I think anyone who has used snow leopard when it was current knows its was the best. I still don't think its been matched. So many 'features' have been added to the newer releases its just slowed the OS down. Snow Leopard is installed on my 2011 MacBook Pro and it boots in 8 seconds to the desktop.
I used Mac OS since Leopard and honestly I didn't see that much of a change to Snow Leopard to give it a S tier ranking, definitely a great system and deserving of a A tier tho
Yes, I definitely agree with Snow Leopard being the S tier “big cat” Mac OS X release. Leopard wasn’t too far behind though, and if it were me, I’d put the last “big cat” release Mountain Lion right in between an A and S because it’s integration of features to bridge the Mac and iOS was a springboard for everything to come after that in terms of how tightly knit the 2 are now.
I desperately wanted to try Snow Leopard on real Mac with the sleek first boot intro, especially curious about PowerPC Rosetta, but unfortunately my MacBook Pro just one year after 2011, it just won't boot, although now I've tried on VM, the experience is totally different.
Why exactly do people perceive snow leopard as being so amazing when most of its features were actually introduced with leopard? Is it because it was faster, or just a uniquely shared feeling of nostalgia for the era?
At the start of the video I thought, “Well obviously Snow Leopard is going to be the S-tier.” Glad I was right, but I agree with the community that Tiger is also an S. Both are fantastic operating systems.
Leopard is where I came in. Snow Leopard was the best IMO. Apple needs to go back to introducing a new OS when its ready, instead of every year. The quality dropped notably when they started this and the bugs increased.
Everyone needs to go back to releasing products when there is a reason to release products, instead of just making up false novelty in order to keep up with the pace of competitive oneupsmanship
iOS has suffered similar problems where very annoying bugs were introduced in each major iOS version starting with iOS 13 that took several months to get fixed. iOS version 15 had a bug in Safari that caused all ungrouped tabs to be closed when an external app opened new ungrouped tabs and the total tab count exceeded a certain number (likely 500, because that was the tab limit in the version before tab groups were introduced in iOS Safari). It was only fixed in iOS 16, so I had to just deal with the bug for the major part of a year - not fun. Hopefully macOS isn't suffering such annoying bugs.
Tiger was probably the best: runs on G3, G4, G5, or Intel (except for Classic on Intel); still has Classic mode (dropped in Leopard); most apps built up to 2010 run on it where 10.3 and earlier were dropped by devs fairly quickly and Leopard introduced problems for some older apps; lots of features but relatively lightweight compared to Leopard or later.
Sorry Crazy Ken, but Tiger for Intel never had a retail release. Apple shipped machine specific versions of Tiger for Intel with an Intel machine. Leopard was the first retail version of OS X for Intel and PPC. I.e you couldn’t walk into an Apple Store or BestBuy and purchase a copy and then go home and put it in your Intel Mac. You had to use the disks that came with your machine.
One thing I really wish Apple would do in modern versions of macOS is let us revisit the old themes. I _love_ the Aqua interface. Back when I was a poverty-stricken teen, those round blue buttons, colourful window controls, and pinstripe windows were an aspirational goal for me. I wanted a Mac so badly I used transformation packs on Windows XP to make it look the part, except far far jankier. Right now, I would like nothing more than to be able to switch macOS 12 to a Tiger theme.
I'm still using Tiger and Leopard in various systems (Intel and PowerPC) and I totally agree with your Tier list. Some things you didn't mention: Lion not only dropped Rosetta but also FrontRow, which was absolutely critical for me as I used a 2007 Mac Mini as an "Apple TV 1 on steroids". iSync as well for syncing with my Nokia cellphone. And it was the first Mac OS X that didn't greet you with a way too loud post install welcome melody - I really enjoyed these on my many Leopard installs. AND it needs much more system ressources as Snow Leopard. Over all I hated Lion back then (nowaydays I kinda like it. After all, it is the most futuristic and "path making" Mac OS). Next: I absolutely cannot stand jaguar and panther beeing the same tier, as except for Macs with a Rage 128, panther ran much smoother on the same hardware (notably the ATI eMac and >800 TiBooks). Next is Tiger: I love and hate this one equally. It can be rock stable (esp. 10.4 Server ist dope), has the fastest spotlight index of all cats, needs nearly no ressources, ergo is blazing fast, runs on nearly every new world ROM Mac, runs great on HDDs and has the best Dock appeareance (very futuristic, looking back now). BUT it has the worst SMB implementation of all times. Period. Hate it. Still S-Tier, love you Tiger
5:40 "I was just kitten... KIDDING! I said KIDDING! I need to move on to Panther before I make another catastrophic pun. CAT-astrophi... *KENSORED*" This had me balling my eyes out with laughter. Great job Ken. Wait, was this part scripted or not?
I saw the title of your video and knew instantly you'd go with the absolute best macOS cat release, Snow Leopard. Having used macOS from the 80's, and having been an Apple employee when Snow Leopard released it definitely has my vote for S Tier.
Am I the only one which had bad memories about Mountain Lion? It was kinda slow and very unstable on my late 2009 iMac... Mavericks solve that for me. Also, I've never been a big fan of skeuomorphism as I prefer the look and feel of Windows 8 for example, so...
My mom did the opposite on her back than 2011 13 inch macbook pro, she had mountain lion and upgraded to mavericks, but she wasn't happy at all about mavericks, very unstable and a lot of apps would lock up and crash, so she begged me to put mountain lion back which i did, i used lion on my imac because i liked it, it was fast, responsive and fluid.
Same experience here with Lion, same Late 2009 iMac (important detail: with a Core 2 Duo E7600 and 4GB of RAM). I guess people were just richer than us and were all using brand new Mac Pros lol
My top would have to be Snow Leopard. It wasn't my first step into Mac OS X (that was Tiger), but it was my first step into hackintoshing. I had a Dell Mini 10v netbook, and with minor tweaks it ran Snow Leopard really well.
Snow Leopard was a great OS - an absolute understatement marketing-wise, but so many innovations behind the scenes and also very stable, well-tested. Nowadays, Apple seems to focus more on marketing and somewhat neglect technical excellence...
I used a 2006 black macbook as my daily computer for a while in 2018, and I had the snow leopard disk even though I think it could run up to lion natively but it did it's job so thats the version I am most connected to
When it came to Mac OS X the versions that made a serious difference, um impact are 10.2, 10.4 and yes 10.6. Don't get me wrong 10.5 was a huge upgrade.. and even the last (outside of beta) Mac os version to run on PPC but it wasn't optimal on them systems unless you had really fast IO and lots of memory. Mac OS tiger would work well on almost any G4 Mac and had a very long life giving them Mac's an impressive advantage over the rest. But 10.6 I admit was a massive improvement under the lid and it too had a long life. In fact I bought a copy of 10.5 for my MDD, never installed it... and bought a new Mac pro with 10.6 and used that until 2014. There was litterally nothing in 10.7 that seemed worth upgrading to and still doesn't. Sure, ok so it looks and has a few evolutionary features but nothing stands out as a must have that 10.6 didn't have already and 10.6 looked more professional too. But 10.7 did start that Mac on this new course that it's on today.
I loved Lion. I never had issues; like so many others did.. it's what got me in to OS X (macOS today). But I can see S-Tier going to Snow Leopard. So many loved it.. and was very stable.
You have a very large collection of things from Аpple, and I hope you're doing well in America. (I'm from Russia) I really like your videos. Keep up the good work!
Honestly, it was hard to give up Snow Leopard and go on to the next round of system updates, knowing it would all be continuing to change. Snow Leopard was pretty much perfect in its time.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm going to say Snow Leopard. About 10 years ago I hackintosh'd a Pentium 4 machine with Snow Leopard, and it ran infinitely better than Windows ever did, and everything worked near-enough out the box. Nothing but good experiences I had with that.
Tiger is the best first-generation cat macOS but snow lion is best for second-generation cat macOS. 10.13 is the best third-generation macOS before ARM support. macOS 11 is more stable than mac OS 12 and less resource-hungry. PLEASE SLOW DOWN macOS development and fix the bugs and flaws before adding more API and features.
Usually only the people who joined the Mac world with the Intel switch. 10.6 was ok and better than 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion) but the true Winner was 10.4 (Tiger) - it was so fast and snappy (on PowerPC) and not as bloated like everything that followed.
@@NightDevilMacGeneral 100%. Having switched to Mac during the OS 9 years and using OS X from 10.1 on, 10.4 was the absolute best, with 10.6 being a close second.
@@swiftrealm I‘m not sure if it was the limitations of PPC or the lack of will to optimize for an EOL platform. The G5s were powerful beasts but IBM wanted their weight in Gold in return and didn’t bother making a power saving mobile version. IBM‘s Power Platform is still existent in the HPC market and sure is not limited in its niche.
The first OS X version I used was 10.3 Panther, but my iBook G3 came with a free promotional upgrade to Tiger when I bought it. I liked it, but Snow Leopard was definitely my favorite big cat version. It was so much smoother of an experience overall than Leopard... responsive, stable and full of little QoL improvements. There wasn't much to recommend OS X Lion or Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard, unless you had iDevices, I was a Windows beta tester back in the day and I'm still surprised at how simple and intuitive Snow Leopard is to use over the Windows releases that were out at the time.
9:55 There were actually a couple G4 models that were *officially able to dual boot Leopard and OS9. That means they can have the latest PPC version of OSX (although with a performance hit compared to Tiger and no programs to my knowledge that required it, at least none that worked on G4's) while also being able to run OS9 and 68k programs. *I know there are both ways to install Leopard on G4's that aren't supposed to be powerful enough to run it, as well as ways to put OS9 on later G4's that weren't supposed to run it, and that's not to mention third party emulators, but official support is always interesting.
This was a great episode. And yeah! Tiger and Snow Leopard ftw! So Tiger axed some old G3 processors Leopard axed classic apps and G3 processors Snow Leopard axed PowerPC processors Lion axed Rosetta and 32 Bit Intel processors Mountain Lion axed 32 Bit EFI next version axing old Macs just for no clear reason but performance were Sierra and the following (altho Monterey runs perfectly fine on my 2008 MacBook Pro 17" HiRes) (one of the minor-updates of) Catalina axed 32 Bit Intel code execution
Congrats to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for being the best Big Cat macOS version of all time! (I voted for Tiger (10.4) in regards to compatibility with old and new Macs, but I do agree with others on Snow Leopard.)
Oh, I remember so well when macOS Lion was released, everyone hated it. TH-cam was full of rant videos about how bad the new inverted mouse scroll was. No one liked Launchpad and worst of all, the "Save As" feature was gone, instead documents were automatically saved and every time you launched TextEdit, all previously opened documents were restored. All of those features are still there today, and every time I reinstall macOS, those features are the first to be disabled. Man, I wish I could just reinstall macOS Snow Leopard and use it the way I did back in 2009. I hate how quickly app support becomes obsolete. I could reinstall Windows XP now and find software to make it usable like it was 15 years ago.
Snow Leopard was top tier. Lion would be a B for me, too much skeuomorphism. They got rid of Spaces + Expose and Mission Control was not an adequate replacement at the time. Plus, the Aqua interface got uglier with Lion.
I used os 9.2.2 for long time and first OSX panther a lot on my iMac I video edit a lot I didn't used tiger much I went back to Windows since my snow white iMac CRT went out . However I got use Mountain lion for while and I love it I wish I could afford Mac I would use them for vidoes editing and audio creation mac's are best for that
Never been a mac user outside of the computers at school, but I have used Linux distros quite a bit after I would accidentally destroy the OEM Windows install. It's crazy how many UI features on Linux Mint/Ubuntu seem to have been Mac innovations. Not sure who got them first, but I'm going to assume Mac.
10.8 Mountain Lion 😍 The. Best. OS X. Ever. Period. I remember the time when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion and boyyyy that OS was freaking AMAZING. It made the already perfect Snow Leopard and simply made it better. By the 10.8.5 update it was the most rock solid OS I’ve ever seen and worked with. Oh God the UI, I might be in the minority but damn those Skeuomorphic design looked fantastic 😍
My first Mac OS was version 8.6. I lived the Mac OS X anticipation, disappointment (with Cheetah, which I didn't install and stuck with Mac OS 9) and then joy when Puma came out. I still remember installing Puma on my iMac G3. That first boot on Mac OS X felt like diving into the future.
in hindsight visually Jaguar and Snow Leopard are both the end of an era in terms of the theme of the OS. After both of them big changes in the way the system looks. They should DEFINITELY release a full on Jaguar or Cheetah theme for a modern mac os system imo, that would be amazing. Snow leopard theme would be cool to see as well. It's been long enough, bring it back! Solid color fil be gone!
I think Tiger was the first ''fully baked" OSX. It was a really good system. The leopards had Spaces which I loved. Lion got rid of them for Mission Control...grrr.
My 2012 Macbook Pro, which I still use, and my 2008 Mac Pro that I retired last year. When MacOS 10.10 was released I tired to use it, but both systems slowed down very bad, and had some other problems. I downgraded both back down to 10.9, then when 10.11 released the next year I upgraded them to that and they both were fine. Am I the only person who had trouble with MacOS Yosemite?
I grew up with early versions of OS X. Pre-Tiger OS X for me would be an "F". It was so slow and I remember it being buggy at times. We never had Tiger. It was either Mac Mall or Macworld that ended up scamming my mom when she bought it. They sent us a blank disk and that was it. She ended up having to get the credit card company involved because they refused to issue a refund. Good times. Leopard would be an "A." Snow Leopard is without a doubt S-tier. Lion and Mountain Lion would be B-tier. I believe Lion took away the dock customization. There use to be 3rd party apps that had skins for the Dock.
I started my Mac Journey with Leopard and quickly updated to Snow leopard. Until now, SNOW LEOPARD Truely The BEST, CLEAN, FAST OS X ever, Running Big File Photoshop is like a riding magic carpet.Its smooth as butter. Its Finger Licking GOOD!!
imo ... 10.2 Jaguar is A tier = only b/c it extended the life of alot of the G3 macs Cheetah & Puma are both F tier = they either kept crashing or programs running them also constantly crash. It wasn't surprising since both were in development
Why did Snow Leopard GONE!!, It was the only OS that I had on my MAC's that would take my Film Scanner Well, Now I have to accept my Windows Laptop XP to run my Scanner... Thanks alot COOK...
Come on, no-one really says poo-ma do they? Everyone knows it’s pyoo-ma. 😜 And another thing…what’s this jag-wire thing? It’s jag-u-ar. Jag-wire?! 🤦♂️
I have never used a Mac because they are too freaking expensive compared to PC. And very difficult to upgrade (I love tinkering with my PC.) So, for now (and into the future,) I will stick with PC. Hence I am going with Windows 10.
Aqua never looked like liquid to me. It looked like plastic. As in, it looked like the same double-gloss plastics used on Macintoshes of the time. The pinstriped translucent parts, the blue or gray highlights. Yeah. Looked like a G4 tower or iMac 500 Indigo. By the time they got to Tiger, there was much more smooth white in places, which was like the iMac G4 and the eMac, and a lesser extent the Mac mini. Leopard looked like it was designed to compliment the Titanium Powerbooks and the G5. It wasn't until iOS and Yosemite where it seemed like Apple's graphic design team decided to divorce the look of the OS from the design of the current hardware. That said, I really miss those early days of Mac OS X. I felt like I was part of a special club, getting to use this super-awesome and futuristic new system. Even if none of my Mac OS 9 stuff worked right. I didn't even really try to use Classic, I tried to avoid it and did my best to find OS X equivalents if new versions weren't available. I maintained my OS 9.2.2 or 9.1 or 8.6 setups on my other, older Macs (I had several, from a Powerbook 1400c to a Power Macintosh 6500/250 and a Blue G3 which all stayed on the classic OS). I remember finding new apps and being able to update my OS X workflow and just get into the groove. And I miss my G3 iMac. I still have my G4, but the Radeon video card croaked, so I can't run OS X on it until I replace that. Bleh.
Mac OSX wasn't really a rewritten version of the previous MacOS versions. It was, instead, an updated version of the OpenStep/NeXT OS that was given a new MacOS looking UI. Mac OSX 10.0 had none of the old OS and couldn't run any of the old OS's apps. It couldn't even manage something a elegant as Rosetta. Instead, it had to run a complete virtualized OS 9.2 to give the users access to their old applications. This was something that was very important at the time as there was only one third party commercial "shrinkwrap" application that shipped for 10.0, Macromedia FreeHand.
I love Snow Leopard, I have a external hard drive with Snow Leopard and boot up fast and used my old apps I have paid for back then. I was happy to find out it rank better then all the OS out there on your video! I still have my first iMac 2005? Maybe 2004, It only has Leopard and still works, one thing though, I will not go online because of hackers out there. Again, using the old apps on there and the Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac, works great! The new OS is okay though! thanks for the video, made my day when I watch it!
For me, Tiger was the only S, with Snow Leopard and Jaguar both As. Lion may have introduced a lot of new features, but it also removed PowerPC/Rosetta, so that lowered it to a D for me. Similar with Leopard, removing Classic, even with its new features, dropped it to a D. The original 10.0 release scored a D for me - it was revolutionary, it just wasn't finished. 10.1 got a B - finally a "good" release, but still not quite there, it was Jaguar to me that was the "perfect initial Mac OS X version." Panther added features, but also was a dog on slower systems, while cutting some systems off completely, so it got a C, alongside Mountain Lion.
OSX .0 killed my IMAC G3 HD; then people kept saying you should never buy a .0 software...Companies made small software that disappeared quickly after Apple changed the version. 10.3.9 was to me the best MAC OSX I did lots of great work on my G4 tower. 10.4 was good as 10.5 but small upgrade then 10.6 was the best for the transistion to Intel Macs. 10.7 was supposed to change the desktop being the same as the mobile but they failed it's now coming slower with Ventura.
Although not a big cat, let’s not forget how efficient and refined Mac OS X Mavericks was! I’d say it’s an S-tier contender, hanging out with Tiger, Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion in my book. And the first free version!
Snow Leopard was my true entry into the Apple Ecosystem. I did play games on my Dad’s PPC macs so my first experience with Apple was technically OS 7 or 8 ;)
Having a universal GUI for all screen sizes and screen types, is a bad idea. I use a real computer and a 21 inch screen to do my real work. Not a tablet and most certainly not a smartphone. I want my GUI to take advantage of available screen real-estate. Less confusing icons and more simple buttons with overlaid text. Resolutions are also getting way to high for their screen size, making everything way to tiny. Also, building in notifications and tighter support for social media is becoming very annoying. Those should be separate applications or add ons for smartphone zombies who only use computers for communications and surfing. Phones and tablets are niche products and should not and can not replace real desktops and laptops. FYI...best Mac OS was 8.6, and best OS X version was/is probably OS X 10.6.8.
2009 was just a great year for both Mac OS and Windows. Snow Leopard and Windows 7 we're the best, and are still the best. They are operating systems meant to hand you the controls, no bull. Both OSs now are too overly polished, simplified to the point of unusability and handholdy. Both of which also slowly becoming more of a forced marketplace on your desk replacing what was once yours. One the worst end, for at least MacOS, I gotta say Panther. Used it a lot on my iBook G4 back in the day and wow was just Mac OS Vista
Very instructive with great humor. One question: is Snow Leopard also the best OSX on which to run Final Cut pro 7 ? I am returning to it after years of not having time for video and it still feels great.
It's a shame 10.9 wasn't named after a big cat. It's the last to have the amazing Aqua style, and the first to come with plenty of newer technologies that are still used today. It lost much of the skeumorphic design of specific applications that were still around in Lion and Mountain Lion. It also improved the battery life of my Mac over Mountain Lion. By a lot.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't iOS originally advertised as "OSX for iPhone?" I kinda remember Steve Jobs mentioning something about how iPhone was getting its own version of OSX because I also remember snarking that maybe it'd be called "Kitten."
Apple didn't really seem to know wtf they wanted OSX too look like though. Full aqua and white with pontiac body cladding everywhere was quickly mixed with metallic designs. It was very weird for a while. For some reason I still find OS9 to look fantastic visually.
I got my first home mac at the time of Tiger, although I'd used OS-8 and 9 professionally long before that. I miss the 3D dock. :( For me, Leopard and Snow Leopard were the pinnacle. Lion, sorry to say, is where things started to go wrong. I hated the iOS redesign; I still hate it; I have no idea why Apple or anybody else would think it would be a good idea to try and mimic a 6in phone screen on an OS running on a 27in monitor. Everything seems to be as unintuitive as possible. Keep your phone interface for your phone and leave my Mac alone!
I know it’s not a big cat release, but Mavericks was the single fastest version of MacOS I’ve used to date. It was rock solid stable and kept the beautiful UI and imo one of the best OSes of all time
I was just always disappointed that OS X wasn't called Liger when they announced the switch to Intel. Bred for its skills in magic, of course. And I was equally disappointed that iOS wasn't codenamed Rusty (the smallest of the big cats.)
I was a big Panther fan in part because of OS 9 backwards and I found Spotlight worse than the find feature (maybe I just didn’t know how to use it right but intuitiveness should be a down vote regardless)
I don't even use a Mac until 2015 but I heard a lot of good thing about Snow Leopard. To me it's the quintessential version of Mac OS like Windows 7 did for Windows. Too bad I never got the chance to use it on a proper Snow Leopard era Mac.
Tiger is the clear winner. Leopard *did* run on PowerPC, but not with the same speed that Tiger had. Tiger has many of the modern features we take for granted today, but isn't bogged down with unnecessary features to make it "iOS-like." It also keeps the original aqua interface without too much tacky skeuomorphism. Clear S.
I prefer Leopard over the Snowy variant purely for it’s legacy support. I used that OS numerous times to burn old CD media for 68K Macs with good results.
No idea about Mac OS last time I played around with a Mac OS was back in the middle 90s I think it was 7.5 or something. Never been a huge Apple fan but world needs Apple without competition you got stagnation.
Jaguar wast the first fully usable version OS X, basically the first version I could recommend to be that could replace OS 9. Prior to that, dual booting was a very common thing for me and others I knew.
Enjoy the Mac OS X Big Cat Showdown! 😼
Feel free to suckscribe for more tech episodes every Thursday-and turn on the notifications. 🔔
The video is cool)
Great video so interesting. Could you do one for microsoft windows
"Linode helped meowed ..." Missed almost a pun there Ken :D
I’m your 999th like 😃
There are other wild cats that they still could have used Mac OS Lynx would been cool
I think anyone who has used snow leopard when it was current knows its was the best. I still don't think its been matched.
So many 'features' have been added to the newer releases its just slowed the OS down. Snow Leopard is installed on my 2011 MacBook Pro and it boots in 8 seconds to the desktop.
Agree Hugh, Agree
8 seconds wow
I used Mac OS since Leopard and honestly I didn't see that much of a change to Snow Leopard to give it a S tier ranking, definitely a great system and deserving of a A tier tho
I ran a Snow Leopard hackintosh for a few years. It was, quite frankly, the best MacOS i ever used, and was my gateway into owning real Macs.
I keep thinking they’re going to do a new snow leopard. They should’ve done it a looooong time ago. It’s gotten very sloppy
Yes, I definitely agree with Snow Leopard being the S tier “big cat” Mac OS X release. Leopard wasn’t too far behind though, and if it were me, I’d put the last “big cat” release Mountain Lion right in between an A and S because it’s integration of features to bridge the Mac and iOS was a springboard for everything to come after that in terms of how tightly knit the 2 are now.
I desperately wanted to try Snow Leopard on real Mac with the sleek first boot intro, especially curious about PowerPC Rosetta, but unfortunately my MacBook Pro just one year after 2011, it just won't boot, although now I've tried on VM, the experience is totally different.
My mid 2007 MacBook runs Mac OS X Snow leopard
Why exactly do people perceive snow leopard as being so amazing when most of its features were actually introduced with leopard? Is it because it was faster, or just a uniquely shared feeling of nostalgia for the era?
Snow Leopard was the best because it’s so nostalgic and memories of it are always good for me ;)
Tiger is the best for PowerPC and Snow Leopard is the best for Intel
At the start of the video I thought, “Well obviously Snow Leopard is going to be the S-tier.” Glad I was right, but I agree with the community that Tiger is also an S. Both are fantastic operating systems.
Snow Leopard is awesome but something about nostalgia gets me with Tiger so they both deserve that S tier
Leopard is where I came in. Snow Leopard was the best IMO. Apple needs to go back to introducing a new OS when its ready, instead of every year. The quality dropped notably when they started this and the bugs increased.
Couldn’t agree more
Yep
Everyone needs to go back to releasing products when there is a reason to release products, instead of just making up false novelty in order to keep up with the pace of competitive oneupsmanship
@@jek__ Exactly!
iOS has suffered similar problems where very annoying bugs were introduced in each major iOS version starting with iOS 13 that took several months to get fixed.
iOS version 15 had a bug in Safari that caused all ungrouped tabs to be closed when an external app opened new ungrouped tabs and the total tab count exceeded a certain number (likely 500, because that was the tab limit in the version before tab groups were introduced in iOS Safari). It was only fixed in iOS 16, so I had to just deal with the bug for the major part of a year - not fun. Hopefully macOS isn't suffering such annoying bugs.
Leopard dock lagged like hell on my MacBook Pro Santa Rosa circa 2007. Tiger dock was 60fps smooth back then. I wondered why Apple would allow this.
They were way too obsessed with all the 3D and stuff. There was an easy terminal command to make it flat again though
Tiger was probably the best: runs on G3, G4, G5, or Intel (except for Classic on Intel); still has Classic mode (dropped in Leopard); most apps built up to 2010 run on it where 10.3 and earlier were dropped by devs fairly quickly and Leopard introduced problems for some older apps; lots of features but relatively lightweight compared to Leopard or later.
Now let's rank Classic MacOS versions. System 7.6 is my favorite!
Yeah!! I would love that video
I like MacOS 9.
I like Mac OS 7,8,9/9.1/9.2
Sorry Crazy Ken, but Tiger for Intel never had a retail release. Apple shipped machine specific versions of Tiger for Intel with an Intel machine. Leopard was the first retail version of OS X for Intel and PPC. I.e you couldn’t walk into an Apple Store or BestBuy and purchase a copy and then go home and put it in your Intel Mac. You had to use the disks that came with your machine.
Good to know!
Not watched yet but predicting a snow leopard win. Let’s see…
👀
One thing I really wish Apple would do in modern versions of macOS is let us revisit the old themes. I _love_ the Aqua interface. Back when I was a poverty-stricken teen, those round blue buttons, colourful window controls, and pinstripe windows were an aspirational goal for me. I wanted a Mac so badly I used transformation packs on Windows XP to make it look the part, except far far jankier. Right now, I would like nothing more than to be able to switch macOS 12 to a Tiger theme.
Skeuomorphism is dead unfortunately.
Haha relatable! That was so me
@Sriram Sundar Damn shame too. Even the ugliest skewomorphism designs weren't boring, whereas now its just flat and tired colors.
Snow Leppard was the version we used in my Digital Media class and that was my introduction to Mac. I too give it an S.
I'm still using Tiger and Leopard in various systems (Intel and PowerPC) and I totally agree with your Tier list. Some things you didn't mention: Lion not only dropped Rosetta but also FrontRow, which was absolutely critical for me as I used a 2007 Mac Mini as an "Apple TV 1 on steroids". iSync as well for syncing with my Nokia cellphone. And it was the first Mac OS X that didn't greet you with a way too loud post install welcome melody - I really enjoyed these on my many Leopard installs. AND it needs much more system ressources as Snow Leopard. Over all I hated Lion back then (nowaydays I kinda like it. After all, it is the most futuristic and "path making" Mac OS).
Next: I absolutely cannot stand jaguar and panther beeing the same tier, as except for Macs with a Rage 128, panther ran much smoother on the same hardware (notably the ATI eMac and >800 TiBooks).
Next is Tiger: I love and hate this one equally. It can be rock stable (esp. 10.4 Server ist dope), has the fastest spotlight index of all cats, needs nearly no ressources, ergo is blazing fast, runs on nearly every new world ROM Mac, runs great on HDDs and has the best Dock appeareance (very futuristic, looking back now). BUT it has the worst SMB implementation of all times. Period. Hate it. Still S-Tier, love you Tiger
Snow Leopard is still my favorite. I always have it installed it in a VM so I can use it every so often
I placed my bet on Snow Leopard being the best.
same
5:40 "I was just kitten... KIDDING! I said KIDDING! I need to move on to Panther before I make another catastrophic pun. CAT-astrophi... *KENSORED*" This had me balling my eyes out with laughter. Great job Ken. Wait, was this part scripted or not?
I saw the title of your video and knew instantly you'd go with the absolute best macOS cat release, Snow Leopard. Having used macOS from the 80's, and having been an Apple employee when Snow Leopard released it definitely has my vote for S Tier.
Am I the only one which had bad memories about Mountain Lion? It was kinda slow and very unstable on my late 2009 iMac...
Mavericks solve that for me.
Also, I've never been a big fan of skeuomorphism as I prefer the look and feel of Windows 8 for example, so...
My mom did the opposite on her back than 2011 13 inch macbook pro, she had mountain lion and upgraded to mavericks, but she wasn't happy at all about mavericks, very unstable and a lot of apps would lock up and crash, so she begged me to put mountain lion back which i did, i used lion on my imac because i liked it, it was fast, responsive and fluid.
Same experience here with Lion, same Late 2009 iMac (important detail: with a Core 2 Duo E7600 and 4GB of RAM). I guess people were just richer than us and were all using brand new Mac Pros lol
My top would have to be Snow Leopard. It wasn't my first step into Mac OS X (that was Tiger), but it was my first step into hackintoshing. I had a Dell Mini 10v netbook, and with minor tweaks it ran Snow Leopard really well.
Snow Leopard was a great OS - an absolute understatement marketing-wise, but so many innovations behind the scenes and also very stable, well-tested. Nowadays, Apple seems to focus more on marketing and somewhat neglect technical excellence...
I used a 2006 black macbook as my daily computer for a while in 2018, and I had the snow leopard disk even though I think it could run up to lion natively
but it did it's job so thats the version I am most connected to
Tiger snow and leopard are the best.
5:47
Before I make a *cat* astrophic pun
Cat-a-strophic
(1 KHz sine wave)
When it came to Mac OS X the versions that made a serious difference, um impact are 10.2, 10.4 and yes 10.6. Don't get me wrong 10.5 was a huge upgrade.. and even the last (outside of beta) Mac os version to run on PPC but it wasn't optimal on them systems unless you had really fast IO and lots of memory. Mac OS tiger would work well on almost any G4 Mac and had a very long life giving them Mac's an impressive advantage over the rest. But 10.6 I admit was a massive improvement under the lid and it too had a long life. In fact I bought a copy of 10.5 for my MDD, never installed it... and bought a new Mac pro with 10.6 and used that until 2014. There was litterally nothing in 10.7 that seemed worth upgrading to and still doesn't. Sure, ok so it looks and has a few evolutionary features but nothing stands out as a must have that 10.6 didn't have already and 10.6 looked more professional too. But 10.7 did start that Mac on this new course that it's on today.
I loved Lion. I never had issues; like so many others did.. it's what got me in to OS X (macOS today).
But I can see S-Tier going to Snow Leopard. So many loved it.. and was very stable.
Much as you know, Snow Leopard is the best One.
We all knew that OS X Snow Leopard was gonna be in S tier.
yep
I was prepared to riot if it wasn’t! 🤣
You have a very large collection of things from Аpple, and I hope you're doing well in America. (I'm from Russia) I really like your videos. Keep up the good work!
I started with Jaguar on an iMac DV, ended up with Tiger on that Mac. Tiger really was great.
Honestly, it was hard to give up Snow Leopard and go on to the next round of system updates, knowing it would all be continuing to change. Snow Leopard was pretty much perfect in its time.
Snow Leopard because it seems the most compatible (It Boots on lots of Macs)
Snow Leopard 4ever! I'll keep that SL CD like a treasure!
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm going to say Snow Leopard.
About 10 years ago I hackintosh'd a Pentium 4 machine with Snow Leopard, and it ran infinitely better than Windows ever did, and everything worked near-enough out the box. Nothing but good experiences I had with that.
Lion killed front row. If that doesn’t bump it down one rank idk
Mac OS X Tiger is the best OS I played with I love it
I still have it on my dual PowerPC G4 from 2003 :)
Snow leopard followed me through school
Mavericks was the best and stable MacOS for me.
hi
hi
Hi
I loved the video Ken, so much history behind OS X!!! Thank you very much for the shout-out, I enjoyed working with you. 👍
Ah yes a 1KHz sine wave
ITS A BEEP
Tiger is the best first-generation cat macOS but snow lion is best for second-generation cat macOS. 10.13 is the best third-generation macOS before ARM support. macOS 11 is more stable than mac OS 12 and less resource-hungry. PLEASE SLOW DOWN macOS development and fix the bugs and flaws before adding more API and features.
In my opinion Snow Leopard was the best
I agree with both result lists, but the second one is more accurate :) 10.4 for PPC and 10.6 for Intel are the top releases 100%
That was very predictable. Almost EVERYONE I know (including Mac pundits) all agree that Snow Leopard was the best release ever of MacOS X family.
Usually only the people who joined the Mac world with the Intel switch. 10.6 was ok and better than 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion) but the true Winner was 10.4 (Tiger) - it was so fast and snappy (on PowerPC) and not as bloated like everything that followed.
@@NightDevilMacGeneral 100%. Having switched to Mac during the OS 9 years and using OS X from 10.1 on, 10.4 was the absolute best, with 10.6 being a close second.
@@NightDevilMacGeneral 10.5 was built with Intel in mind. It showed the limitations of PPC, and Apple knew this hence the switch.
@@swiftrealm I‘m not sure if it was the limitations of PPC or the lack of will to optimize for an EOL platform.
The G5s were powerful beasts but IBM wanted their weight in Gold in return and didn’t bother making a power saving mobile version.
IBM‘s Power Platform is still existent in the HPC market and sure is not limited in its niche.
The first OS X version I used was 10.3 Panther, but my iBook G3 came with a free promotional upgrade to Tiger when I bought it. I liked it, but Snow Leopard was definitely my favorite big cat version. It was so much smoother of an experience overall than Leopard... responsive, stable and full of little QoL improvements. There wasn't much to recommend OS X Lion or Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard, unless you had iDevices,
I was a Windows beta tester back in the day and I'm still surprised at how simple and intuitive Snow Leopard is to use over the Windows releases that were out at the time.
9:55 There were actually a couple G4 models that were *officially able to dual boot Leopard and OS9. That means they can have the latest PPC version of OSX (although with a performance hit compared to Tiger and no programs to my knowledge that required it, at least none that worked on G4's) while also being able to run OS9 and 68k programs.
*I know there are both ways to install Leopard on G4's that aren't supposed to be powerful enough to run it, as well as ways to put OS9 on later G4's that weren't supposed to run it, and that's not to mention third party emulators, but official support is always interesting.
This was a great episode. And yeah! Tiger and Snow Leopard ftw!
So Tiger axed some old G3 processors
Leopard axed classic apps and G3 processors
Snow Leopard axed PowerPC processors
Lion axed Rosetta and 32 Bit Intel processors
Mountain Lion axed 32 Bit EFI
next version axing old Macs just for no clear reason but performance were Sierra and the following (altho Monterey runs perfectly fine on my 2008 MacBook Pro 17" HiRes)
(one of the minor-updates of) Catalina axed 32 Bit Intel code execution
mountain lion is snow leopard’s son
Congrats to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for being the best Big Cat macOS version of all time!
(I voted for Tiger (10.4) in regards to compatibility with old and new Macs, but I do agree with others on Snow Leopard.)
Oh, I remember so well when macOS Lion was released, everyone hated it. TH-cam was full of rant videos about how bad the new inverted mouse scroll was. No one liked Launchpad and worst of all, the "Save As" feature was gone, instead documents were automatically saved and every time you launched TextEdit, all previously opened documents were restored. All of those features are still there today, and every time I reinstall macOS, those features are the first to be disabled. Man, I wish I could just reinstall macOS Snow Leopard and use it the way I did back in 2009. I hate how quickly app support becomes obsolete. I could reinstall Windows XP now and find software to make it usable like it was 15 years ago.
Snow Leopard was top tier. Lion would be a B for me, too much skeuomorphism. They got rid of Spaces + Expose and Mission Control was not an adequate replacement at the time. Plus, the Aqua interface got uglier with Lion.
I used os 9.2.2 for long time and first OSX panther a lot on my iMac I video edit a lot I didn't used tiger much I went back to Windows since my snow white iMac CRT went out . However I got use Mountain lion for while and I love it I wish I could afford Mac I would use them for vidoes editing and audio creation mac's are best for that
Never been a mac user outside of the computers at school, but I have used Linux distros quite a bit after I would accidentally destroy the OEM Windows install. It's crazy how many UI features on Linux Mint/Ubuntu seem to have been Mac innovations. Not sure who got them first, but I'm going to assume Mac.
Snow was the best :D
10.8 Mountain Lion 😍
The. Best. OS X. Ever. Period.
I remember the time when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion and boyyyy that OS was freaking AMAZING. It made the already perfect Snow Leopard and simply made it better. By the 10.8.5 update it was the most rock solid OS I’ve ever seen and worked with. Oh God the UI, I might be in the minority but damn those Skeuomorphic design looked fantastic 😍
My first Mac OS was version 8.6. I lived the Mac OS X anticipation, disappointment (with Cheetah, which I didn't install and stuck with Mac OS 9) and then joy when Puma came out. I still remember installing Puma on my iMac G3. That first boot on Mac OS X felt like diving into the future.
My Tier List of Mac os
S : All of it
in hindsight visually Jaguar and Snow Leopard are both the end of an era in terms of the theme of the OS. After both of them big changes in the way the system looks. They should DEFINITELY release a full on Jaguar or Cheetah theme for a modern mac os system imo, that would be amazing. Snow leopard theme would be cool to see as well. It's been long enough, bring it back! Solid color fil be gone!
I think Tiger was the first ''fully baked" OSX. It was a really good system. The leopards had Spaces which I loved. Lion got rid of them for Mission Control...grrr.
My 2012 Macbook Pro, which I still use, and my 2008 Mac Pro that I retired last year. When MacOS 10.10 was released I tired to use it, but both systems slowed down very bad, and had some other problems. I downgraded both back down to 10.9, then when 10.11 released the next year I upgraded them to that and they both were fine. Am I the only person who had trouble with MacOS Yosemite?
I grew up with early versions of OS X. Pre-Tiger OS X for me would be an "F". It was so slow and I remember it being buggy at times. We never had Tiger. It was either Mac Mall or Macworld that ended up scamming my mom when she bought it. They sent us a blank disk and that was it. She ended up having to get the credit card company involved because they refused to issue a refund. Good times. Leopard would be an "A." Snow Leopard is without a doubt S-tier. Lion and Mountain Lion would be B-tier. I believe Lion took away the dock customization. There use to be 3rd party apps that had skins for the Dock.
I started my Mac Journey with Leopard and quickly updated to Snow leopard. Until now, SNOW LEOPARD Truely The BEST, CLEAN, FAST OS X ever, Running Big File Photoshop is like a riding magic carpet.Its smooth as butter. Its Finger Licking GOOD!!
I once tried to install lion on a Windows computer
oh cool
I'm not even a "Mac" guy but this was an entertaining upload. Well done, sir
I'm still running Snow Leopard on a 2009 Mac Pro. making music with it everyday.
imo ... 10.2 Jaguar is A tier = only b/c it extended the life of alot of the G3 macs
Cheetah & Puma are both F tier = they either kept crashing or programs running them also constantly crash. It wasn't surprising since both were in development
Why did Snow Leopard GONE!!, It was the only OS that I had on my MAC's that would take my Film Scanner Well, Now I have to accept my Windows Laptop XP to run my Scanner... Thanks alot COOK...
Come on, no-one really says poo-ma do they? Everyone knows it’s pyoo-ma. 😜
And another thing…what’s this jag-wire thing? It’s jag-u-ar. Jag-wire?! 🤦♂️
I have never used a Mac because they are too freaking expensive compared to PC. And very difficult to upgrade (I love tinkering with my PC.) So, for now (and into the future,) I will stick with PC. Hence I am going with Windows 10.
Aqua never looked like liquid to me. It looked like plastic. As in, it looked like the same double-gloss plastics used on Macintoshes of the time. The pinstriped translucent parts, the blue or gray highlights. Yeah. Looked like a G4 tower or iMac 500 Indigo. By the time they got to Tiger, there was much more smooth white in places, which was like the iMac G4 and the eMac, and a lesser extent the Mac mini. Leopard looked like it was designed to compliment the Titanium Powerbooks and the G5.
It wasn't until iOS and Yosemite where it seemed like Apple's graphic design team decided to divorce the look of the OS from the design of the current hardware.
That said, I really miss those early days of Mac OS X. I felt like I was part of a special club, getting to use this super-awesome and futuristic new system. Even if none of my Mac OS 9 stuff worked right. I didn't even really try to use Classic, I tried to avoid it and did my best to find OS X equivalents if new versions weren't available. I maintained my OS 9.2.2 or 9.1 or 8.6 setups on my other, older Macs (I had several, from a Powerbook 1400c to a Power Macintosh 6500/250 and a Blue G3 which all stayed on the classic OS).
I remember finding new apps and being able to update my OS X workflow and just get into the groove. And I miss my G3 iMac. I still have my G4, but the Radeon video card croaked, so I can't run OS X on it until I replace that. Bleh.
Young Christopher Thompson Mark Martinez Angela
Mac OSX wasn't really a rewritten version of the previous MacOS versions. It was, instead, an updated version of the OpenStep/NeXT OS that was given a new MacOS looking UI. Mac OSX 10.0 had none of the old OS and couldn't run any of the old OS's apps. It couldn't even manage something a elegant as Rosetta. Instead, it had to run a complete virtualized OS 9.2 to give the users access to their old applications. This was something that was very important at the time as there was only one third party commercial "shrinkwrap" application that shipped for 10.0, Macromedia FreeHand.
I love Snow Leopard, I have a external hard drive with Snow Leopard and boot up fast and used my old apps I have paid for back then. I was happy to find out it rank better then all the OS out there on your video! I still have my first iMac 2005? Maybe 2004, It only has Leopard and still works, one thing though, I will not go online because of hackers out there. Again, using the old apps on there and the Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac, works great! The new OS is okay though! thanks for the video, made my day when I watch it!
For me, Tiger was the only S, with Snow Leopard and Jaguar both As.
Lion may have introduced a lot of new features, but it also removed PowerPC/Rosetta, so that lowered it to a D for me. Similar with Leopard, removing Classic, even with its new features, dropped it to a D.
The original 10.0 release scored a D for me - it was revolutionary, it just wasn't finished.
10.1 got a B - finally a "good" release, but still not quite there, it was Jaguar to me that was the "perfect initial Mac OS X version."
Panther added features, but also was a dog on slower systems, while cutting some systems off completely, so it got a C, alongside Mountain Lion.
OSX .0 killed my IMAC G3 HD; then people kept saying you should never buy a .0 software...Companies made small software that disappeared quickly after Apple changed the version. 10.3.9 was to me the best MAC OSX I did lots of great work on my G4 tower. 10.4 was good as 10.5 but small upgrade then 10.6 was the best for the transistion to Intel Macs. 10.7 was supposed to change the desktop being the same as the mobile but they failed it's now coming slower with Ventura.
Although not a big cat, let’s not forget how efficient and refined Mac OS X Mavericks was! I’d say it’s an S-tier contender, hanging out with Tiger, Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion in my book. And the first free version!
Snow Leopard was my true entry into the Apple Ecosystem. I did play games on my Dad’s PPC macs so my first experience with Apple was technically OS 7 or 8 ;)
Apple back then didn’t have plug and play! Compatibility problems! You should do a comparison to windows xp!
Can’t wait for the California locations video so we can see a few in the D-F tiers... _cough cough_ big sur _cough cough_
Having a universal GUI for all screen sizes and screen types, is a bad idea. I use a real computer and a 21 inch screen to do my real work. Not a tablet and most certainly not a smartphone. I want my GUI to take advantage of available screen real-estate. Less confusing icons and more simple buttons with overlaid text. Resolutions are also getting way to high for their screen size, making everything way to tiny. Also, building in notifications and tighter support for social media is becoming very annoying. Those should be separate applications or add ons for smartphone zombies who only use computers for communications and surfing. Phones and tablets are niche products and should not and can not replace real desktops and laptops. FYI...best Mac OS was 8.6, and best OS X version was/is probably OS X 10.6.8.
2009 was just a great year for both Mac OS and Windows. Snow Leopard and Windows 7 we're the best, and are still the best. They are operating systems meant to hand you the controls, no bull. Both OSs now are too overly polished, simplified to the point of unusability and handholdy. Both of which also slowly becoming more of a forced marketplace on your desk replacing what was once yours.
One the worst end, for at least MacOS, I gotta say Panther. Used it a lot on my iBook G4 back in the day and wow was just Mac OS Vista
Very instructive with great humor. One question: is Snow Leopard also the best OSX on which to run Final Cut pro 7 ? I am returning to it after years of not having time for video and it still feels great.
It's a shame 10.9 wasn't named after a big cat. It's the last to have the amazing Aqua style, and the first to come with plenty of newer technologies that are still used today. It lost much of the skeumorphic design of specific applications that were still around in Lion and Mountain Lion.
It also improved the battery life of my Mac over Mountain Lion. By a lot.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't iOS originally advertised as "OSX for iPhone?" I kinda remember Steve Jobs mentioning something about how iPhone was getting its own version of OSX because I also remember snarking that maybe it'd be called "Kitten."
Apple didn't really seem to know wtf they wanted OSX too look like though. Full aqua and white with pontiac body cladding everywhere was quickly mixed with metallic designs. It was very weird for a while.
For some reason I still find OS9 to look fantastic visually.
I got my first home mac at the time of Tiger, although I'd used OS-8 and 9 professionally long before that. I miss the 3D dock. :(
For me, Leopard and Snow Leopard were the pinnacle. Lion, sorry to say, is where things started to go wrong. I hated the iOS redesign; I still hate it; I have no idea why Apple or anybody else would think it would be a good idea to try and mimic a 6in phone screen on an OS running on a 27in monitor. Everything seems to be as unintuitive as possible. Keep your phone interface for your phone and leave my Mac alone!
I know it’s not a big cat release, but Mavericks was the single fastest version of MacOS I’ve used to date. It was rock solid stable and kept the beautiful UI and imo one of the best OSes of all time
Tiger was peak design and stability for this amazing OS. Functionality doesn’t hold up from a modern perspective though.
My Top 3 Mac OS X Releases are:
- Tiger at 3rd Place
- Mountain Lion at 2nd Place
and...
- Snow Leopard at 1st Place!
I was just always disappointed that OS X wasn't called Liger when they announced the switch to Intel. Bred for its skills in magic, of course. And I was equally disappointed that iOS wasn't codenamed Rusty (the smallest of the big cats.)
I was a big Panther fan in part because of OS 9 backwards and I found Spotlight worse than the find feature (maybe I just didn’t know how to use it right but intuitiveness should be a down vote regardless)
I don't even use a Mac until 2015 but I heard a lot of good thing about Snow Leopard. To me it's the quintessential version of Mac OS like Windows 7 did for Windows. Too bad I never got the chance to use it on a proper Snow Leopard era Mac.
Tiger is the clear winner. Leopard *did* run on PowerPC, but not with the same speed that Tiger had. Tiger has many of the modern features we take for granted today, but isn't bogged down with unnecessary features to make it "iOS-like." It also keeps the original aqua interface without too much tacky skeuomorphism. Clear S.
I prefer Leopard over the Snowy variant purely for it’s legacy support. I used that OS numerous times to burn old CD media for 68K Macs with good results.
No idea about Mac OS last time I played around with a Mac OS was back in the middle 90s I think it was 7.5 or something. Never been a huge Apple fan but world needs Apple without competition you got stagnation.
Jaguar wast the first fully usable version OS X, basically the first version I could recommend to be that could replace OS 9. Prior to that, dual booting was a very common thing for me and others I knew.
YES! I love Snow Leopard! I downgraded my 2009 13 inch MacBook Pro back to it recently!
Missing Data;
How far backwards-compatible was each OS? How many machines back did they support at time of release?