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0 pointsdeaddodo10mo ago0 comments

If all you did was look at it, sure. OS 8 was a mess internally with an archaic and badly designed kernel. Windows 98 was much better at multitasking, system recovery, process isolation, etc. And that's saying a lot for the BSOD-ridden mess that that was. Then you had NT, which made both look like children's toys.

And that's just in the Microsoft vs Apple camp. If you left that then Unix, BSD, BeOS, etc also blew it out of the water.

MacOS 8 looked pretty, but it was far from a "good" OS.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

indymike10mo ago· 2 in thread

OS 8 was designed to run on 68020 without the mmu so you could run on the Mac II and LC. Likewise, MS was trying to keep backwards compatibility with windows 3.11 era software which led to 98 being a compromise, where NT was a much better os. Incidentally, you could pop in an MMU and install A/UX for a os 8 style ui running Unix underneath on those older Macs.

deaddodoOP10mo ago

A/UX isn’t Mac OS 8.

Your reasoning also isn’t sufficient. The classic Microsoft Kernel was able to support a much wider variety of hardware because it was modular (internally, not architecturally). The classic Macintosh Kernel had a far smaller ecosystem to support and couldn’t even add support for hardware that existed on many of their own devices that would make the kernel on-par with the 9x kernel and be transparent (except for improved usability) for users.

So to recap, OP claimed that OS 8 (not A/UX) was superior to 9x. And that’s simply false. Many consider the 98 kernel garbage, even for its time; and yet it’s objectively better to OS 8’s.

If we’re simply arguing Apple hardware OSes versus Intel options (as you seem to be conflating this to), then the latter still wins with Xenix, any number of Unices, BSD, Linux, etc; all more stable and better supported than A/UX as well as better UI-centered OSes (NT, OS/2, BeOS, XFree86, etc).

indymike10mo ago

> If we’re simply arguing

Not arguing. The context is that MS had much more capable hardware to run 95 on than the 68020 based Macs.

> seem to be conflating

Not really. Just providing some context as to why MS was able to get a jump while Apple got held back by hardware.

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LargoLasskhyfv10mo ago

Can't remember 98 having BSODs. Think that was a thing from NT4 on, and upwards.

98 just crashed, or showed something DOSish white on black before rebooting.

edit: Hrrm. According to Wikipedia it did. Still can't remember that, though.

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