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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

10.4 was such a beautiful operating system. I really believe that Apple had the best operating system out there for the short window that 10.4 was around.

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I still use 10.4 on a 2005 PowerMac several times a week for various creative projects.

The ease of use is so much higher than recent MacOS versions it's not even funny.

What software are you using? Is the machine connected to the internet?

I played with 10.4 for the first time relatively recently. I was using VMWare Fusion, which isn't supposed to support OS's prior to Leopard, and Tiger crashed frequently as a result. So I can't fairly evaluate stability, although it was definitely speedy.

But, in terms of visual design... I don't think it's as pretty as Leopard, but what I find intriguing is how well it matches the hardware design of the era. On a Powerbook or PowerPC iMac, I can imagine how the contents of the screen would perfectly match the hardware that framed it.

I don't think Apple has done anything quite like that since...

10.4 was OK but for my money 10.6 was better.

It was, but the rest of the world had caught up quite a bit by then. Recall that when 10.4 was in its prime your options were Windows XP pre-service pack 2, aka, Swiss cheese Windows. The ecosystem of available operating systems really put 10.4 well above the competition.

I agree, 10.4 seemed "complete" (besides lacking Time Machine, which I didn't know I wanted until it was added).

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