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People who used older macintosh OS in the 90s, what was it like for your daily use, work, games etc? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by Tekkip20@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I have uses the newer OS's of Mac but never the classic series that were numbered.

For those who have used apple computing back in the day, what was it like using it? Was it a lot more snappier and better user interface intuitiveness?

I say this because it always seemed to me that the macintosh operating systems seemed to be more.. "smooth sailing" than Bill's 50/50 BSOD contraptions (Windows ME anyone?)

Obviously things have changed a lot more with newer macos being more fisher priced down in looks but I'd really like to know what you guys thought about OS 8 or 9!

Thank you!

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 3 months ago

I loved it dearly. There were lots of cool customizations that were possible because the OS wasn't locked down pre-internet. There was a system extension to have Oscar the Grouch pop up in the Trash and sing when deleting files. There were GUI customizations that radically changed the interface. iTunes Visualizer was amazing to watch while playing music on LSD.

Someone figured out how to trick the AOL client to think you were in their Support section (which wasn't billed against your allotment of monthly hours) and released AOL4Free so you could run forever without extra billing. Eudora was a fine email client that I only remember because other people talk about how much they liked it. I was too young to work and so received very few emails at the time, but I know I hated whatever came after it; I think maybe Outlook Express? We had to troubleshoot system extensions that had incompatibilities and used a tool that aided in a binary search of disabling some systematically across reboots. You could customize apps with a tool called ResEdit (a resource fork editor for attributes like icons and buttons).

The most important part (to me) at the time: The text looked beautiful. I could never understand how anyone using the janky Windows fonts didn't look at MacOS and immediately think to themselves, wtf my computer must be garbage. Being a publishing-first platform really made our typefaces shine by comparison.