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Written by Michael Salsbury
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Monday, 23 January 2006 |
Earlier today, I read an article on Apple Matters
by Gregory Ng entitled "Mac OS 7.5: Better than Tiger Will Ever Be".
It is one of the few articles I've ever read by the Mac Faithful that
actually takes an honest approach toward Mac OS X (Tiger or
otherwise). In the article, Ng gives his reasons why OS 7.5 is better
than OS X (I'm paraphrasing below):
- Quark XPress was actually built for the OS in OS 7.5. "When you
zoomed in and then quickly Fit Page in Window, you saw the redrawn
screen in an instant. Quark 6 in OS X brings nothing but Spinning
Beachballs of Death."
- OS 7.5 was better with font management. "If you do use FontBook
[in OS X] then clearly graphic design is a hobby for you because you
seriously cannot get anything done with that piece of junk."
- The user interface of OS X has made managing multiple documents
difficult. Opening windows was straightforward in OS 7.5 but not so in
OS X. There is no "windowshade" in OS X.
- OS 7.5 had the ability to crash and come back up relatively
quickly afterward. "Sure, I crashed 5-10 times a day but at least I
knew the timing of the restart process. Sometimes I do a Security
Update [on OS X] on my machine and it takes 10 minutes to restart."
While I don't disagree at all with Ng's article, I would add a lot more to the list:
- Classic Mac OS was easier to troubleshoot and repair. If my
system failed to boot for any reason less serious than a hard disk
failure, I could restore the System Folder from a backup (or, lacking a
backup, from the original OS install CDs) and be back in business.
Since application preferences were stored in one of two places (the
System Folder's Preferences subfolder or the application's own folder)
it was easy to troubleshoot those as well.
- Classic Mac OS was more forgiving of font file corruption. A
mildly corrupted font file in the Classic Mac OS often worked anyway.
A mildly corrupted font file in Mac OS X generally won't work at all.
- Setting up a printer in Classic Mac OS is easier than OS X. In
Classic Mac OS, you went to the Chooser, selected the printer's icon,
clicked on the printer's name, and you were pretty much done. In OS X,
you have to launch the Printer Setup Utility and go through a
relatively lengthy process to set it up.
- The Classic Mac OS interface remained consistent with itself.
Even when Apple added features to the Classic Mac OS interface, those
features were incremental improvements to the existing interface. OS
X, for no reason other than Apple's desire to "think different", moved
the traditional location of certain window controls.
- It was easier to burn a CD in Classic Mac OS. In Classic, I
usually used Toast. To create a CD or DVD in Toast, you launched it,
selected the files you wanted burned to it, clicked a "burn disc"
button, and you were done. In OS X, you create a "burn folder", copy
files into it, and tell the Mac to burn that folder. It's something of
a convoluted process to me, and not terribly intuitive.
- You could mount folders on startup in Classic Mac OS. Yes, I
know you can do this in OS X also, but it's not the simple process it
was in Mac OS 9 and below. A simple checkbox took care of it then.
Now, you have to go mucking about in arcane UNIX-like tools. This is
not a step forward.
- An "Applications" menu used to be possible in Classic Mac OS. I
happen to like the Windows concept of the "Start" button giving me a
menu of the applications I installed on my system. In Classic Mac OS,
that was easy to replicate in the Apple menu. It was handy to be able
to launch an application from there. In OS X, I'd either have to
clutter up the Dock with all my applications, drop a bunch of aliases
on the desktop, or sort out some other way of accomplishing this.
Regardless, it's not going to be the simple and elegant solution I had
in Classic Mac OS.
In short, like Gregory Ng, I don't think OS X improves my productivity
on the Macintosh. In fact, OS X plays a very large part in the reason
I switched from using the Macintosh as my primary platform to using
Windows. I find Windows to now be easier to troubleshoot than OS X,
font management to be simpler, printer setup to be (at least) no more
difficult, the interface to remain consistent (since Windows 95),
CD/DVD burning easier, mounting folders on startup to be automatic, and
the Start menu an elegant solution to locating exactly the application
I want to use right now.
That all being said, there have been a few software packages I've
missed since the Classic Mac OS days. Fortunately, there are Mac
emulators available on Windows that would allow me to run Mac OS 7.5,
8, or 9 if I so choose. These emulators, at least on my Windows
hardware configuration, run the Mac OS at speeds that rival (or beat)
the hardware I was using in those days. All I need to do it buy an old
"junker" Mac to have a license to the ROMs and I'll be good to go...
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Last Updated ( Monday, 30 January 2006 )
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