept fixing it until was out of warranty.
posted by philip-random at 6:09 PM on September 19, 2016
That is odd phillip-random. My experience has been much different.
I had a laptop, 10 years ago or more though, that had problems and they had trouble fixing it. When I sent it in the 3rd time they just sent me a brand new laptop that was another generation and twice as powerful as the one I had, which was nearly 3 years old at the time.
The last time I needed service, about a year or so ago, was again on a laptop at the end of my applecare contract. Or should have been. I actually bought it as a store demo when it was already at least a year out of date, then never registered the applecare because there was some mix up. So the computer was 4 or 5 years old. I brought it in to the store, told my sad story, and the guy said "no problem". Spent 15 minutes sorting out the applecare that was screwy because of the demo situation, then replaced the whole case and keyboard because it had a crack, and told me they tested the battery and it was old so gave me a new one of those too.
That's nothing compared to the service they had when I got my first mac in the mid 90's. I bought a refurb cheap from a weird warehouse dealer and at some point it had problems. I called service and they said "where are you?" "What? I'm at work." They took my address and within an hour or so a guy shows up at my work. He replaces the motherboard and says "There you go" and left. I never signed anything, I never showed any proof of purchase, they didn't even ask where or when I bought it, nothing except "where are you?"
To summarize; I'm cheap and Apple has lost money on me.
posted by bongo_x at 6:52 PM on September 19, 2016 [3 favorites]
I had a laptop, 10 years ago or more though, that had problems and they had trouble fixing it. When I sent it in the 3rd time they just sent me a brand new laptop that was another generation and twice as powerful as the one I had, which was nearly 3 years old at the time.
The last time I needed service, about a year or so ago, was again on a laptop at the end of my applecare contract. Or should have been. I actually bought it as a store demo when it was already at least a year out of date, then never registered the applecare because there was some mix up. So the computer was 4 or 5 years old. I brought it in to the store, told my sad story, and the guy said "no problem". Spent 15 minutes sorting out the applecare that was screwy because of the demo situation, then replaced the whole case and keyboard because it had a crack, and told me they tested the battery and it was old so gave me a new one of those too.
That's nothing compared to the service they had when I got my first mac in the mid 90's. I bought a refurb cheap from a weird warehouse dealer and at some point it had problems. I called service and they said "where are you?" "What? I'm at work." They took my address and within an hour or so a guy shows up at my work. He replaces the motherboard and says "There you go" and left. I never signed anything, I never showed any proof of purchase, they didn't even ask where or when I bought it, nothing except "where are you?"
To summarize; I'm cheap and Apple has lost money on me.
posted by bongo_x at 6:52 PM on September 19, 2016 [3 favorites]
Okay, so I finally got around to installing Classila on my 1998 G3 PowerBook Wallstreet with System 9.2. And here I am, posting from it on metaflilter!
For an 18-year old computer, it performs surprisingly well on the modern internet.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:15 PM on September 27, 2016 [8 favorites]
For an 18-year old computer, it performs surprisingly well on the modern internet.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:15 PM on September 27, 2016 [8 favorites]
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Also, I think their only real innovation has been in marketing for several years.
posted by Samizdata at 3:07 AM on September 17, 2016 [5 favorites]