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Since the release of OS X, something of a schism has developed in the Mac community between those who have enthusiastically embraced the new operating system, and those who remained unconvinced and continue to use the Classic Mac OS.

The former group tend to regard the Classic holdouts as Luddite stick-in-the-muds, hanging onto what the X-istas are wont to refer to as an antiquated, obsolete OS. The latter faction counter that OS X is slower than OS 9 in many important respects, a lot less flexible and user-friendly in other important respects, has support issues with some of the things they need to do, and that OS 9 simply does a better, more efficient job for them on the balance.

As readers of my OS X Odyssey column here on Applelinks will be aware, I am sort of in the latter camp. I’ve diligently been trying to learn and like OS X for nearly a year now, but continue to use OS 9 for most of my production work, not least because I find that I can get that work done about 20 to 30% faster in OS 9.1 or 9.2,2 running on a 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook, than I can in OS X.

But it’s not just speed that makes me more comfortable and happy in OS 9. OS X is pretty and flashy, and I’ve actually come to prefer its Aqua appearance to the Classic OS Platinum, but I still find the way the old Mac Os works a lot more elegant and user-friendly Mac OS X.

I don’t hate OS X. There are many aspects of it that I like very much: the appearance as noted; the easy and productive multitasking; the rock-solid basic system stability (although I find that some OS X applications crash annoyingly often). I don’t have any trouble switching back and forth between the two systems, and after a year, I find OS X pretty much as intuitively familiar as the old OS. Since I’ve installed OS 10.2 Jaguar, I’ve been using OS X a lot more for work that I had been, and indeed I’m working in it right now as I edit this article. However, overall I still don’t like using it it as much as I do OS 9. There’s no bias or prejudice here. I WANT to like OS X, and I want it to do a better job for me than the old OS does. But it doesn’t -- yet.

I appreciate that OS X is the future of the Mac platform, and I will continue my Odyssey, but I’m not convinced that the elegance of the 1984-2002 Mac OS is likely to ever be matched by all OS X. It’s the end of an era.

I was thinking about these things the other day while piling firewood, which I find a good catalyst for contemplative analysis. The thought occurred to me that one of the biggest distinctions between OS X and the Classic Mac OS is that the latter was the computer OS for people who don’t like computers.

What I mean here by “people who don’t like computers,” is folks who have little or no interest in computers as an end in themselves, but rather regard them as tools or appliances -- a means to an end -- that they want to just work as efficiently, easily, and unobtrusively as possible. The old Macintosh slogan: “The Computer For The Rest Of Us” was explicit acknowledgment and affirmation of that cohort, which I am a member of.

In terms of personal taste, I prefer analog to digital, mechanical to electric or electronic, manual to automatic, simple to complex. I would rather use hand tools for woodworking than power tools. I like manual focus cameras and stick shifts in automobiles.

I paid very little attention to computers at all until the early ‘90s, even though my former business partner nearly a decade earlier was a programmer for a large corporation as his day job, and had personal computers around. I studiously and stubbornly ignored them for the most part, and continued using my trusty manual typewriters. Actually, I am partial to the even more basic pen and paper for drafting, and continue to use that method by preference to this day.

It was only when I my cousin gave me a surplus Wangwriter II digital word processor in 1991 that it finally dawned on me that the ability to cut, copy, paste, rearrange, correct, and otherwise manipulate it on a computer screen was a superior and more efficient way to work with text for final edits than on paper or in a typewriter, and the productivity gain facilitated by word-processing was both remarkable and undeniable. I still prefer the aesthetics and tactile feel of pencils and paper and mechanical typewriters, but there was no looking back. I was hooked on the word processor as a writing tool, and in 1992 I bought my first Mac.

The Wangwriter’s menu/command line prompt user interface had been very good -- much more attractive and user-friendly than DOS, but the Mac was a whole new dimension. The razor sharp, one bit, 9 in. screen of the little Mac Plus was a window into a new world, and Microsoft Word 4, and then 5.1, allowed me to do vastly more with text that was ever possible with the old Wang and light years ahead of the typewriter’s capabilities.

Shazam! A computer for people who didn’t really care about the geeky aspects of computers, with a user interface that required no memorization of arcane command line and prompts, not to mention being a lot nicer to look at than a bunch of green or amber text and computer code on a monochrome screen. When you typed a letter it looked like a letter. WYSIWYG! The desktop metaphor made computer use analogical to real-world experience. The mouse served as an extension of your hand with which to reach into cyberspace and arrange things the way you wanted them. I still didn’t know an ‘030 from a 386, and I was still indifferent to computer technology for its own sake, but here was a powerful and attractive tool that was reasonably easy for ordinary people to use.

Over the past decade, I have gradually acquired a lot more knowledge about what goes on behind the computer interface, partly from my son, who does like technology for its own sake, and partly out of necessity. When you live 150 mi. from the nearest Apple dealer, and you depend on your computer for your livelihood, you end up doing most of your own tech support. I’m a quick study in a careful researcher, and since I began writing about Macs as a journalistic pursuit, I also absorbed a lot of information.

However, I’m still no computer technology expert, and don’t pretend to be, any more than, say, the average person who writes for car magazines is an automotive engineer. The social-cultural, philosophical, and economic aspects of computing and the Internet still interest me a lot more than the technical details of hardware and software. I don’t play computer games, or use computers for any sort of recreation. For pleasure, I would rather go for a hike in the woods or read a book. Macs are the tools of my trade.

And as such, I prefer them to remain in the background and “just work,” which they mostly have over the years. The Classic Mac OS, once you get it set up and sorted out to support what you need it to do, is a superbly transparent medium. You interact with the excellent GUI, and simply don’t have to think much about what’s going on underneath the surface. That is, a until it crashes, or you get an extension conflict, or somesuch. I have been blessedly seldom affected by this sort of thing for the most part, and I find OS 9 still a great pleasure to use most of the time.

OS X, on the other hand, despite its spectacular Aqua GUI always seems to be reminding one that UNIX is there just below the surface of toiling away admirably, but not nearly as unobtrusively as the old Mac OS did. Of course, that seems to be one of the reasons why people who like computers and computer technology for their own sake prefer OS X. The real enthusiasts even peel away Aqua and get to into serious command line computing with the Terminal. I certainly don’t disparage this. It is a matter of taste and inclination, and if it weren’t for the tech-oriented folks, there would be no computers or software for the rest of us.

However, I think this distinction goes along the way toward explaining why I personally have not really warmed to OS X. I’m gradually getting to like it better, but I’m always happy to boot back into OS 9, especially when I’m in a hurry and want to get things done quickly and smoothly.

Reader Thomas Bank commented in a recent letter to OS X odyssey Odyssey that even though he finds OS X slower than OS 9, he still likes it a lot better because, in his estimation, “OS X works in the manner that I feel a computer should work. Not necessarily as fast as I would like at times, but in the way I would like.”

Text Edit Plus author Tom Bender said, also in a letter to Odyssey: “I like OS X a lot, but after reading comments about OS X’s listlessness, I sat down and tried to figure out what I liked about it. Why do some folks admire OS X’s performance and some don’t? Maybe people with newer systems just don’t notice the interface sluggishness. That could be part of it, but I think there’s more... why do I meticulously avoid booting back into 9, or even launching the Classic mode? Is it because OS 9 is so “clunky” in comparison to X? Perhaps, but how can I tolerate this loss in performance and productivity?...

“OS X has introduced us to the concepts of true concurrency and true crash resistance. With OS X, I can listen to my iTunes AND download 100 megs of graphic files AND recompile a million lines of code AND burn a CD while simultaneously writing a letter to my favorite journalist.”

I can appreciate and respect those points of view, but from my perspective, the Classic Mac OS, despite its acknowledged shortcomings, the works for me like a computer OS should.

When the Classic Mac OS X is finally dead and buried, there won’t really be a contemporary computer OS for people who don’t like computers anymore, and that saddens me. OS X will of course get better, and more user-friendly, and I suppose that it’s remarkable how Mac-like they’ve actually been able to make it, but I remain to be convinced that it will ever achieve the wonderful levelled off and intuitive, subtle elegance of its predecessor.

Charles W. Moore

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