I guess the real question is "how Mac-like is OS X?"

One thing I love about OS 9 is that it's so customizable. It's possible to build it according to your needs - much easier than with OSX or XP. It's very slim as well in terms of hardware requirements. Last but not least the flexibility... only recently I copied the OS 9 installation of my PowerMac G4 to a Blue & White G3 I had here with OS 8.6 running. Didn't want to go through the whole "find the CD" and "installation OS + all the updates" thing again. So I put my PowerMac G4 folder onto the hard disk, booted the G3 up and I had OS 9 running with my settings. That's an amazing amount of flexibility. Try that with an installation of XP or OS X ....

Nope.

"I really believe WinXP is the true successor of the old Mac OS"

Probably, but XP in WinXP stands for "expired", from its very beginning.

I like XP and and I've used both XP and OSX for years so I'm very familiar with both. Whether or not XP is "more Mac like" is a moot point; this original article was written in 2002.

In my opinion, OSX is ahead of Windows at this point in terms of speed, stability, and flexibility. It's fun to look back and compare operating systems, and with the advent of Vista it appears many PC users were looking back, but not just for comparison; they were choosing XP over Vista. LOL

I think WinXP is better than Mac OSX

oops, did I say somethin´wrong

The original quote sums up Windows XP perfectly. In 2001 it required too much CPU, RAM and disk for your average PC (forcing everyone to upgrade hardware). Now, 3 Service Packs later and with CPU, RAM and disk space more than adequate to run it well. Helped to an extended life by the train wreck that was Vista.
Like they say, if you pick well written and mature software, it can be a dream to use.
Hate the colour schemes though, just a bit too cartoony.
And of course I'd use Mac OS X any day over it.

I suggest you all read the PDF linked from http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter1/ .

In short, Windows XP isn't much at all like Classic Mac OS, neither is it much like Mac OS X.

Windows XP was cool for the standars pcs, but MacOS X kick ass from its very beginning... in every sense.
Probably the similar points were some things about the user interface, but even Linux has them.
I remember when I install MacOS X 10.2.8 in my G3 266 Desktop... now, try to install the XP in a 1997 PC...

Windows xp works great on my dell, but if i had a choice, i'd hack leopard and install it (as i have no leopard compatible computer )

I don't think he was saying XP is more Mac-like than OS X. He just thinks it's a successor, whatever that means. I think it's a pretty useless statement,that he made.

I'm not going to lie: until Mac OS 10.4, Mac OS 10 sucked. Killing OS 9 was a way to get more people to join OS X.

The fact that really irks me is that Mac has been trying to advertise for years about "ooh, we're the creative system" but there's no way to change the look of the system, at all! There's no Kaleidoscope equivalent for OS X, no wacky extensions that do crazy things...

Extensions for OS X that do crazy things? If you're running 10.6 TotalFinder does pretty crazy things. There are many others. Their method of operation is different, but the design of the Objective-C runtime makes it easy for "extensions" to hook into programs and modify their behavior. I have several such enhancements installed.

Did OS X suck before 10.4? It sure was more solid than 9.x but without many native apps you were stuck.

But Classic Mac OS just doesn't scale. It is full of old, ugly code which would take immense effort to rewrite into anything more modern. Apple did what they had to do, and switched to something which has lasted over 10 years (20, if you count NeXT), and which won't be obsolete anytime soon.

Apple Confidential 2.0 is a quite comprehensive look into Apple's early days.