Before OSX

[robh]

I've a feeling that many people now using OSX have switched to Apple hardware because of OSX.

So, what were you using before OSX, and why did you choose OSX ?

Me, I never liked "classic" MacOS and come from a unix background, ultrix, sunos, solaris, hpux, freebsd. I switched to OSX because it was unix with mainstream commercial support (hardware and software).

Your turn.

[griffman]

I was using prior versions of the OS, and had never used UNIX (beyond an occasional 'ls' on a web server!) before OS X.

I switched primarily because I was tired of crashes in OS 9, and it was apparent that the multi-tasking was not very good. I wasn't aware just how bad it was until I started using OS X :-).

-rob.

[balthisar]

Let's see.... started on the Commodore Pet, then Apple ][, then Commodore Vic 20, TRS-80 MC10, TI-994A, C=64, C=128, C=128-CP/M, Tandy CoCo, Tandy PC-clone/DOS, Amiga 1000/2000/500, Windows 3.11, Win95/98/NT4/Me/XP, and of course the Mac+/SE/SE30/ColorClassic/Quadra636/PowerMac6400, and now WinXP/MacOSX/PowerBook/iMac.

Whew!

I have tried Linux in the past, but for my purposes it was useless -- Windows and Mac OS were always "nicer" despite the crashes. Having BSDish OS with an actual, useful interface is great.

BUT, I'm a little miffed that my "iMac only" scanner and my FireWire CD-burner (made by a Mac OS-only company!) both work better under XP than on Mac OS X! And that's with the "built-in" drivers!

[Phil St. Romain]

During the past few years, I've only bought Macs for home and work, so I was using OS 9. There were years when we owned PCs running DOS and Windows 3.1. As Macs became more affordable, we made the switch. Having our kids use Macs in school didn't hurt anything, as that's what they wanted at home as well (let's hear one for Apple's Education marketing strategy).

There are places where I consult that use PCs. At one of them, the work station I'm assigned to uses Rev. 1 of Win. 95 on a PC with 16 RAM, 1 G hard drive, and 100 mhz speed. It's got NAV set-up, and they use Netscape for email and web browsing. After I click on Netscape to open it, there's time to go down the hall, get coffee, and return before it's up. Seriously!! After using that thing for awhile, no one would ever say that OS X is slow!

We're all X at home now with our 5 Macs on our little network. We like it for its stability and most of us also like Aqua. :D

Phil

[Schep]

I was using my Mac Plus running Mac os 7.1.1
then i got my iMac with os x

Schep :)
still use Plus for old shool games

[edlake]

My first computer was made by RCA. Of course, I didn't own it, but I input data into it. I couldn't actually enter the room it was in because I didn't work in that department. The computer was owned by Chase Manhattan Bank.

I've "used" other mainframes including IBM, Control Data and Honeywell. Also custom programmed CP/M type machines (no OS, just user programs), typesetting computers (DEC 11-44), Osborne I, Kaypro, IBM PC (original one), Apple ][, Mac SE, Mac II, SE 30, FX, ci, Quadra 800, Centris 650, 7100, Motorola StarMax, Power Mac G3 (beige), and my G4 (450 SP). Not to forget my Amiga 1000/2000/3000 (which I still have). Also various Windows machines, simply because I had to.:D

[rusto]

Sinclair ZX81, Apple ][c, Mac512K, Centris 660AV, Centris6100/66 and finally my current B&w G3/350.

Also moved quickly (was beta user) to OS X due to distaste for crashiness of previous Mac OS.

[zs]

Some tape driven machine in elementary school, Apple II-IIGs, Mac LCs and Performas all through school.

Through college, I've used a few versions of Windows, DOS, AS/400, and my favorite, DEC UNIX. I did all of my C/C++ programming on a terminal networked to the school's Alpha machine.

LC II, Performa 5200CD (oooo- a CD ROM! ;) ), PPC G3, iMac are all machines my family owns/has owned.

For me, my very first machine was a Power Computing Power Center Pro 210. That eventually broke and over the last year I have been using a G4 450DP and I absolutely love it!

[rmblair]

"So, what were you using before OSX, and why did you choose OSX ?"

Almost 2 years ago we bought our first Mac --- iMac DV SE 400MHz Graphite w/128MB, Epson 740i, Agfa DuoScan 1212 --- because our old Gateway P-I 66MHz with 16MB and a 20MB HD circa 1994 was obviously seriously dated (brought home when company was updating/standardizing desktops). We wanted internet access at home, but I had concerns about the safety of Windows on the 'Net vis-a-vis viruses, especially for my computer-illiterate wife. A good investment and no problems in the interim. (My wife has yet to open a virus!) The long view then was OS X was coming and I wanted at least a starter platform.

I have been using computers computers since the original IBM PC with 64KB and no HD. Went thru DOS versions 2.11 - 6.22. Ran OS/2 versions 1.0 - 3.0...and liked it, especially versus Windows. Windows 3.1 thru (currently at work) 2000. Occasionally even played some with the now-defunct corporate mainframes --- IBM and Amdahl, and hankered after Unix. I like OS X best of all.

My peripherals all work under OS X. I find the Aqua interface interesting and easy to use (my wife can use it to retrieve email with Mail and Internet Connect via modem). At this point in time I am very pleased. The responsiveness of my iMac, now with 1GB RAM, is very comparable to the IBM ThinkPad T21 P-III 800 with 128MB under Win2K I use everyday at work...if not better.

5/10 years ago I would never have considered a Mac. In fact, I considered Macs somewhat toy-like. But after I convinced my computer-limited sister-in-law and brother to buy one of the original B/W units, with which they are quite happy after adding 256MB RAM and pushing to Mac OS 8.6, I more or less had to eat my own cooking (read recommendation) or face an irate sister-in-law.

I especially like the included developer tools, and to this point, have been favorably impressed with Apple's support of the new OS. The ability to run Unix/Linux applications is a big plus. Overall system stability has been outstanding. And, the user community with folks like Griffman leading the way is exemplary.

Make mine OS X. However, I still do not like Mac OS 9.x.x. It was never a comfortable fit. I always felt my options were too limited and everything was too structured.

Long-winded boB

[aiBoek]

I've had a Commodore 64, an Amiga 500, a Mac Plus at home, then worked on a DEC Alpha running DEC UNIX at University (still do, and like it), some Windoze boxes at university (3.11, 95, 98), a Linux box, and occasionally some other Unix flavours. I like Unix, but there's some things you don't do on Unix, like DTP, and the GUI isn't what it should be.
Then there's some Macs at my work running OS 9.1. I like MacOS, but it crashes rather often (I work for a magazine, doing the layout and things like that; you wouldn't believe how often those two macs at the office crash when the deadline's approaching! :mad: ) and for some things Unix is just a lot more powerful.
I've bought an iBook last september and I'm really happy with it. OS X is exactly what I've been looking for for quite some time. It still has its flaws, but the concept is just perfect, and it has the potential to become the single best allround OS.

aiBoek

[stephenfleming]

NCR Century 100 (COBOL), CDC 6600 (Fortran), Cray-1 (yes, I had an account on one back in 1979... it probably had less horsepower than this G4, but GOD, it was sweet then!), PDP-11 (where I learned Unix, but refused to learn C)... all timeshared, of course.

The first computer I "owned" (meaning, not timeshared; actually, my company owned it) ran CP/M. I personally paid money for a TRS-80 and for a Commodore 64, as well as a Sinclair... I forget the model number. I managed to skip DOS entirely, buying my first Mac 128K (one floppy, no hard drive) for $2495 in April 1984. I never looked back.

I've since owned at least one model of every major Macintosh generation (and wish I still owned them... they'd make a great museum!). I helped convert a multinational corporation to Macs for about a decade until they caught the Wintel plague (soon after I quit, coincidentally).

I bought a couple of Dell boxes to use as Linux servers at the office, but those are being migrated to MacOS X Server. Even with the Dells in place, my small company is 100% Windows-free.... Linux, MacOS, and PalmOS. And, boy, did I catch flak for that back around 1997 when it looked like Apple was going to die...

I think there are thirteen Macs in the house at the moment, but some are probably only good for parts. Anybody need a 10 meg (not 10 gig!) external hard disk? Cheap? :)

[yuriwho]

Started with an Apple ][e at home, PetCommodores at high school later additional IBM PC's (XT & AT) at home. Then mix of early mac & windows computers at university along with vax's & VMS in compsci classes. At grad school, mostly macs & SGI's provided my first unix knowledge. Continued with macs for many years through 7.5.5-9 with SGI's for the heavy lifting. As soon as OS X PB arrived I dove in the deep end....My platforms have been united.

I'm still in the pool treading water, just learned drownproofing. Hope to be able to perform rescues soon.

Y

[tomsinclair]

Started with a Vic-20, moved to a C-64, then an Amiga 500.

When Commodore was flushing itself down the toilet, I looked into other platforms and decided that the Macintosh was the most likeable and bought a PowerMac 8100/110 running System 7.5.1.

During the Clone Wars..er, Years, I purchased a Power Computing PowerTower Pro 225 which I later upgraded to a 250 MHz G3. (I still have it but I'm running LinuxPPC on it instead.)

For portability, I picked up a 5300cs and had (contrary to folklore) very little trouble with it. (However, I do still kick myself at not getting the active matrix screen.)

Later I got one of the first Wall Streets (the G3 250 with the 13" screen). That ran OS 8.1 at first but I upgraded to 8.5 then 8.6 (my favorite) then 9.0 then 9.04 then 9.1 then 9.1.2 then finally OS X with the Public Beta.

OS X performance wasn't very good on the Wall Street (despite 320 MB RAM) but the stability was so outstanding that I stayed in X as much as possible.

I recently sold the Wall Street and am now the proud owner of a TiBook 667.

Professionally, my background is in computer science with an emphasis on UNIX (BSD, SysV, Solaris, HP-UX) and smattering of other systems. However, I didn't like any of them as a personal desktop and thought that Windows was a waste of my time so I kept with MacOS and had my patience rewarded with OS X, which gave me the best of both worlds.

[Tyger]

AmigaOS 3.1 of course.

OS 4.0 and 5.0 are on the way...

[sao]

Always, forever Macintosh...and now my new love and concubine, is "Unix"...

Started with a Classic Macintosh with 400k floppies.
Then a Powerbook 140 with 40 MB HD and 8 MB RAM.
Upgraded to PPC with a 6100 with 250 MB HD.
Later a Power Mac 8500 with 1 GB HD and 256 RAM.
Today, my whole household screams Macs:
My son (12) iMac DVSE 400 Mhz, 13 GB HD 512 RAM complains he needs a bigger HD to play his games in OS X . (He don't want to use OS 9.2.1 anymore)
My wife, uses a brand new iBook with a Palm V,
I go by with my old Powerbook G3, upgraded to 30 GB HD and 640 RAM, which I use with a Visor DeLuxe...
...and a new Power Mac G4 867 with superDrive 100 GB internal and 30 GB external HD and 1.1 GB RAM, with Apple 17 inch Flat screen Display.

(Extra info: Minolta digital Camera Dimage 7)

A long, long way since my small Classic...

and OS 10.1.2 Rocks...!

Cheers,

[Fletch]

Before OSX I was using OS9.

My first mac was a B/W G3/350 and before that was a Gateway. *sigh* yeah..I admit it..

But at least I switched to macs :D I love OSX and can't wait for all the smaller apps to go out of the beta stage!

Thanks for the forums Rob...great site!

[lerkfish]

I started using a macplus for deadline production somewhere around 1984 (5?) it had no hard drive, and one 400k floppy had the system, and one 400k floppy had the macdraw (shudders) we printed to the first generation 3 dpi apple printers (ok not that low but it seems like it)
When we bought a 20 mb hard drive, I was in heaven! (it was a Supermac! this was back in the days of the zebra macpaint lady)
ahh...memories.

since then, I've used most of the mac models at one time or another at work, but at home, I've only owned:
macplus
IIsi
Motorola Starmax clone (miss the clones!)
G4/400 yikes


The only reason I didnt upgrade more often is the extremely frugal nature of my wife, who is worse than the bean counters at work. Everytime I want an upgrade I practically have to break the machine before she'll allow it!
:)

[JayBee]

Low funds have always forced my upgrades to be few, and pretty far between. However, here's the short list:

Commodore VIC 20
- man, I loved this beast. Was about 3 years old when I got it, and was totally addicted to it for many, many years... mmmm. BASIC.

Sinclair Spectrum ZX 48k
- hooo yeah! Rubber keys, a dodgy powerpack that eventually caught fire, and Jet Set Willy. Got this as a cast-off from older relatives. This machine ate a frightening number of kiddie-hours.

Atari 520 STFM
- Ah, the bitter debates, the dividing of partisans, the fights, the tears. But it WAS way better than the Amiga ;) This machine got me through high school, and taught me the joys of pixel art.

AMD K6/166
- My current winBox, hardly the same machine I bought - new CPU, two new drives (after the original did a nose-dive a year ago), new graphics board, more memory, DVD/CD-RW, and win2k in place of the original win95.

and last, but not least:

iBook SE 366 (Graphite)
- bought refurb'd in 2000. Was in the market to buy a laptop, and had also always wanted a Mac - had used them extensively in school (and they could read ST disks, which was handy), and loved the OS - very similar to GEM from a GUI standpoint. I keep telling people the story about me using the iBook exclusively for about a month after I got it, and then went back to the PC and kept losing work - I had gotten out of the windows-acquired habit of saving my work every five minutes...

And then OS X arrived. It's been my workhorse since PB, and it just keeps getting better. I only boot into 9 these days when I need to... erm... when I need to... to...

I'll get back to you on that one.

JayBee

[peepster]

I'm not going to write a complete history of Operating Systems I've used previously but I've used most of them.
Recently I've been running Linux at home (popping into Windows every now and then for some VB programming) and HPUnix at work. I bought into OS X for a couple of reasons. One of them was the new iBook, a beautiful laptop. I hadn't been keeping up with the Mac world much and I was thinking of getting an iBook and sticking Linux on it when I found out about X. It's Unix they said and I had to have it. Apple's years of experience in user-friendly front-end design on top of a rock solid unix foundation was too good to miss out on, even if it would need a little work and time to get right. So far, apart from the odd issue, I love it... can't wait for an update though. At the moment each one makes a big difference and I can't get enough of that 'ooooh, they've fixed that problem' and 'wooooow, that's fast now' :)

[Electric Sheep]

I've installed and used quite a few OSes over the years:

Mac OS X
Mac OS 9/8/7/6
Windows 3.1/95/98
IBM OS/2 Warp
BeOS (ver 2 IIRC)
LinuxPPC
NetBSD

I also tried to get NeXTSTEP for Intel up and running, but failed miserably :)

But I've used Mac OS (in some form) as my primary for as long as I can remember.

[xchanyazy]

Let's see

1984 (Age 2, OS ? - 6) - Dad get's one of the first Mac's to be shipped to the U of Michigan's store. Many hours happily spent with macdraw, eventually moving up to games (who remembers Let's Get Tanked?). The good old days of trading 400/800 k floppies at MUG's and connecting to a local BBS at 1200 baud

1994 (12, 7-7.5.1) - Family gets a PM 7100, running at an astonishing 66 mHz. Painful memory: Installing MS Office from floppy disks

1997 (15, 7.5 - 9.0.2) - Family gets a Performa 6400/180. Angry because old games stopped working. Confused by the computer not being under the monitor. Eventually upgraded to a G3/333(ish?)

2000 (18, 9.0.2 - X.1.2; LinuxPPC; Xfree86 w/ gnome) - Bought myself a G4/500 AGP for college. I rule.

Some other insignificant things happened in there (my parents say I have a little brother), but this is what really sticks out in my mind.

[melg]

Originally posted by Tyger
AmigaOS 3.1 of course.

OS 4.0 and 5.0 are on the way...
And I thought I was the only one. :cool:

[Tyger]

Melg, no way man!

I am having to live with OS X at the moment (which I love) but can't wait for the big day anytime now...

You might like my website...

[melg]

Originally posted by Tyger

You might like my website...

Please post your site. It didn't show up in the message.

melg

[Tyger]

http://www.gonedutch.demon.co.uk/

[WillyT]

I've used lots of systems.

*1968-1969 IBM 360 OS 64K words (64 bit words ie 512K?) OS means tape and disk I remember printing 25 copies of a 3 page graphic(text) writen in FORTRAN. The operator said the paper hit the ceiling. Ink jets had one nozzel per dot clear across the 132 column page.

1970-1977 totaly deprived

1978 PAIA 8700 part of a P4700J kit. Digitally controlled analog synthesizer. Wrote a sequencer for it. Hex entry all the way. Tape storage took 5 min to load 1K. Then sequence played for about 2 minutes. Oh you mean I was supposed to record the AUDIO out to tape?
This unit still works.

1981 TI 99/4 Pretty fast 16 bit 16K. Basic was written in GPL. So you got intrepreted intrepreted Basic (extremely slow)

*1981 5 TI PLC Lader logic only I worked with various and nunerous PLCs from here to present. These were originally called PCs but we all know what happened in 1981.

1983 Radio Shack CoCo CLS 9 (Clear the screen to the 9th out of 8 colors) printed a bad 9 letter word.

1984 C-64 Executive (transportable with built in 4" monitor and s-l-o-w disk drive (about 45 minutes to copy a disk)

*1984 HP 2000 80K Fabriteck Core, Cartrifile tape. This was a Measurex system(One Results Way, Cupertino, CA) at a Firestone Plant(closed December 2001)

*1984 Dec LSI 11/23 256K another Measurex system.

1985 Amiga 1000 Oh wow a COLOR "Mac" and it actually multitasks. I remember having 72 copies of the lines demo running before it GURUed (basicly a Kernal panic)

1988 Amiga 2000 The dealer let me trade in my 1000 plus $800 and then gave the 1000 back to me. Its now updated to 10M (8M 32 bit fast DMA and 2M Chip) 44M Seagate SCSI, Chinon 1X CDROM, 1G Jazz, 68030 33Mhz, MIDI
I STILL use this machine every day.(Absolutely great version of Galaga)



2000 G4 400 MHz 768M 10G and 60G, DVDrom, iomega USB CDRW, HP G85, MOTU Fastlane MIDI, IOGear USB 2.0 pci (I plugged it in and it worked!)
When I first got this I was stuck with OS 9 and was not that impressed (remember I was used to the Amiga) But we're rocking now with OS X.(since April 2001)

* computers I enjoyed working with but didn't own.

I'm trying to forget all those other so-called systems from work.
:cool:

[Tyger]

WillyT: I also am addicted to Galaga on the Amiga!

THE best version period.

[Ron Goodman]

I'm a serious dinosaur. I used to do systems programming on MTS, a timesharing system originated at UMich and shared by a consortium of universities, include Wayne State in Detroit and RPI in Troy. We got a 6100/60 when they came out and I had Linux running on it for a while, but never really liked KDE all that much. As soon as the Public Beta came out I upgraded to a G4 so I could run it, and have pretty much lived in X since then. When I was working on MTS, Unix was just making it's move out of the labs and into the Comp Sci departments, who didn't want anything to do with the mainframe and MTS, so I've been muttering about untuitive command names for a long time. I use the Terminal when I have to, but I'm not a Unix geek in the real sense of the word.

[DanW]

Let's see:

I have owned and used:
1980-1984 (roughly): TRS-80
1986-1990: Mac Plus
1990-1994: SE/30 (still have)
1994-2000: 7100/66 (still have)
2000 on: G4/450
2002 on: iBook 600

I've also spent time over the years, at school and at work, on Apple IIe, DEC PDP 11/70, DEC VAX VMS, Win 3.11, Win 95, Win 98, and Win NT, and of course, Macs from Mac Plus to G4.

I've been booting into OSX on both current machines since January.

[Andrew LaGow]

Here's what I've used over the years:

1990 - Mac IIcx running System 6.04. It was this operating system in the face of the only other OS most people I knew were using -- DOS -- that made me seriously start loving the Mac. Plus I was the first person at my publishing company to seriously understand the implications of what the Mac would bring to our industry. That original Mac IIcx has now been upgraded to a IIci (I had to bore out another hole in the back for the video port) and is acting as my router, running FreeBSD. Hasn't given me one problem since I configured it over a year ago.

1991 (maybe 1992, I forget) - Mac Classic. Bought this for my wife, who's a writer. She used WriteNow almost exclusively for years. Now there was a word processor! It was perfectly tuned to most writers' needs without all the ridiculous bloat of Word.

1995 - Power Computung Power 100. This was one ugly box. But it was a Mac and was a PowerPC! I was disappointed that I wasn't getting Photoshop in real time the way I hoped (I'm still hoping--once you've seen the Quantel Paintbox, you understand what Photoshop aspires to be), but what the heck...

1996 (I think) - Powerbook 5300. This laptop was every bit as bad as its reputation. It never worked right, always crashing. Pkus it was grayscale and that always cheesed me.

1998 - G3 233. Very nice. Kids use it for games now. I have 8.6 on it because I find the memory requirements of 9 and above to be a bit onerous and I'm not willing to put any more money into hardware for that machine.

1999 - Took advantage of the Powerbook trade-in program and ditched that stupid 5300 for a Wallstreet 266. Talk about a work of art. I look at the TiBooks and iBooks every now and then, but this laptop, running Mac OS 8.6 is so very functional I can't imagine I'll need another for quite a while still.

2000 - PowerMac G4 DP 450. This is my OS X box. OS X has only recently become workable on this machine, but since that time I've been very pleased. Waiting for Photoshop 7 now (pant, pant).

Andy