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0 pointspornel1y ago0 comments

It may seem responsive if you run old software on modern hardware.

It was always slow on contemporary hardware. On affordable PCs Win 3.1 was so slow you could see it redrawing windows and menus. Win 95 was so resource hungry, people wrote songs about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOwQKWiRJAA). XP seemed fast only at the end of its very long life, due to Longhorn project failing and delaying its famously shitty successor.

It wasn't just Windows. Classic MacOS for most of its life could not drag windows with their contents in real time. Mac OS X was a slideshow before 10.4, and Macs kept frequently beachballing until they got SSDs.

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kalleboo1y ago

> Classic MacOS for most of its life could not drag windows with their contents in real time

There was shareware you could install which would do it though! Even on a 25 MHz 68030 it was surprisingly usable (more usable than the passive matrix LCD at least) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cQo29SIIgU

It got a bit slower in color on an external display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peWIysrf7DY

ksherlock1y ago

That wasn't a hardware limitation. BeOS was outperforming Windows and Mac on the same hardware. If JLG hadn't demanded too much money, Apple would have merged with BeOS (and probably be a distant memory by now but that's a separate issue)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjriSNgFHsM&t=350s

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