Brothers,
I've been thinking about the whole timing of Panther, and I'm starting--I mean continuing-- to have some serious questions about Apple's whole strategy.

In this "age of the work in progress" I notice a lot of public previews, sneak peeks, and so forth. A lot of pre-ordering, selling stuff that ain't there yet. Don't it seem like when you DO buy things early... you end up spending twice as much for garbage? Doesn't it feel like we're FUNDING development, instead of just being consumers for products?

The timing of the release of the G5 has me baffled. I told you it'd come on the heels of the Quark release, and that kind of makes some sense to me... but the fact that it also comes on the THRESHOLD of a "major" OS release seems kind of counterintuitive. It set off my crapdar.

We have to assume that the G5 is pro hardware. We have to assume that Apple is, at long last, trying to get some of the high-end market back. Quark is pro software. OK, I get it. But how far away is Panther? 4th quarter? Why tout it now? Doesn't that seem like another carrot on a stick for pros? Why the stick?

Let's examine this. Say you're a pro. You see the Quark release, you see the G5 release, you see the teaser for Panther (where the jury is out as to whether it'll be pro capable... thalo says it won't be). Again, we have a lot of promises, but it's still too easy to say "where's the beef?" I look at the way it's playing out and think: we could still get CAUGHT. Buy a G5 now, on a wing and a prayer, and Panther turns out to be a dog... what happens then? Quark, which must work at least somewhat with Jaguar, is about to endure a major Mac OS release right after its own release, which will mean problems, or a patch, or something. And Quark is not speedy pete when it comes to that kind of thing.

This is called being gunshy. OS X has made me gunshy. I don't TRUST Apple anymore. I see us being milked, and not having a lot to show for it. I see release after release of half-done shit... I see sexy hardware that may or may not work with the upcoming stuff (meaning more releases, and more money down the drain). I see no sign of the era of eye candy calming the slightest bit. I see the promise of maybe ONE thing that will make a difference in workflow (redone open/saves... finally sortable by date)... I see more show-offy stuff like Exposé (variation on the Quartz theme of making stuff big n' small). But I don't see ANYTHING that says "pro" yet. Except the power of the hardware.

And yet. Gunshy boy thinks: "I'll bet you that most of that hardware power is going to go to drawing faster crap. Aqua will eat all that power as an appetizer, and lick its fingers while I struggle to keep OS X together."

You know what I say now, whenever Apple or any developer releases anything? "Prove it." I used to assume that things would just get better and faster. Now I'm suspicious, skeptical. I've BEEN conned, and now I'm less likely to fall for anything.

I'll probably HAVE to buy Panther, just to have something to talk about here at thalo.net... but I really don't want to. I've been burned and burned again. I'm certainly not going to spend money on apps, if suddenly Adobe and Macromedia and all them start milking me for upgrade prices.

Remember the days when a software license meant you were a customer ENTITLED to future upgrades? What a concept. Now upgrade prices are as much as some of those apps used to cost new in the box.

And in this brave new world of OS X, when I DO choose to upgrade, I inevitably get a poorer product when I do. Very rarely do I feel I've gotten my money's worth. I still haven't met the X-App that can laugh in the face of the legacy. I find the upgrade prices aren't WORTH IT. Nothing improves. In fact, things seem very often to go backwards. And now I'm paying to go backwards? No thanks.

Now, let me step out of gunshy/suspicious mode for a second. Suppose that the new OS, and the new versions of apps to run on it, really did improve. I mean really. Not pretend, not just more eye candy... but if they really did the job better? If it wasn't just a grift, if development meant things actually developed. Well, I'd have to say that then I'd pay the money gladly. What's Panther gonna be, $129?

If OS X ever had the stones to be pro capable, a real honest-to-god pro system with a pro interface (even if it was back to Platinum), I'd probably pay through the nose. All it would have to be, would be markedly superior. It would have to be more than the version number changing, and a few eye-candy tweaks.

But that's what I think we're paying for. As time goes by, and I see the timing of these things unfolds, it starts looking more and more like a friggin' RACKET. We're being pushed to see how much we'll swallow. And we end up giving free money to big American corporations, while they do no more than pay lip service to development. It all reeks of pretend. We're buying eye candy. We're buying a few bells and whistles, when we need much more serious improvement.

The big stuff, the scary stuff, is not being fixed. It's carrots and sticks and sexy hardware, but FONT RENDERING is still abysmal? Why? It's easier for Quartz to deal with uniform fuzz-haloes than intelligently resolving letterforms. The file management and Finder are still going to be a wreck. Why? Because it's too hard for unix to deal with the kind of instant-gratification updating of the legacy. It wasn't built for that.

What can OS X handle? Stuff you sit back and watch and go "gee whiz" about. But if you look deeper, it really doesn't do all that much. It's ILLUSION of responsiveness (dock mag effect is responsive, until the processor has to work for a living). It's stuff designed to be as impressive as possible, within a framework that has as a core truth, that you have to mortgage everything for these little happy-horseshit moments. They exist in a vacuum. They are rarely sufficiently integrated into the user's workflow. They are passive entertainment. They are little intellectual Everests, like spinning gears, moments of genius that you fire off like fireworks and watch... but that were never designed to make life easier. Just to impress the easily impressed.

I get the feeling that no real work is being done. Except in the music store. I'm a die-hard Mac Fan, but my faith is being bled from me by cheap tricks.

Time for Apple to step up to the plate. You want pros to buy G5's? Want us to buy Quark? Make OS X a serious pro-capable operating system. Stop trying to yank us, stop trying to get us to pay for bullshit.

When I fire up Panther, and I see that I still can't change Lucida in the Finder, I'll know that Apple isn't doing its job. When I come out of sleep and the clock takes forever to update, I'll know they're lazy. When I download a file to the desktop, and have to burn a click to friggin' SEE it, I'll know they are doing squat to improve OS X. When I see the "eraser effect" in Classic and the "halo" effect of text highlighting, I'll know that somebody ain't working with me in mind.

You know why Panther labels are just on the text? Too hard to colorize the folder icon. Slow updating pan-OS means they couldn't do it. They found a way to finally fix colored text highlighting in apps like mail (after user complaints)... and that's why "Labels" look like that now. All the BS is workarounds for stuff they can't figure out how to do, for an operating system that is not up to the task.

Spatial Finder with quick updating? No can do, so let's make the Finder a dumber file browser. Maybe if people use it in column view most of the time, they'll be so impressed they won't realize it's slow to update and forgets.

I see crap like that, and alls I can say, is they are not fooling me. I live and breathe Mac, and I can see when stuff is weak. I know when they are hiding stuff they think they can't do. It's like when I watch magicians. I know a misdirect when I see it. I know sleight of hand tricks. OS X is full of them. The biggest problems are lurking behind the most ferocious eye candy.

And now with the timing. The bigger the carrot the longer the stick. If you buy a G5 now, you're buying the PROMISE of Panther, without actually seeing how it will perform. Well not me. I'm now officially gunshy. A skeptic. I'm buying nothing until I test drive and it proves to me it can handle what I need it to handle. OS X fails that test miserably time and again. So I continue to dig in and use OS 9, which has a better, faster, more responsive and intuitive interface. Because it still has the soul of the Mac. It's not trying to con me with happy horseshit. Its problems are honest problems. And bottom line, it costs me less to use hardware and software that does a better job, that I've already licensed, than it does to upgrade to software that has proven clearly to me that it's not ready for primetime.

I'm just not gonna pay primetime prices until it is ready. Sorry, but the dream of OS X ain't sweet enough for me to do that.

I feel for you, my brother, and all the pro users who are reliant on their Macs. As hard as it is for me to stomach, I can only imagine what it's like for you guys. It literally sickens me when I think about what was and what could have been.

My thing was the OS, period. Learned it, lived it, loved it, and willingly became the pro bono personal techie for a host of Mac users.

I recommended Macs to family, friends and strangers who bought in. I convinced them with facts and passion. Can't begin to tell you how many times I persuaded folks at Sears, PC Richards, CompUSA, or whoever was carrying Macs, to at least test drive and consider one. I can actually boast that I was responsible for couple of sales right in front of my face. This after they new zilch about Macs; nor did the store salesperson. I even proudly instituted you guys, the designers, pros, artsy people, guys in the know, into my "sales pitch" as to who was using Macs. THAT was my commitment to the platform.

I can no longer recommend Macs to anyone. I wouldn't screw anyone like that.

No, I'm not a pro user, but nevertheless, something was taken from me that I enjoyed for a good many years. It took a PC to convince me that I'd (we'd) been had. How f'n sad is that?

Snobby, my dear bro... yeah I hear that. I was a total evangelist. Everywhere I went I'd talk up Macs. Like you, I used my chops to sell people I know and love on them. They ask me now, and what do I say? Hang back. OS X is a dog. Don't let the eye candy fool you, it's just a front for a struggling, perma-beta OS. If you're just going to surf and play games, you can do that better and faster on a PC.

If they're a true digital hubster, caring only about MP3 playing and home vids and digital pics, I tell 'em what the hell, get an iMac... but don't say I didn't warn you about OS X.

My endorsement of Macs used to be across the boards, because I BELIEVED it to be the better platform. I still think it could be, but for the brain fart of Aqua. If only they'd return to the sanity and performance of Platinum, and the logic and commonsense of the AHIGs.

For my pro friends, we all commiserate about diggin in. Shaking our heads at the unbelievable ripoff street prices of dual-boot Macs, which we are going to need to survive. We'd much rather be spending that money on the next gen, the future. What's stopping us? OS X.

Every single damn problem on the tech end I'm having, is thanks to OS X being a total piece of crap. I know exactly what needs to happen to it to make it stop being crap, heck, even Apple knows it... We've all told them. Trim it down and speed it up. Make it more intuitive and Mac like. They're just resisting.

This interface is every bit as stupid as the round mouse was. Apple finally admitted they had managed to make the worst mouse in the industry... they didn't realize it on their own. Oh, no, they talked it up like it was a masterpiece, the future of mousedom. It was user complaints that got them to see the light. They don't have the guys in-house who have 'nads enough to say, uh Steve, bro, this really bites the big one. It took US to do that. Then they finally got off their asses and rolled up their sleeves and followed it with the BEST mouse in the industry. Well, it's deja vu all over again. Steve, Steve, Steve, listen to me. Listen to your faithful, hardcore user base: OS X is a friggin' joke. Get with it. Do whatever you have to to fix it. Now listen very carefully and repeat after me: "Less is More." "Pros hate eye candy." "Pros need visual economy." "Pros need state of the art font rendering." "Pros need speed." "Pros need a minimal, high performance interface which is the OPPOSITE of what your marketing guys say is going to rope in digikids." "The legacy was more intuitive." "We need a pervasive metaphor." "We need design consistency." "We need application stability."

Calling Apple, calling Apple... OS X is the worst operating system in history. With the worst interface in history. It's an embarrasment. Unless you get to work NOW, that's how you are going to be remembered. You screwed the pooch, got caught, and it was the end of you. Talk it up as stable and cutting edge and pretty, but the fact is, that's all bullshit. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Turn it around, you can do it.

We need one of those characteristic Jobs last minute saves. Newsflash: Steve Jobs, in an emergency 3-Day summit with veteran Macintosh Pro users, has outlined a blueprint for the next generation Macintosh Pro operating system to run on the G5, whose sales have been at a record low for the embattled hardware company. Unlike Aqua, which seems to be geared for casual and new users, the new pro version, codenamed "arbyte" (a play on the german word for work) guarantees design professionals a serious and stable working platform without all the marketing hype... "

"Then they finally got off their asses and rolled up their sleeves and followed it with the BEST mouse in the industry."

Wow, Apple makes the MS Intellimouse Explorer?!?

bro thalo, you don't know how many times I've worked in OS X and felt deceived. Your examples of cover-ups, especially the labeling example, was right on the money. Deception, cover-ups, razzle-dazzle, all at the expense of functionality and performance. And lies, blatant lies.

Do you know what one the biggest problem seems to be? The apologist drowning out the voices of reason and demand of excellence coming from the Mac faithful. Their acceptance of an inferior product lowers the bar tremendously.

I read a post at MFI from a reg, touting the G5 and claiming that he's confident that it will outperform the P4 chip. Fair enough, anything is possible in this day and age. BUT, do you know what this poster's rationale was, and what lead him to believe this? He actually said that Steve Jobs admitted that the P4 outperformed the G4 but now Jobs promised that the G5 will be bigger and badder than the P4 chip.

Say what?? Did Jobs not "prove" that the G4 was faster than the Athlon and P4 chip (we all know how his test was biased and a myth in itself). So this MFI regular is exuberant that Jobs admitted that he lied and believes Jobs most recent claim of the G5 superiority.

Whether Jobs actually did admit this or not is irrelevant. That the Mac blind apologists can spew such bullshit in the good name of their God Jobs, is telling, and the crux of the problem.

Whether Jobs actually did admit this or not is irrelevant. That the Mac blind apologists can spew such bullshit in the good name of their God Jobs, is telling, and the crux of the problem.


Snobby, You're not making this up? How does this happen? This guy reasoned out that because he believes Jobs lied to him the very last time Jobs was talking about microprocessors that proves Jobs will be telling the truth the next time he talks about them? Huh? What? Does that make any sense to anyone at all? Even close? Even a near miss?

I guess there is no one left that will (or is allowed to) insist that posters make sense. There is no SnobbyRobby, or thalo, or Brad, or anyone else that can say (or is allowed to say) "MAKE SENSE!" "I don't care what you say, but for God's sake, MAKE SENSE"

I guess in an designed and invented discussion forum it isn't very important to make sense. Chatter is chatter and as long as everyone chatters making sense is optional and may even get in the way of the chatter.

Shouldn't making sense be at least a minimal requirement for a discussion point? That the last part of a point shouldn't directly contradict and lay waste to the first part? Why doesn't this sort of stuff embarrass the writer?

Oh, that's just typical. And it gets funnier every time. Spin is always a joy to sit back and watch.

My favorite of all time was the infamous "Bell Curve" diagram showing native app availability. It was treated as gospel. Then came the unbelievably insulting "months are hours" clock diagram. My eye muscles are still hurting from rolling my eyes over that one.

But that's what Jobs has always been, part PT Barnum. Playing suckers. The trick with him is, not to be a sucker. He stops being lazy when you call him on the grift.

I've always said, in order to beat Microsoft at anything, being that they're totally entrenched, you CAN'T be lazy. You have to out power them. You have to outclass them. You need total philosophical and moral victory. You've got to build a better mousetrap, for real. You've got to do EVERYTHING better than them. You've got to take every weakness of theirs, and improve upon it. You've got to make every single personal computer activity better on a Mac, than on a PC. Total experience. Not some, all.

Surfing, games, porno, casual use, pro use, science, business, everything.

Hey, games are better on PCs! You can't accept that. Surfing is faster and all sites work better in IE! Can't accept that.

What does the Mac have now? Music? Home vids? Not enough. It has OS 9 for pros, but again, not enough. Cooler looking hardware? Great, but not enough. And the one thing it has is a totally crappy operating system with a terrible interface. Unacceptable. I'll tell you one way to make XP look bad: go minimal. XP will look as overdone as OS X looks right now.

In the words of Thoreau, simplify simplify. Distill, coalesce. Make everything smarter. If something is stupid, change it. Then it won't matter which chip is faster. Be less bloated and make every workflow intuitive, and the Mac will be better and faster.

Turn Microsoft from an 800 pound gorilla into a 90 pound weakling with your friggin' BRAIN. Outthink them. Don't dumb down, smarten up. Give more power to the people, and you'll conquer the market decisively. People will pay more if you give them their money's worth.

Try to decieve, and you'll get caught red-assed, like now. Steve could be a hero instead of a crook. And our best heroes rise to tasks. Steve is primed for redemption. All he's gotta do is believe his own bullshit and "Think Different." It's a tall order, being better for real. But it's the only way. I'm hoping he'll start throwing his infamous tantrums at the software guys. OS X has got to stop sucking, now.

Brothers all.

When I bought my first computer within one month the G4 came out within another 5 months a new OS was released. So my take on, In this "age of the work in progress", is please point to when in this industry has it not ever been a work in progress industry.

To Brother Thalo I believe one of the last things I posted to you at MFI was things would look much different at the end of the year. Why Panther and the G5. Panther I believe has 64bit code instruction. Photoshop 8 is going to be 64bit coded as well. Hence the hip on the PowerPC970 64bit technology.

I have to admit that I wasn't too clear about the gist of your article, brother thalo. But it leads me to what I think is a related thought.

I can't help thinking that a lot of people are reaching their upgrade cycle, particularly with the economy improving. The announcement of the G5 is a compelling opportunity for many to upgrade after this recently economic lull and has probably presented a chance for many to check out OS X for the first time. After all, we don't all spend our time online becoming intimately familiar with the goings on in the Mac world. I can't help thinking, therefore, that across the Mac universe lately (and possibly leading to the latest mini-surge of OS 9 vs. OS X articles) is heard a chorus of "WTF?"

The G5 need only be faster than the G4.

PC's are moot, I'll never use them by choice (I always personally buy Macs for myself or for any job I'm at). Of course I do use them when I need to and hop on coworker PCs from time to time because they are there.

I wouldn't buy a terahertz PC even if it finished my jobs before I can even think of them.

I need the quality of an Apple-designed and made Macintosh (fuck clones, then, still and always) running Mac OS X, because that is the only OS that consistently does whatever I ask of it, reliably and with some style.

Hype is politics and I don't bother with either much. Jobs can say this or that and I don't care of it's true or false or a cute manipulation of the facts. But I've seen othere CEOs like Steve Case, Steve Ballmer, BIll Gates and others at keynotes and they "lie" and spew wishful thinking aplenty. Steve Jobs tends to deliver more than the other guys. And when he doesn't you can be sure his error was trying to push the limits, rather than the other guys merely listing upcoming meek, status-quo, no-brainer upgrades to products and services.

You can hate him for being ahead of the times, or like him for that. Just depends on who you are.

I still don't think it's about liking or hating Steve Jobs. But it needs to be about calling Apple on stuff that's PRETEND pushing the limits... the stuff where delivering on the promises doesn't really happen. I think we should tolerate, oh, zero of that. I think we're well past A's for effort, and OK attaboy for the old college try.

Time to get serious about backing up some of the bullshit. You're right, when Apple DOES do it, when they do deliver the goods, it's great. The G5 release in and of itself, could be great. But there's a bigger emergency, and it's whipping the OS in to shape.

There's a profound, and I mean profound lack of quality in the software division. A lack of care. Everything looks cobbled together, and disorganized. Functionality is all over the place, and it's not being held together by a cohesive interface.

The gist of my thoughts was that disconnecting the Panther release from the new hardware release is indicative of the state of dysfunction. Say you're a sucker: you buy a G5 based on the PROMISE of Panther, without having the new OS in your hot little hands. If you did, perhaps you'd see that nothing's really happening to improve OS X, and it would pooch the hardware deal.

If, however, you made a real effort to improve the OS for pro users, if you really wanted to sell to the high end. Well, then you round up all the feedbacks, fix the damn software, and release it WITH the G5. Here, take that, we still love you, faithful users!

But the slimy and deceptive way it's happening means there's still some kind of weird problem. They're still trying to HIDE how weak and unfinished the OS is. Looks like they really need us to throw in behind it BEFORE they make it good. Well, sorry, it don't work that way.

We'll adopt WHEN it's good. Hey, maybe if I was a Lotto winner, I'd be able to piss money away on brand new hardware running a third-rate operating system and terrible apps... but not now. Now I need the product to be worth it. I need harmony of hardware and software. I need the operating system to work, be better than the legacy. Make my life and work easier, and if OS X is the best they can do, well that ain't good enough. If they want this little blue-hearted pro to bite, they're going to have to come through in the clinch, and give me "Less is More." A real pro capable OS. Not promises, not bullshit.

Here’s what I might buy tomorrow: A G5 capable of running OS 9, built-in SCSI, floppy, and a serial port.

Why am I asking too much?

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Make it 8.6-capable as well, and we'll see if we can get a deal on two of 'em.


Markle

Throw in an ENIAC emulator and they'll take the nursing-home market by storm!

Did anyone see VH1's 200 greatest pop-culture icons? #82 was Bill Gates. Beating out the likes of Eddie Murphy, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Johnny Cash, Gretsky, The Fonz, DiMaggio, Hendrix, Sly Stallone, Charlie Chaplain, Charlie Brown, Babe Ruth, Hugh Hefner, Bruce Lee, Leonard Nimoy, Jim Morrison, The Great One (Jackie Gleason), Bob Marley, Joe Namath, and Cartman (among others).

Steve Jobs was number... oh wait, excuse me, HE DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST. Buh-buh-buh-whaaaa? One of the inventors of the personal computer, one of the revolutionaries who gave us the Macintosh (without which Gates would have had nothing to rip off)... didn't even make the top 200. The Rock and Queen Latifah squeaked in there, but not the Mock Turtlenecked one. I think that's kinda unfair. He's certainly a pop culture icon TO ME.

Yeah, come on guys, get with the times. I thought I was an old fart, but jeez. These are the days of Justin Timberlake (#112), not the Duke (#54) or the King (#3). The problem with gen x and digikids is that their parents (and even their grandparents) are still embarrasingly smarter and cooler than them.

But I digress: A floppy? Next thing you'll be wanting is real books that aren't Harry Potter. Paintings on canvas. Wine in a bottle with real cork, instead of in a convenient mylar bag. But seriously, floppies are one of those things that got replaced by better and more economical as far as I'm concerned. You could burn a single 1.4 meg file on a CD-R and still come out ahead, right? Unless of course I gave you a bale of floppies for free. I can't believe stores even sell floppies anymore, certainly not for money. Meanwhile, there's not a single job I've done in the last five years that would even FIT on a floppy. But I do kind of have a soft spot for them. They speak of a bygone era that I truly miss. I have some classics in my collection. Almost all demagnetized by time. Even some cool old games, when the Mac was a thriving game platform.

I'd buy a G5 if it dual booted 9.1, or if OS X was pro-capable. For example, if Classic worked as good as 9.1... maybe with its own Classic Finder. That's all I need. I can live without the SCSI, the floppy, the serial port. What I can't live without, is a good operating system.

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The problem with gen x and digikids is that their parents (and even their grandparents) are still embarrasingly smarter and cooler than them.

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Yes. Our parents and grandparents had great taste. Bing Crosby. Bob Hope. I could go on and on. This generation (or the recent one) has had its bright spots. Pearl Jam. Nirvana. The Ashley Twins. (Can I mention them? They're almost 18 after all.)

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Steve Jobs was number... oh wait, excuse me, HE DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST… He's certainly a pop culture icon TO ME.

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Holding…my…tongue……won't…mention…egomaniacal…list…oops…

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But seriously, floppies are one of those things that got replaced by better and more economical as far as I'm concerned.

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Yes, but we're not talking about better. We're talking about practical, useful and getting rid of objections in the attempt to make a sale (something that seemingly doesn't cross the mind of Jobs these days). We're talking almost pennies.

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Meanwhile, there's not a single job I've done in the last five years that would even FIT on a floppy.

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It's not about what *I* do. It's about what clients give me and they still give me all kinds of shit on floppies. And if you want to sell "Pro" towers you might as well include SCSI for the foreseeable future (perhaps that's still a build-to-order option).

<< But seriously, floppies are one of those things that got replaced by better and more economical as far as I'm concerned. >>

Depends on what you use your computer for. People who work with text instead of graphics find them great for quick backups. Text-only files are very small. A friend of mine wrote a BOOK and got the whole thing on a floppy.

The installation disks for my word processor, which is my workhorse, came on floppies, JUST before software publishers switched to CD's. Last November, when the motherboard in my beige G3 died, I took advantage of the journey to the repair shop for a new motherboard to do some upgrades to the box, including a new and larger HD. This meant loading the HD from my backup CD's to restore my computing life. But something in the word processor didn't work right--it couldn't find picture files to insert into graphic frames, even when the name of that file was right there in its own "Insert" box. Nothing I tried could fix that problem, until I decided to just trash the app and re-install it from the original disks. When I did that everything worked normally, and has ever since. If I hadn't been able to re-install it, I would have lost a major feature of the program; and I wouldn't have been able to re-install it if I didn't have a functioning floppy drive. So there's another benefit of the floppy if you use an "ancient" app from the mid-90's.

Incidentally, for the X-Men who keep insisting that OS X will run on a beige G3, we know that X will NOT support the floppy drive on a machine it is supposed to run on.

Markle

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Oh, look... I've just been promoted from Novice. Wait till I tell my mom!



Markle

Incidentally, for the X-Men who keep insisting that OS X will run on a beige G3, we know that X will NOT support the floppy drive on a machine it is supposed to run on.

Can't speak for the built in floppy of course, but I have a cheap generic 3.5" floppy disk drive that I have connected via USB. OSX handles that guy just fine. I needed it to download various old science stuff from the early 90's. And I needed it to load my favorite Classic game Lode Runner, which works quite well in Classic mode.

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Oh, look... I've just been promoted from Novice. Wait till I tell my mom!

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Damn. I'm still stuck at Moderator.