I supported the Macintosh Labs at SFU from 1991-1993. Those systems booted off of floppies (which I handed out at the front desk) - and one of my jobs at Harbor Center was, on a weekly basis, running anti-virus off the boot floppies to clean them off.
I also supported the Macintosh Platform at Netscape (HUGE Macintosh house) from 1996-1998. A good portion of the time we ran into a tough problem on the Macs there (by then we had hard drives), our Mac Lead (which I was not) - had us do a "Fresh Install" of the operating system. That pretty much always resolved the problem, but seems kind of invasive nowadays.
I sometimes think we view Mac History through rose colored glasses.
I will agree with you - that damn beachball is annoying. Though, I am happy to say, that as of 10.7.4, it probably only spins for about 5-10 minutes of my day now in aggregate, as compared to the 20-30 minutes a day back in the 10.7.1 era.
Tolerance. I guess I just have less of it. Machines are faster now than they were back then and I am not going to tolerate slow response time just for the sake of the latest version of an OS. Windows is the same game. Upgrade, again and agina and again. All the while, no speed gain. I once worked for a guy who said, "Software is like a gas. It expands to fill space." Nowadays I use UNIX exclusively, as much as I can. Whenever I have to use Windows or Mac it slows me down. With UNIX, I can keep the software expansion contained and enjoy the speed gains as hardware improves.
Everything with computers is a trade-off. I'm happy to make some trade-offs and forgo whatever Cupertino is hawking in order to have flexibility and speed like the "good ole days".
Technically. If you consider The Open Group as some sort of authority. But Apple's OSX shows how meaningless it is to recieve the expensive POSIX "certification" from The Open Group. Alas, there is nothing in the spec about having to actually perform. Nothing that requires clean design or reliability, let alone transparency. I mean, if you want to use UNIX for a commercial product, by all means go ahead, but the least you could do is not ruin it.
"Certified UNIX". Pure marketing. Apple has the budget. There are vastly better UNIX implementations (from which Apple has borrowed copiously) that will never be certified. Go figure.
From where I sit, the most talented coders always seem to hold the POSIX specifications in spite. They do not like them. OSX is proof that they are not being unreasonable by taking that view.
To be clear, I'm not endorsing GNU/Linux. That is a whole 'nother story of UNIX gone bad.
I also supported the Macintosh Platform at Netscape (HUGE Macintosh house) from 1996-1998. A good portion of the time we ran into a tough problem on the Macs there (by then we had hard drives), our Mac Lead (which I was not) - had us do a "Fresh Install" of the operating system. That pretty much always resolved the problem, but seems kind of invasive nowadays.
I sometimes think we view Mac History through rose colored glasses.
I will agree with you - that damn beachball is annoying. Though, I am happy to say, that as of 10.7.4, it probably only spins for about 5-10 minutes of my day now in aggregate, as compared to the 20-30 minutes a day back in the 10.7.1 era.