I will miss you, OS 9...

Oh, OS 9. How I will miss you, OS 9.

We've had so many good times together, you and I. I remember the first time we met. I had been seeing that cheap x86 machine that couldn't even run Windows for years before I realized that the relationship just wasn't working anymore. I had to trade her in.

A friend of mine had this PowerMac 7100 that was running OS 7.6x. I was hesitant though, because it wasn't a Windows machine, and that's what I had always been with. It just wasn't my type! But after he did some prodding and I realized that the price was right ($500 for the 'puter, a scanner, a 17" monitor, tons of software, a modem, a printer...you get the picture), I decided to give it a try.

It was beautiful. Finally, I had found the keys to my productivity and creativity in the digital realm. The windows, menus and troubleshooting tactics all made sense. No more would I go searching through 20,000 .dll files to find out what was causing my troubles. If I wanted to do something, I could do it. Quickly. And I didn't have to search through nested preference panels to find out how to do it!

Then I found you, OS 9. You were beautiful -- mature, sassy, snappy, intelligent -- and a bit unstable. You knew how to make everything work with style and speed, even if you sometimes got ahead of yourself and all mixed up. That's OK. I understand. I often get mixed up, too.

Remember that time that I was working on a new Web page in Dreamweaver until 4 a.m.? Remember how I got so into what I was doing that I forgot to keep hitting save? Then, one of your extensions somewhere did something funny and you got confused. I nearly threw you out my bedroom window! That was fun. You were always beautiful, but you could sometimes be real annoying.

And remember that other time that I installed a piece of shareware, I can't remember what it was, and every time I booted I got a blank menu and couldn't do anything? I had to reboot with the shift key down and remove the extensions before I could go on and use you again. You could always be so touchy about change.

But over the last year, I've been thinking a lot about us. I think we're growing apart, you and I. It used to be that I thought you were everything I wanted in an operating system. But now, I've met someone else and I'm not so sure. I know it might hurt a bit, but I want to tell you about her.

Her name is OS X. Yeah, it's pronounced "ten," but it's actually a roman numeral. Pretty weird, I know.

I could tell she was different right away. She has a lot of the things that I liked about you, actually. She's sexy, she's easy to use, and very efficient. But she doesn't seem to get as confused as you used to.

You know that in eight months of being with her, I've only had one hard system crash? It was this one time when someone sent me an AOL .gif picture that somehow had a creator code set to open with you, OS 9, and you started to boot. I decided that I didn't need you that at particular moment and tried to get you to quit. You know what you did? You caused X to have a kernel panic! It must have been jealousy, I'm sure.

I know that I've been spending a lot of time with her, but she's so much easier to be around. And no offense, but every time that I'm with you, I'm secretly wishing I was with her.

So we had a lot of good times together, you and I, OS 9, but I think it's time we parted ways. This has been coming for some time, I think. But just yesterday, I decided to make a commitment to X, and she asked me to have this talk with you.

So long, old friend. Give me a call sometime, if you get a chance...