Well Apple put
more effort into OSX then they did with their first UNIX
(A/UX). OSX pre 10.3.x sucks.
10.2 was the first OS X we found production-ready for graphic arts and
pre-press, but Adobe and Quark had a few years of catching up to do
after that before they could match the stability of OS9 workflows.
Amusingly, one of the apps I require Classic for is QuarkXPress 4.x,
mostly because I am a tightwad and not interested in buying a new copy for
the relatively few times I use it (primarily for creating posters for
medical and research conventions). For that matter, Photoshop 7, the last
version that doesn't require Adobe's annoying registration process, won't
run on 10.5 even though it is Carbon and doesn't require Classic. I'm not
buying a new copy of that either if I don't have to.
10.2 was definitely the first OS X that was ready to go. 10.1 just had too
many gaps and Apple was still mucking with the internals (notice that a small
but significant set of technologies like docklets didn't make it to 10.2).
There are also at least two good reasons to run 10.2: its Classic is more
compatible with certain applications than 10.3 and 10.4, mostly games, because
its windows are not double buffered (the entertaining METAL BASIC crashes
with certain operations on 10.3 and 10.4 because of this, and the original
Mac port of DOOM flickers badly on 10.3+), and it could still mount classic
non-AFP-over-TCP volumes from the Classic Chooser. I used my 10.2.8 G4 to
mount the EtherTalk-based NetBSD IIci as a network share by mounting it in
the Chooser from Classic, a trick that doesn't work properly with 10.3 and
doesn't work at all with 10.4. If you are primarily working with Classic apps
and require OS X infrequently, 10.2 is probably your best bet. I'd still be
running it on my MDD except that I put a 1.8GHz G4 upgrade in it, which works
great with OS 9.2.2 but does NOT work with anything prior to 10.3.5 (!).
Strange that OS 9 supports 7447 G4s better than 10.2.
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Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems *
www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at
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