System 7.5.2 - Why is it so bad?

[LC_575]

I keep hearing that 7.5.2 is regarded as the absolute worst version of Mac OS ever released. How come?

 

[Unknown_K]

It was buggy, 7.5.2 broke many apps and they kept fixing it until 7.5.5.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

It incessantly crashed. I was in university when the PCI Power Macs first appeared and we all excitedly sat down at the Power Mac 7200s in the new lab and found that we got around three minutes out of Netscape Navigator before we got a system error. Our knowledge and competent usage of biological euphemisms increased dramatically over the next several days. We all went back to the IIcis in the math department basement; at least they worked!

It wasn't until 7.5.5 that people dared to actually do anything on those computers, demonstrating it was the OS and not the hardware.

 

[Unknown_K]

7.5.2 was the OEM CD for the 7500/8500, have one here somewhere.

 

[protocol7]

It was also the system version used on the Pippin.

 

[Charlieman]

System 7.5.2 was the first version with OpenTransport built-in, but OpenTransport wasn't really ready. As a consequence, DHCP did not work correctly and OT even managed to misinterpret the MAC address when reading it from ROM. I recall that Apple's engineers in the OT and AppleShare teams were very helpful at the time, but that still left a lot of problems for us all to pick up.

Note that whilst the Pippin OS is based on System 7.5.2 (required for PCI support), it uses a version of classic networking.