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Mac OS 9

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Re: Mac OS 9

#211

Post by TacticalCoder »

Oh the memories! I've spent countless hours on MacOS 8 and then 9 IIRC, running QuarkXPress to do professional desktop publishing. Mostly on a beige Powermac G3 tower. I still have that computer somewhere in a garage, don't know if it still boots and still has my software of yore installed.

Our physical tools of the trade were Iomega Zip drives and Iomega Zip disks (100 MB then 250 MB IIRC), Apple II Extended keyboard (the M3501, with ALPS switches: incredible keyboards for the time), HP LaserJet printers (600 and then 1200 dpi) and Sony Trinitron CRTs.

Re: Mac OS 9

#212

Post by dTal »

philistine wrote: post #113
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the lack of a proper fullscreen function...

Believe it or not, full screen apps are a Windows thing. Apple has added full screen app support only recently, and any Windows convert who has switched to macOS and has problems adapting to its UI has one thing in common: they haven’t let go of the idea that all apps need to use the whole screen at all times.

>full screen apps are a Windows thing

And iOS. Funny, that!

Re: Mac OS 9

#213

Post by matthewmacleod »

truetraveller wrote: post #155
slowmotarget wrote: post #10

It's a great reminder of how well MacOS 9 UI and UX were designed, and how space efficient the whole OS was on screen. Even the window handle bars were subtly shadowed, the window shadows evolved when they were collapsed. Like Windows 95 at the time, Mac OS 9 was a beautiful work of interaction design.

Mac UX is far worse compared to Windows, in my opinion. I feel very claustrophobic using it. How do you live without a simple maximize button? "Maximimze to contents" is ambiguous, and in practice, does not work at all for most apps. I find myself having to "manually" maximize windows. And now, I don't want a third party app. To add to this, even after I "maximimze" windows, I have an ugly menu bar at the top, in add…

If they’re anything like this, almost none of your frustrations are going to be objective - they are going to be things that grate on you because of the design and interaction models you are used to.

There’s nothing wrong with that! You’re allowed to prefer particular approaches. It’s like when I use Windows or Ubuntu, and get frustrated at how particular interactions work. It’s not because the Mac is objectively better, but because I’m used to it.

(Except for the keyboard shortcuts. Distinct control/option/command keys is objectively better and I will die on this hill.)

Re: Mac OS 9

#214

Post by GoofballJones »

Now you just need QuarkXpress loaded on it and use a weird 3rd party font manager to load the customers weird fonts....and then have it simulate crashing every 5 minutes or so.

Would really bring back that OS 9 feeling.

Re: Mac OS 9

#215

Post by CydeWeys »

mihaip wrote: post #165

I'm the creator of the site, thanks for the submission. This is an in-progress port of the SheepShaver emulator to WebAssembly/Emscripten, https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/34 is tracking the remaining work. If you're interested in running older Mac software in the browser, the BasiliskII-based sites at https://system7.app/ and https://macos8.app/ may be better bets. They will boot faster and have fewer c…

Awesome, this is so cool! I remember MacOS 9 with a mix of fondness, hatred, and nostaglia. OS X was definitely a big improvement when it came out (I remember OS 9 having so many crashes), but some of the charm was definitely lost.

And these .app domain names you're all using in this space are great and totally apt. I love to see great usages of my work in the wild like this.

Re: Mac OS 9

#216

Post by npteljes »

truetraveller wrote: post #183
deergomoo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you live without a simple maximize button? Why would I want a webpage which stops showing additional content after ~1200 pixels wide to take up the entire of my 2560px wide monitor?

Because it removes the clutter of your desktop + other windows. I think many would agree. Sure, there are times you need to see windows side-by-side, and there is affordance for that. But mostly, a person is doing one task at a time.

I'm this person. I have a hard time focusing on one, never mind more than one - in a similar vein, notifications are also disabled / minimized.

Re: Mac OS 9

#217

Post by kccqzy »

klodolph wrote: post #184
realgeniushere wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a funny cope. > Believe it or not, full screen apps are a Windows thing. Nope. It’s just that maximizing—single action to expand a window the whole screen minus the OS docks/taskbars—is present in every widely used OS except for Mac OS. > they haven’t let go of the idea that all apps need to use the whole screen at all times Not sure where you’re getting “at all times” from. Windows and Linux desktops all eas…

Prior to full-screen mode on macOS, you would option-click the window resize button to resize it to the full size of the screen. This still works. It just doesn’t snap.

That's a Zoom button not a Maximize button. Apps like Safari zoom based on the content, not the screen.

Re: Mac OS 9

#218

Post by eyesee »

azinman2 wrote: post #123
slowmotarget wrote: post #10

It's a great reminder of how well MacOS 9 UI and UX were designed, and how space efficient the whole OS was on screen. Even the window handle bars were subtly shadowed, the window shadows evolved when they were collapsed. Like Windows 95 at the time, Mac OS 9 was a beautiful work of interaction design.

You say that but I’ve recently been programming an app in system 7, which isn’t totally dissimilar to 9 in UX, and I keep thinking “wow how did I ever use this.” Windows constantly occluding each other, no easy way to switch between them outside of the mouse, finder windows filled with grids that I have to scroll through, no easy way to just see the desktop, etc. Current macOS is miles ahead in usability.

It’s interesting: my recollection of that period was I rarely stored anything on the desktop. The file system was so much smaller and easier to handle that I stored things in folders and didn’t have trouble finding them again. Not until OS X did I pick up the desktop-as-staging-area habit because navigation was so painful.

Re: Mac OS 9

#219

Post by azinman2 »

eyesee wrote: post #218
azinman2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that but I’ve recently been programming an app in system 7, which isn’t totally dissimilar to 9 in UX, and I keep thinking “wow how did I ever use this.” Windows constantly occluding each other, no easy way to switch between them outside of the mouse, finder windows filled with grids that I have to scroll through, no easy way to just see the desktop, etc. Current macOS is miles ahead in usability.

It’s interesting: my recollection of that period was I rarely stored anything on the desktop. The file system was so much smaller and easier to handle that I stored things in folders and didn’t have trouble finding them again. Not until OS X did I pick up the desktop-as-staging-area habit because navigation was so painful.

But then how do you easily navigate / launch apps? Dig thru your folder trees each time in Finder? Most apps I’m finding have folder structures with a bunch of aux files. It’s not so seemless as a dock or even a start menu.

Back even then I used my desktop heavily too.

Re: Mac OS 9

#220

Post by kccqzy »

truetraveller wrote: post #182
philwelch wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you live without a simple maximize button? Classic Mac OS apps did not put the entire application UI in a single full screen window. Instead, it was typical for an application to contain multiple windows that could all be visible at once. > To add to this, the "top" menu bar is lame. This is related. In Windows, the entire UI of the app is contained in a single window, which you would typically maximize to f…

I understand all of that. And that is precisely my point. Isolate everything concerning an app to its own window, and allow that to be maximized. If an app has multiple windows, contain them within the main app window. Don't pollute the "global" window space with app-specific windows.

> If an app has multiple windows, contain them within the main app window.

This advice is actually rarely followed by apps regardless of whether they are on Windows or Mac. Consider Microsoft Word; if you open two Word documents, does Microsoft Word open two windows or does it open one main app window and then contain both documents in a single window? Are you aware of this Microsoft concept called MDI?

It sounds like you were used to iOS where each app has but one window and you'd prefer that to be the case on desktop operating systems like Mac or Windows. There's nothing with preferring that, but it's against decades of desktop computing tradition.

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