Apple Drops Mac OS 9

Eugenia Loli writes "MacCentral has the up-to-the-minute updates on the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference. The first big news is that Apple drops Mac OS 9. 'It's time to drop OS 9,' Steve Jobs said. 'We can do things in X that we just can't do in 9... a hundred percent of what we're doing is X only. [...] Mac OS 9 isn't dead for our customers, but it is for developers. Today we say goodbye to Mac OS 9 for all future development,' said Jobs." We all expected this to happen sooner or later, more sooner than later. There's been no new Apple development for Mac OS 9 in some time; only maintenance updates. But I won't stop Mac OS 9 development. You can't stop me! Muahahahaha! Update: 05/06 18:31 GMT by P : More news from WWDC continues to roll in.

Eugenia Loli writes "Probably the really big news is with Jaguar, the codename for Mac OS X 10.2. There is handwriting recognition technology that will be recognized by any application that uses text. Apple also introduced Quartz Extreme, which takes the compositing engine in Quartz, and accelerates it in graphics cards, and combines 2D, 3D and video in one hardware pipeline via OpenGL. 'Everything on the screen is being drawn in hardware by OpenGL.' It requires AGP 2x and 32MB of video RAM. It is not possible on older graphics cards like RAGE 128 cards, said Jobs -- that means it'll work on newer iMacs and eMacs, but not on older machines, he emphasized. Jobs said this puts Apple two years ahead of 'the other guys.'"

Update: 05/06 18:46 GMT by P : An anonymous user writes: "Apple is releasing Mac OS X Rackmount Servers. Also releasing AIM-compatible messaging called iChat; you can create buddy lists of anyone on the local network, and you can use your mac.com username to log in to it."

So sad to see it go...

[Anonymous Coward]

...ah, the unprotected memory. The cooperative multitasking. The first one taught me to never make off-by-one errors in CodeWarrior (it also, by proxy, taught me all about MacsBug). The second taught me never to FTP things while typing in a telnet window.

Yeah, I'll sure miss Pre-X MacOS...

Great Category

[waldoj]

You might want to rethink that new Mac OS 9 [slashdot.org] category, then, huh?

:)

-Waldo Jaquith

"Muahahahaha!"

[ackthpt]

But

I won't stop Mac OS 9 development. You can't stop me! Muahahahaha!

You're mad! Mad, I say, mad!

BTW, how long till the first OS-9 emulator hits the fan? ;)

goodbye beige

[tps12]

Since OS 9 is no longer being supported, and OS X is not supported on any of the beige (or black, for Powerbooks) Macs, I guess the era began with the Ugly Yellow Box is finally at an end.

With it go some of the things that Mac users have come to love about their quirky boxes...high quality (but expensive) parts, Easter Eggs, strange homebrew interfaces (ADB, anyone?), tiny screens, humorous error messages that convey no information...everything that at one point made Apple Apple.

Well, I don't like it. You can have your protected memory. And while you're at it, you can remember to take your preemptive multitasking, too. We Mac users have always maintained that that kind of stuff just isn't needed for the home user, and I stand by it, even if Steve Jobs won't.

Call me crazy, but I appreciate an intuitive interface; yeah, that's right: intuitive. Since when does it make sense for "Shut Down" to be classified under a little picture of an Apple? How is your average Joe or Jane going to find it there, when it clearly should be labelled "Special". There was a time when the Apple icon was reserved for "Chooser" and "Calculator", but that time has come to pass.

Not to mention the new "brushed metal" appearance of the Apple CD player. Once upon a time, a user could choose (yes, remember choice?) from an extensive handful of horrid, non-standard color schemes for the late, great Apple CD Audio Player.

So let's raise our glasses in honor of Mac OS 1-9, the interface we hated to love for so many years. And let us launch off our Holiday Rockets in honor of Steven Jobs, our own great Lincoln, liberating the slaves of the antebellum command line. And raise too our voices, for tonight we give thanks where none thanks have dared yet go.

Thank you, Macintosh, for everything. The Last Mac Purist,

Re:Tough Shit.

[cpeterso]

but what about Windows XP? I have not found any compelling reason to switch from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. The only reason I have even considered it is the ClearType font blurring and the fact that the Start button and scroll bars "hit areas" actually extend to the edge of the screen, making them easier to click. This is very advanced technology, I think.. ;-)

Re:Ethernet

[joshsisk]

Keep OS 9 installed. It's not like Steve Jobs is going to go to your house while you are asleep and install OS X on your computer against your will.

Re:Jaguar

[foobar104]

Now [A]pple rips off the name of an old Atari product, Jaguar.

First of all, this is just a code-name. But, on that subject, did you ever hear the story of Carl Sagan's lawsuit against Apple? The Power Mac 7100 was developed under the code name "Carl Sagan," and when that worthy found out, he sent his lawyers a-calling. The Apple engineering team obligingly changed the code-name... to "butt-head astronomer."

Will Slashdot Drop the OS 9 Icon?

[elliotj]

I noticed that this is the one and only OS 9 related article to use the Slashdot OS 9 icon. Pretty funny to click on it and see that the only story is that OS 9 is being killed. Heh.

Re:goodbye beige

[tps12]

One thing I like about Gnome is that it doesn't even pretend to make sense. "Shut Down" is under "Foot".

Re:Tough Shit.

[Wakko Warner]

If you forget your password, credit card info, online banking login, or social security number and you run Windows XP, Microsoft will email it to you.

This can be very beneficial!

- A.p.

Re:Gutsy move

[joshv]

If you want to talk backwards, compatible, I have DESK ACCCESSORIES from 1985 that run without a problem on my iBook and iMac today.
Try that, Windows boys ;-)

Actually I've run Windows 1.0 in a window on top of windows 2000. The applets, write.exe, calc.exe, and paint.exe - all work fine. No overlapping windows though - damn that Apple lawsuit...

-josh

Re:goodbye beige

[Phroggy]

Since when does it make sense for "Shut Down" to be classified under a little picture of an Apple? How is your average Joe or Jane going to find it there,

Damn straight. Everyone knows it should be listed under "Start".

A new topic for the final post...

[coene]

So, a new topic for OS9 was created, number 178 in slashcode, and this is the only article under it. Why, may i ask, does this deserve its own topic, thinking that this will probably be the first AND last post for it (os9) as they are getting rid of it anyways.

Erm, long, cluttered sentence. I'm too lazy to rephrase. Sorry.

Re:Makes sense

[sg3000]

> As a fun experiment I replaced "Apple" with
> "Microsoft" and "OS X" with ".Net". The result
> shows just how hypocritical slashdot visitors
> are when it comes to Microsoft vs how much they
> praise Apple/Linux/Whoever for the same thing...

I've got mod points to assign, but I'm going to respond anyway.

What you've discovered is not hypocrisy, but context. As someone pointed out earlier, the actions of a monopolist are treated differently than those of just another company. Don't like it? Well, to paraphrase and reinterpret Mel Brooks, sometimes it sucks to be the king.

In other words, underdog companies trying to struggle out from under the thumb of a company convicted of illegally abusing their monopoly and said monopolist are generally treated differently. Read the former as Apple and Microsoft respectively. If you don't understand this, try reading the following examples for additional edification.

Statement: "My dad ate the last slice of ham? I'm going to kill him!"
When said by you: just a statement
When said by a convicted sociopath and murderer: probably a parole violation

Statement: "Whoa, nice rack"
When said by 14-year old boy: probably normal
When said by 41-year old female priest: She'd better be talking about lamb!

Statement: "I made a poopie in my pants"
When said by 1 year old child: probably cute
When said by the guy sitting next to you on the bus: very disturbing

Statement: "Soon we'll be laying off 120% of our staff"
When said by a your disgruntled co-worker at lunch after a recent layoff: vaguely humorous
When said by your CEO: scary

Statement: "I'll rip his head off, and shit down his neck! And I'll laugh like a motherfucka! I'll laugh like a motherfucka! 'Cause I hate her! 'Cause I hate her!"
When said by Alain Jourgenson of Ministry: you're probably slam dancing circa 1990
When said by your father: you're probably talking to a police officer a few hours later

See context can be fun! Statements can take a wildly different meaning depending whom the statement is related to. Last one.

"We're going to take unfair advantage of the fact we own both the hardware and the software."
Steve Jobs originally said this about a year ago. Considering he's CEO of Apple, a company that has been struggling to increase their market share from 5%, and almost went out of business 1997. To hear him say this is to hear that he's serious about building differentiators into the Macintosh. And seeing where Mac OS X is today, it's good to hear.

If Bill Gates or Steve Balmer had said this? You're darn tootin' we'd probably be done with this whole antitrust case and some geek with glasses would be fending off the amorous advances of the ham-eatin' sociopath from the first example.

Don't like it? Don't think it's fair to Microsoft? Don't feel bad; Microsoft would rather be in this position than in the case where they have to scrape and claw their way from 5% market share. If they didn't want to deal with the hassles, they shouldn't have broken the law in the first place.