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OS 9 Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Reprieve for Booting New Macs With Mac OS? 138

Posted by pudge from the yay-quark dept.
MatthewRothenberg writes "Apple has announced that as of January, new Macs will boot with Mac OS X only, but now MacInTouch reports that there might be a reprieve in the works for booting with Mac OS. According to one reader, a Quark representative has been calling pro publishers to ease their worries about the lack of a Mac OS X-native version of its QuarkXPress DTP program; after talking it over with Quark, Apple has agreed to move back the Mac OS X-only deadline until June." I can imagine that conversation with Jobs: "Why don't you just finish porting your freaking product already?"
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Reprieve for Booting New Macs With Mac OS? More

Reprieve for Booting New Macs With Mac OS?

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  • Well Sometimes Portings isnt so easy and quick. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:27AM (#4854065)
    I bet the program was filled with a bunch of coding tricks that made Classic Work Fine but those tricks no longer work in OS X. Although a lot of the framwork may be simular the reality of coding is sometimes inorder to get it to work the way you want you will need to do some tricks that makes porting harder. It is my guess the code it well hacked up and they are running into a lot of stumbling blocks in order to get it to work.

    • Re:Well Sometimes Portings isnt so easy and quick. (Score:5, Informative)

      by MatthewRothenberg ( 617484 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:12AM (#4854467)
      >>It is my guess the code it well hacked up and they are running into a lot of stumbling blocks in order to get it to work.

      We ran a story about that on eWEEK a couple months back ... From what Quark's been saying [eweek.com] at Seybold San Francisco and other gatherings, XPress 6.0 will represent a whole new code base, not just an upgrade optimized for Mac OS X's Carbon APIs.


      • Just how difficult is it to port a Mac OS 9 app to Mac OS X's Carbon APIs? It's not that hard. Carbon apps are native Mac OS X apps and still binary compatible with Mac OS 9.

        If Quark had not wasted YEARS rewriting Xpress from scratch (ala Mozilla), then Adobe InDesign would not have made the inroads it has (ala IE). Imagine a world a few years ago where designers had to choose between upgrading their huge library existing Quark files to a Quark XPress 5.1 Carbon app for Mac OS X or starting over with the incompatible, untested Adobe InDesign 1.0? Adobe wouldn't have had a chance..

        Joel on Software: "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" [joelonsoftware.com]
        • While in theory it isn't that hard, in practice it can be. I've noticed that, oddly, the place where most have problems is in using proper Carbon events. Yet that is probably the #1 facet of the program that will affect performance and perceived fluidity of use.

          I honestly don't think that most people would complain too much if a program was fairly good but didn't use all the features of the OS. I mean most people were happy with Quark that barely used any OS7 feature.

          The big question really is how good Quark will be. After all the disparaging comments by the Quark head, I'm none to optimistic that they'll do that good a job. This is an excellent way for Adobe to gain market share.

      • I wonder if "new code base" == "Cocoa." OS X-only apps are not necessarily Cocoa (like Office v.X). InDesign is a Carbon app so depending on how Apple improves the OS in the future, being a Cocoa app (if it is) could be a real edge for XPress.
    • ...you mean non-standard widgets and tools, then yeah. Those scrollbars on the documents, for example, aren't "real" Macintosh scrollbars, it's goofy proprietary code. When OS 9 (or was it 8?) had a facelift a few years back, XPress suddenly stopped matching the rest of the operating system and had to be patched up because of this.

      You're exactly right about the "hacked up" bit. In any other Classic application, porting is relatively easy -- just recompile your code using Carbon and you're on your way. Quark XPress, on the other hand, needs to be rewritten from ground up.

      Personally, I think this delay is great for the desktop publishing world, because it's allowed InDesign to get a (minor) foothold in the industry.

  • Quark can't afford to make a mistake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:39AM (#4854148)
    Quark XPress 4.0 was rushed out with lots of bugs, and it took months to fix them. If the same thing happens with 5.0, then it's pretty much over for Quark, everyone will switch to Adobe InDesign.

    In fact, InDesign 1.0 was garbage, but Adobe didn't care. They knew that time was their real advantage, and that as soon as they released a good product, everyone would forget the past. Well for Quark, all they have is the past. The vast majority of people who use Quark do it only because it's what they've always been using.

    My guess is that Quark 5.0 will be so freakin' amazing, that people will forget how long it took to come out. In fact, I bet some people will laud Quark for taking its time and releasing a quality product.

  • Steve Jobs/Fred Ebrahimi love-in (Score:5, Funny)

    by vilms ( 106676 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:41AM (#4854178)
    I heard this too. My immediate reaction was that some heroic spin had been applied to the REAL story about the meeting. After the preliminary name-calling and fistfight, Steve and Fred were pulled apart, dusted down and made to sit through a mindnumbing PowerPoint presentation that told Fred:

    Every other product you've launched APART from XPress has failed. Most of your user base is on the Macintosh. They're going to Mac OS X and you're holding them back. Meanwhile, Adobe has a product that works on X now...today... and can be used with a little prior knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator.

    Steve's slide was:
    There's a significant percentage of major publishers who might just take this opportunity to dump the Macintosh and slide all those legacy Quark files over to Windows. Because, really, is that migration going to be any more fraught than a forced migration to X when you don't even know if your principal software (and attendant Xtensions) is coming along for the ride? XPress on Windows might be an unpalatable choice, but at least it's there. Right?

    I've completely forgotten the point I was trying to make.

  • not Quark related (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:45AM (#4854232) Journal
    I have the feeling that this is due to the fact that there will be no evolutionary jump in Mac hardware for the next 6 months, so to continue shipping machines with OS 9 and OS X is no big deal.

    Qaurk's market has shrunken noticably enough that not offering OS X ported version is no big deal...

    Dinosaurs...
    • As another poster mentioned below Apple still has [apple.com]
      the policy on their board.

      Anyway IBM's docs [ibm.com] still has the release date on the 970 as "2003 2H" whatever that means. Since they have 2002 2Q for samples hopefully Apple will have a revolutionary change for mid year.

      • "2003 2H" (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Second half of 2003, perhaps, like "2002 2Q" means second quarter? I don't know, just a guess.

    • Re:not Quark related -- Education probably had say (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jerde ( 23294 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @04:01PM (#4856774) Journal
      Apple's Education customers probably had some small part in this, too -- I screamed at Apple pretty loud saying we weren't ready, and they replied that we should buy our next year's machines by January.

      Never mind that our next budget year isn't 'til June.

      I think this will allow schools to make one more year's worth of purchases that are still OS 9 compatible.

      One more year of OS X's maturation (both client AND server) will really really help schools make the transition.

      (Not to mention we have to save our pennies and budget for new versions of Office, PhotoShop, etc., since we don't want to buy more RAM to run X just to use all classic apps...)

      I'm still having bad dreams about how we're going to train everyone to use OS X, or how a mixed 9 and X environment will work.

      (I don't care how flawed it was, people will MISS that darn old Chooser)

      - Peter
      • The sooner the educational market switches to OSX the better. I've been using Classic since 7.5, and one thing I didn't like about it is that stuff learned about the Mac OS was non-transferrable. You can learn to hack with ResEdit and write Applescripts and have fun on a Mac, but those skills were useless on any other OS. I always felt like if you want to get your hands dirty, you should run *nix. I knew Windows pretty well in high school, and when I got to college, I didn't even know what Unix was. Now we've got OS X. If you train kids on OS X, they'll be ready for any computing direction. If they go into a computer science field, it'll be an easy transition to a Unix or Linux box (not that they couldn't use a proprietary OS). If they become designers, audio engineers, or digital video specialists, they'll already know the most used OS. If they just want to be Sales Monkeys or gamers, well, they'll have to learn Windows.

        It's not an issue of how flawed Classic was. What's important is that OSX is built on rock-solid open technology, the same that is being used on the world's best servers and workstations. I just got OSX a short while ago. Pretty soon, I'll be figuring out how to run a cron job. That knowledge is not Mac-specific. It's general computing knowledge. I like that.

  • Screw Quark (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stubear ( 130454 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:51AM (#4854278)
    Apple should say tough shit to Quark. They've been holding Apple's release of OS X for far too long. Adobe has had OS X native versions fo their apps, including InDesign 2.0 (IMHO a far better DTP application than Quark), for over a year now. In fact, users of Quark Xpress should say screw Quark too as Quarj has heldp back the adoption of OS X by designers and the publishing industry. I know lots of designer who want to move to OS X but can't because of Quark and I tell them to do themselves a favor by dumping Quark and getting InDesign.

  • What good should that delay be? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by capmilk ( 604826 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:04AM (#4854400)
    Does it really make a difference to publishing pros if Quark XPress is finally available on Mac OS X or not? I can hardly imagine that everybody is only waiting for Quark so they can switch to X.

    What about existing workflows and applications for scanning, printing, ripping etc. that either don't exist on X or cost a fortune to update I can imagine that the inevitable switch from Photoshop 5.x to Photoshop 7 might prevent a couple of companies to do so.

    Now, if Apple starts delivering OS X-only Macs, what exactly are OS 9-based companies going to do? They can't buy new fast Macs, as they are not supporting OS 9. It might well be cheaper to switch to Windows... Dangerous game, Apple.

    • Re:What good should that delay be? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:14AM (#4854480)
      I can hardly imagine that everybody is only waiting for Quark so they can switch to X.

      That's exactly what's happening in a lot of print and design shops, though. They're buying brand-new dual-processor G4s and running OS 9 on them full-time just for Quark. Every other program they'd need runs under OS X-- even though a few of them only run in Classic-- but they have to stay on OS 9 for Quark.

      And it's not even that Quark is that great. InDesign has it beat in almost every category. But there are millions of Quark files out there that people still need to use. Dropping Quark completely just isn't a practical option.

      What about existing workflows and applications for scanning, printing, ripping etc. that either don't exist on X or cost a fortune to update

      Virtually everything you'd need to run a print shop has been ported to OS X. Practically everybody's using a PDF workflow these days, and OS X has better PDF support than any other OS. As for ripping and printing, all of that is being done with Windows. The Windows RIP just sits there in the corner, humming to itself, and chews through PDF all day and night. The interactive tools, though, are all on OS X except for Quark.

    • Re:What good should that delay be? (Score:4, Informative)

      by frankie ( 91710 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @02:40PM (#4855906) Journal
      hardly imagine that everybody is only waiting for Quark so they can switch to X.

      Exactly 100% of the Mac-based publishing pros that I know personally (1 local tabloid and 2 unrelated freelancers) are indeed sticking with OS9 solely because of Quark. They really want to come over to crash-free OSX, but QXP is their livelihood.

      I've suggested InDesign, but they don't want to risk problems with converting their old files.

    • I work for a publisher, and our production department is indeed waiting for Quark to switch to OSX. Every other program we use is available for OSX, and we regularly update our software. The only thing holding us back is Quark. We would just switch to Adobe, but: 1) we take competetive bids from a variety of printers, many of whom are Quark-only 2)the learning curve for InDesign is more of a worry than the learning curve for OSX
    • It's not just because Quark hasn't gone Carbon that publishing pros haven't switched to OS X. It's the zillions of plug-ins (XTensions) for Quark that also run only in OS 9. Since so many people rely on these in their workflow, it may be a long time before these people switchh to OS X.
    • As an Apple tech support rep i can tell you the number of people i talk to each week that are pissed off about Quark not yet having an OS X version is staggering. Quark is indeed holding quite a few people up. From what i hear it is apples end goal to have os 9 be a distant memory by the end of 2003. Good riddance in my opinion. why would anyone bitch about using OS X
      • oh and if any of you hard core old school mac geeks want to still put os 9 on a machine here is what you can do.... given that the firmware on new macs wont let you boot to os 9 and apples firmware is now actually on the boot sector of the macs harddrive you can do a low level format of the drive and then install os 9 as it will put on the old firmware

  • Quark? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 )
    i missed somthing - what exactly is quark, and what does it do? it couldn't be terribly important for the average home user, as that title rarely comes up in my online reading, but it must be at least marginally important, as they seem to have apple's balls in a vice.

    • Re:Quark? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MatthewRothenberg ( 617484 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @12:03PM (#4854903)

      Assuming you're not just kidding ... :-)

      QuarkXPress has long been the Big Kahuna of page-layout packages (after overtaking Aldus' pioneering PageMaker app back in the early '90s).

      Professional publishers have invested billions of dollars into desktop workflows built around the Mac and XPress and involving all kinds of software plug-ins required to make all the hardware and software in a publishing operation work almost seamlessly. (Older versions of those plug-ins won't work with a Mac OS X version of XPress.)

      Publishers are very conservative about making sweeping technological changes, but the whole shift to Mac OS X is ultimately going to force them to make some serious choices -- especially if there's a serious temporal disconnect between the arrival of Mac OS X-only Mac hardware and a Mac OS X-native version of their centerpiece software application.

      Once you fold in all the imaging peripherals, client-server solutions, fonts, graphics applications, color-calibration technologies and whatnot, it's a wonder that stuff gets published at all. And when you're trying to use the same content for various print and electronic media, it gets even nuttier.

      Even in these tight times (maybe especially in these tight times), there's a lot of money riding on keeping the whole house of cards stable, and the prospect of some sort of disjunct between publishers' longtime preferred platform and their longtime killer app is daunting.

      • hey wow i got modded as a troll! i thought i'd get modded as informative for that... yeah, i'm serious, i know nothing of the publishing industry. photoshop is merely a toy for me. judging from the somewhat vauge explination of quark, it seems to have a vast reach in the publishing industry. nifty.
        • QuarkXPress is pretty straightforward: It offers a nifty set of GUI tools that let you lay out pages for magazines, newspapers and books, as well as catalogs, brochures and any other kind of print publication beyond flyer-length.

          You basically create boxes of different shapes and sizes and pour in graphics and text that you can then style to taste ... You can format these items in all sorts of ways to create various effects.

          Quark has also been working to promote XPress as a multipublishing tool that lets you transform those print layouts into HTML.

          Most every print publication you see every day has been stitched together using XPress. PageMaker (now owned by Adobe) blazed the trail and allowed publishers to start assembling their wares on the desktop, but XPress has been the dominant player for more than a decade.

          A few years ago, Adobe relegated PageMaker to the consumer market and came out with a whole new page-layout application called InDesign, which is now Mac OS X-native.

          Adobe has been working hard to promote InDesign to the big publishing shops -- touting its compatibility with XPress files, among other niceties. Indded, some publishing houses are starting to standardize on InDesign -- but there's still a huge installed base that's used to XPress and has invested heavily in additional software that hooks into XPress to let you control color fidelity, style type, manipulate images and do all sorts of other necessary housework.

        • yeah, i'm serious, i know nothing of the publishing industry.

          All design for publishing is done using pretty much just three programs (or four if you count the text that was provided in MS Word format): Adobe Photoshop for bitmap images (photo's, paintings etc.). Adobe Illustrator (sometimes Macromedia Freehand) for vector drawings, and Quark XPress to arrange it all together on a page and to format the text.

          Of all those programs Quark is perhaps the most indispensible. They benefit from exactly the same kind of dynamics that Microsoft Word benefits from - EVERYBODY uses Quark & expects Quark files and has a hard time if they recieve anything other than Quark files. Adobe (which you might have noticed produces the other 2 software packages used by designers) is trying to move people to their new competing product InDesign but Quark is so well entrenched Adobe is finding it difficult despite enormous advantages. Adobe has immense credibility, they're made of money, produce the two other essential software packages as well as most of the industry standard file formats like PostScript, EPS and PDF, and InDesign is available on MacOS X the newest and best OS from the computer company that still dominates the publishing industry - and Adobe is still having a hard time breaking in on Quark's business.

          As a side note: Quark is actually the name of the company - the software is actually named XPress or "Quark XPress" like "Adobe Photoshop" but since Quark unlike Adobe only has that one product everybody calls the software "Quark"

  • This bothers me, as a Mac supporter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:35AM (#4854646) Homepage
    For many many years Apple bent over backwards to allow legacy software to continue to work, through the transition to 32-bit addressing to PPC and so on. That has started to break down in recent years, and while I can appreciate the benefits of things like abandoning the 68K machines with new OS's (speed, for example), and now, to a lesser extent, booting into OS 9, I'm worried Apple may get a little too used to it, as Microsoft long has been. These moves are a great tool to force people to upgrade ... and Macs users reasonably get pissed over being forced to upgrade -- hardware or OS or apps. The easy path of abandoning compatibility makes more money for Apple, but sacrifices an element of the OS that many of use consider really, really important.

    I adopted OS X well, but was still have uses for OS 9, as on our iMac. The OS X was a novel transition for me, as a 15-year Mac user, because for the first time I had to upgrade several apps to work under the new OS (Classic Mode is not a panacea!). When Apple starts to disconnect from the legacy machines, the software publishers will also do so, if only because maintaining different versions for different machines is too onerous. But many of us have funky old programs that will never ever be updated because their authors have moved on, or the upgrades offer nothing we want to pay for -- we just want to continue on as we have. That won't be possible for long, esp. if the hardware path abandons our antiquated (read: 3 year-old) ways.

    Concretely, I first heard about this from the IT guy at my kids elementary school, which has a substantial flotilla of iMacs. He said it was going to be a pain for them, and with PC forces already snipping at the Macs -- the school admin and high school computers are PC's -- this could portend bad stuff for Mac land. It is a fact of life that the schools buy buy new machines to replace broken ones or expand, and if that necessary path is suddenly encumbered by new transitions and expenses, well, some places will decide it is an opportune time to homogenize the fleet.

    Just some musings ... I've felt that Microsoft has manipulated its profits and bug-fix burden for years by telling users to "get an upgrade" ... Apple may drift in that direction to its long-term detriment ... and yes, before anyone leaps forward, this is an obvious chip in favor of the free software movement. I'm just heavily invested in the older ways; yet (Steve? Are you listening?) I certainly don't rule out moving on. We're not at that crossroads, but I don't like the signals I glimpse ahead (hey, I maintained a metaphor.
    • I don't think that Apple is pushing everyone hard to move to OS X for profit's sake. That doesn't make sense: OS 9 will only stop working on *new* machines, which come with OS X for free.

      I think that Apple is pushing everyone to move to OS X because Jobs is a big control freak and hates the idea that anyone is still using OS 9. From NeXT to Aqua, OS X is really *his*, and OS 9 is not.

    • Re:This bothers me, as a Mac supporter (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Melantha_Bacchae ( 232402 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @01:54PM (#4855513)
      In order for Apple to survive and compete with its minority marketshare, Apple has to be different and better than its competitors. Apple has to be able to improve, they can't keep offering the same thing for 15 years.

      OS 9, despite all the amazing things Apple was able to get it to do, was still Windows 3.x era technology. While it was more stable than Windows 9x (in my experience), a single faulty application (frequently a bad port from Windows) could bring it down. Instead of getting your work done, you had to sit there and wait for it to come back up (at least it had the good graces not to try to pin its crash on you, unlike Windows' telling you that you didn't shut the machine down properly).

      Apple has to move on, or it will die. Its products need and deserve a modern, tough OS that can stand up to today's demands. They took 10 years, many false starts, and one near death experience, to get here. OS X, in its current form, was announced way back in May, 1998; which was four years ago. It will be two years after OS X.0 was released before they stop selling machines with OS 9 installed. And OS X still can run older programs (even many crufty ones) in Classic mode. How much slower and gentler could they possibly make this transition for you?!?

      OS X has rekindled interest in the Mac. Slashdotters that once declared eternal hatred for Apple now proudly tote iBooks. Apple's decision to give the programming tools away for free has resulted in a great blooming of new software for the Mac. Individuals and companies that used to do NeXT software have started developing for the Mac. The open source community is porting every Linux app that doesn't sprout legs and run away. Young people, once daunted by the high cost of development tools, are learning to program and creating hordes of new freeware and shareware. Check out the Mac section in your local Borders, and you will see lots of programming books. I think I even saw a book on, gasp, Mac game programming!

      Heck if you want a real miracle, look at the server side. Before OS X Server and XServe, Apple had practically nothing on the server side. In a matter of months, they went from nothing to being the fifth largest server maker in the US!

      Thanks to OS X, Apple's future shines bright indeed. Which is good for you, because as hard as it may be to upgrade to an OS X only Mac, it is even harder if no one is around to make them. ;)

      Mothra, Queen of Monsters and Apple's forever friend, first switched on this date in 1994 ("Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla").
      • Of course I don't question the "need to move forward" and I've heard all the PR about OS X. My point is that when Apple has moved forward in the past, they've kept an eye over their shoulder to all those scrappy Mac users with legacy machines. OS X is a radical break; OK; will there be one every two years from now on? For most of us OS X is a marginal and expensive improvement, regardless of whether it is a necessary move for the company. I'm sure I use the benefits of OS X a middling amount; however, there are a surprising number of people out there happily using the fairly-stable 8.6, and I have to wonder how many people have upgraded older machines to OS X anyway, an OS that has only been out in semi-acceptable form for about a year. Certainly not the 1,000 or so Macs in our local school system. If Apple raises costs to school buyers (migrating software etc.) it may lose them; it's hard to sell school boards on what great vision Apple has.

        I went and read the official Apple announcement [apple.com] -- apparently any bugs experienced by users are actually features. :)

        I can still run ancient 68000 code from college CS, which is cool, but the Classic has failed in some significant cases, esp. anything involving older external hardware. Just how necessary it is for them to require OS X-only boot? How does it benefit us? Or are we mostly talking about Apple's bottom line?

        And, to repeat myself, I mostly wonder what this portends for the future. Better to start asking Apple now (and I'm sure at least a few on their engineers read /. -- hi, how're you doing? Pass this on to the boss. :), than to find ourselves a few years down the road going WTF and Apple shrugging and saying, sorry, not supported, we figured we could make an extra $10 this way and, more importantly, we just don't care (not that we ever cared that much).

        If that is the likely future (who knows what Apple's future is? certainly not Apple) I'm going to be looking for a new train.
        • 8.6 won't install on any machine made in the last few years anyway. Your old programs were not engineered to explode on command, so what are you worried about? Go ahead and continue to run 8.6 for the next decade. You don't seriously expect Apple to maintain 9 AND X do you? That would only be a detriment to both systems.

          9 died four years ago, the corpse just hasn't stopped moving yet. Soon it will, thank God. X is not radical or new at all, it is proven technology dating back fifteen years. It isn't like Apple just announced X, the first public beta came out a long time ago. In case you can't put 2 and 2 together, Jobs ran NeXT before he came back to Apple. He brought with him a breath of fresh air, and something that is good for the computing world. In fact, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that OS X saved Apple more than it has doomed it.

          • You have it backwards. I don't care which OS you need for which machine. What I do care about is what you can do with that machine once it is plugged in and set up. I don't care if I ever see system 9 again. I do care whether I see the applications I used to use without the headache and cost and occassional impossibility of upgrading. An upgrade merely for the privilege of continuing to use software you already own is no upgrade.

            The OS X is great. OS 9 is gone. Yippee. But that's not at all the point.
        • Apple raising cost to school buyers? erm via the Mac OS X for teachers program apple gave away a copy of os x for any teacher who wanted it ( www.apple.com/education/macosxforteachers )
          • I checked yesterday; my son's particular school has a big shipment of eMacs (is that what they're called?) coming in, which will be able to boot 9 or X. They figure this will tide them over for a few years. Then they'll see where they are. So they're buying a lot of "old" machines just under the wire.

            They are still using some ancient System 7-era software which is primitive but for 1st-graders is just fine. To say they should buy upgrades -- several dozen for each program, to be precise -- is asinine (not that seamelt is saying this!).

      • In a matter of months, they went from nothing to being the fifth largest server maker in the US!

        Just a correction....but they are the fifth largest 1U rackmount server maker in the US, which is a far cry from the fifth largest server maker.

        -z
    • This isn't much different, though more dramatic, than the switch from OS 6 to OS 7. Do you remember the "System 7 Savvy" stickers over everything?

      There was much better backward compatability, but there were your inevitable programs which simply would not run in OS 7. Back then, Apple's answer was "Upgrade your programs".

      There are reportedly ways to fake out the system into booting to OS 9. There was a post even here on Slashdot, but bugger me if I can find it.
      • In spite of the bad mojo of replying to yourself, I found the recent (though ancient in Slashdot terms) discussion of this. [slashdot.org]

        I can't find the specific "trick", but I can't do everything for you.
      • If you can determine the gestalt ID of the machine you want to emulate, you can use MachID Wannabe [demon.co.uk] to trick the machine into thinking it can install a particular OS.
      • low level format the drive and then install os 9 if you want. all of macs firmware is now stored on the boot sector of the hard drive (yes i know this is retarded but that is the way it works) this way you can use the old firmware that will allow you to boot to os 9. if you really want to do this go ahead and it will work but it is pretty much just burrying your head in the sand. and also if you call tech support dont expect us to help you because no matter what on 1/1/03 we are not going to support anything about os 9
    • "as Microsoft long has been."

      Huh? I can run Windows 3.1 apps on Windows 2000.

      How is that not compatible?
    • Are you insane? Microsoft's main selling point has been that it has maintained backwards compatibility the whole time. Unlike Microsoft, however, with OS X Apple has shown that it is possible for a commercial operating system to become faster and more stable with each release. X is a whole new OS. Abandoning some applications, hardware, and practices in favor of new ones has been par for the course for years!

      Seriously, though, if your entire workflow and application set is on OS 9 (or 6 for that matter) why upgrade at all? Either upgrade and bite the bullet, or stay with your older machines and OS's, but don't bitch about not having your cake and eating it too.
    • I'm worried Apple may get a little too used to it[abandoning compatibility], as Microsoft long has been.

      Apple has two such changes that affected backwards compatability in over 18 years. Windows breaks something at every version, which happens almost yearly now it seems. Apple did have to abandon old outdated code and processors.

      The OS X was a novel transition for me ... I had to upgrade several apps to work under the new OS.

      But by now most OS9 apps need upgrading anyway for compatibility with others. And if you have the latest version of a modern title, then it is probably both OS9 and OSX compatible.

      many of us have funky old programs that will never ever be updated

      I have not yet run into a program that won't run in classic and has no replacement. Especially since the Open Source community has filled the ranks once occupied by the sharewarers. The costs I've incurred replacing software have been limited to Photoshop 7 (to replace version 3, which actually ran really well in Classic) and InDesign (to replace Quark, which was nice in Classic so long as I hid it to switch apps). Thanks to Apple software deals I paid around $400 and both. Not to shabby really.

      I can appreciate the benefits of things like abandoning the 68K

      Classic Mode is not a panacea!

      I'd comment, but I'm going to play a game of Keys to the Castle right now.

      • But by now most OS9 apps need upgrading anyway for compatibility with others. And if you have the latest version of a modern title, then it is probably both OS9 and OSX compatible.

        Photoshop 5.5 is a glaring exception -- I wish it was X-native, but it's not worth the upgrade price for that alone, Classic fortunately works fine ... except for scanner support ... and a noticeable performance hit here and there ... and less stability for some strange reason. :( Yeah, there are workarounds, but how nice that I have a G4 that will do everything a new one does (a tad slower) AND boot into OS 9. :)

        My point, with this limited example, is that nothing about Photoshop "need[s] upgrading anyway for compatibility." A picture is still a picture is still a picture.

        And, again, however trivial $400 might be, multiply it by 500+ Macs adn you may see a school board thinking, hmm, maybe we should cut off our nose to spite our face and switch to 100% PC's. Backward compatibility is boring and unsexy and economical and cool.
    • Every new Mac I've bought so far couldn't boot into any OS older than the most current one at the time of purchase (that's partly due to the fact that they put hardware support into those most recent version for the new machines). My old 7600 could only boot into 7.5.3 and upwards. A long time ago I wanted to install KanjiTalk 7.1 just to find out that I can't.

      So with OS X Apple have been nice and done you guys a favour, still letting you boot into 9.x, that time is now over and I think Apple is right taking that step. They can't go on pouring resources in supporting new hardware on a dead OS. Everything has to move to OS X sooner or later, and Apple aren't Microsoft, so they don't have 50 idle Programmers hanging around that they could delegate to look after 9.x and supporting it for years to come. For me 9.x can't be dead enough. And QuarkXpress 5 runs fine in Classic AFAIK. Then if you ouput on a Postscript compliant printer or film recorder WTF is the problem with switching to OS X??
      • So with OS X Apple have been nice and done you guys a favour

        Some favor! They did out of self-interest, or they would have suddenly had a machine that ran no software. They needed a transitional architecture to serve their needs; now they feel it is safe to move on -- for them.

        For for requiring a new OS to boot newer machines, that's not the issue at all; the OS is included. What would be an issue would be that OS in turn forcing you to update all of your software.

        Now, the whole question is balancing Apple's needs versus the consumers, not picking one over the other. Most arguments here appear preoccupied with whether switching to OS X is necessary -- that's beside the point. Legacy support is.
  • What i would really love is a grub/lilo etc style boot loader, so that i can pick on boot rather than having to change it back and forth in my preferences. And bet there is one too, I just haven't opened my eyes wide enough (or my search engine....)

    • Re:well... (Score:2, Informative)

      by cyber11 ( 412346 )
      Just hold the Option key pressed while booting up (if you're using a "new-world" mac; i.e. a mac since about 2000). You'll get a nice boot device selector which also supports Linux. Note that Mac OS 9 and OS X have to be installed on separate partitions.
  • I think the Quark issue is a great excuse for Apple to back off of at least one of their arrogant mistakes announced at the last MacWorld. Jaguar was touted as the be-all-ready-for-prime-time version of OSX. Fact is, it was bug-ridden; with the last 2 releases fixing no less then 150 bugs (that is more than the $1 per feature cost of upgrading that Jobs touted).

    They alienated thousands with the mis-handling of .mac and the full-price-only upgrade to Jaguar. Anyone who has a large number of Macs in design and publishing has stayed away from OSX because of the hidden costs of upgrading. And now that Apple has made it clear that it will cost about $700 to get to the next full version of the OS, multi-Mac houses are taking a wait-and-see approach. Remember, counting the software upgrades, a upgrade to OSX for the average design workstation is close to $1,000.

    Apple is only too happy to back off of this "shove X down your throat" move and blame Quark.

    • Okay, I'll bite at the troll bait... First, him and haw as you will, but the release of Jaguar was a mogor release. The fact that there's only a small decimal increase doesn't change the fact that there were significant improvements in functionality and applications. M$ would have charged $500 for it. Second, you assertion that the next upgrade will be $700 is utter bullshit. First I assume that you are talking about an unlimited licesne. What does M$ charge for that? Oh, right, they don't even offer that. The next upgrade will be 10.3 and I guarantee you it will be free. If you look at previous Apple OS release schedules you will discover that the time frame of paid/free releases hasn't changed that much. If it has changed a little, it is only because the improved architecture allows them to program more quickly. Unless you can show me a link that supports your claims, I'll chalk it up to blatant bitching for the sake of bitching. OSX upgrades don't cost $1000 per computer. Keep in mind the unlimited license availability. Costs would go down significantly. Considering this, the burden of the upgrade price is Quark's. Funny, I can get InDesign with OSX for $300.
    • First, this shouldn't have been modded as a troll --- it's a valid viewpoint but didn't fit into the Steve Jobs masturbatory camp and was punished for it. Bad mods, no cookie and a lump of coal in your stocking come Christmas.

      Second, as another poster has already pointed out, you need to get over the attachment of significance to version numbers.

      Now to the meat:

      Your point about the upgrade price for existing workstations is way off. Multiple copy upgrade licenses of the major design apps are available on the cheap and, further, not really a cost at all since most agencies, printers, production houses, etc. try to stay relatively up-to-date and, as such, would be buying carbonized versions anyway. (Major exception: Quark 3.x It's stable, it's relatively predictable, and it's an entrenched workflow.) Most of the upgrade cost is going to come in training and shifting into a revised workflow, not in infastructure.
    • you are just an idiot there are no other words for you. how is it going to cost $700 to get jaguar? jaguar was not bug ridden there was only one major bug in the inital relase of jaguar and that was burned cds not being able to be read on a pc. tell me a bug in 10.2.2 that isnt related to HPs broken printer drivers? thats right and most of the bugs that were fixed had to deal with rendevous.

  • Major Restructure... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @01:51PM (#4855499)
    Be careful putting your faith in Quark. I'm still amazed at how blatantly people follow Quark, after how terrible they've treated their customers over the years. The Quark following is almost as fun to watch as the Mac followers.... =)

    But, keep in mind. Quark is in the process of closing it's main office, in Denver completely. All development and support has been shipped over seas to India. Denver has a major growth of unemployed Quarkies now... things are getting interesting.

    I won't post the obvious rumors that are about town, but if you've got a chance, I'd high recommend giving InDesign a look, it may be worth it in the end.....
    • The Denver Quark office is just a local US Headquarters. Quark has offices in 10 countries. [quark.com] I hardly doubt that the closing of one office is cause for alarm.

      Everybody's a pessimist these days.

      • Thing is...
        we heard that the UK office had closed too. There is a major restructuring in progress. Whether that means the end of Quark Inc as we know it remains to be seen.
        In the light of Fred's recent stated desire to move kit'n'caboodle into the Windows world and the rumoured decamping to India, it suddenly all seems to make sense!

  • Drop QuarkXPress (Score:3, Interesting)

    by White Roses ( 211207 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @02:05PM (#4855611)
    The company clearly doesn't want [macedition.com] to properly support Macs. Whatever spin the marketroids want to put on it, it comes down to Quark not giving a rat's ass about Mac support. I'm pure Mac OS X now (aside from one little legacy program that I don't think is even made any more - but it's not a heavy-duty program so emulation is fine), and it's great. Adobe has committed, M$, for %$@&'s sake, has committed. Quark simply doesn't want Mac business any longer. Leave them.

  • Quark is a private company (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @02:13PM (#4855679) Homepage Journal
    Quark doesn't have shareholders to impress for profits. Likewise, no shareholders means less pressure to make a Mac OS X move.

    I've already stated my two cents on my blog about Quark's machinations. [blogspot.com] I do have one item to add: Quark appears to have hedged its bets. It knew full well of Apple's commitment with Mac OS X over 3 years ago. However, like many companies, they've been burned when Apple changed gears on their OS plan and announced several Yet Another Operating System Plans in the latter 1990's.

    So Quark went on with its Mac OS 9 version of QuarkXPress (5.0) just in case Apple's OS X plans got chucked. Now that OS X appears entrenched and with direction, Quark is working on the OS X version. The question why they are so slow to port is up to speculation.

    However, I don't feel that Quark's new OS X product will compare to InDesign 2, which has had a larger head start in both Mac OS 9 and now a Mac OS X version. It only takes two or three versions of an Adobe product before it has refined into a competitive product.

    It's even possible that Quark has lost programming staffing and has had a harder time porting. That's just speculation, but it's yet another idea that makes you go "hmmmm."
    • Very interesting comments here and in your blog.
      The release of Quark 5 was all about seeing out the old Quark development cycle with the concomitant requirement to get as much revenue from a major release as possible.
      Quark admitted as much to us, recently. As you know, one of Quark's "lovable" aspects was not releasing ANYTHING for years, then expecting a captive market to pony up for a major release -which most of us did (Quark 3 - 4 and, unbelieveably, 4 - 5). This "new release every five years" hurts us AND Quark. They're changing that now. Unfortunately, for Quark's bottom line, v5 for Mac OS 9 had to happen.
      Actually, you said it well yourself. With a slightly jaundiced view of the last 10 years, it's no surprise that Quark can pin the blame easily on Apple's OS vacillation; that's not the whole story though!
      • Thanks. As far as the "whole story," I'm a fan of the popular opinion that Quark's management are a bunch of idiots with poor direction.

        You're absolutely right on the delayed releases. Why, for the love of God, why?!

    • Actually, Quark has laid off most of its U.S. staff, and has shifted the porting effort to its staff in India. Given Microsoft's stranglehold on Indian Universities, it's not a real surprise that they're having trouble with the port.


      While I worked at Quark (I was one who was laid off, but I didn't work on XPress), Fred Ebrahimi's (the sole owner now) disdain for Apple was very clear. Every new product the company tried was designed from the ground up to be Windows-only. Tim Gill, the real visionary behing Quark's original success, was the one who liked Macs, and he sold his half of the company back to Ebrahimi in 2000.

      • I'll be damned.

        That explains a great deal, and does give more acceptability to the Ebrahimi conference story.

        If you're right, QuarkXPress is going to lose its #1 ranking in DTP in the coming 5 years. Not just for Macs, but for PCs as well--the prepress community and the service bureaus they work will prefer to support a single product. And, moving from QXP to InDesign isn't that hard for most.

  • The matter of costs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ernst_mulder ( 166761 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:50PM (#4856650) Homepage
    Everybody seems to forget how expensive the transition to OS X can be. Some of our design customers have many workstations, ranging from old 9600's (8100's even!) to modern G4's. NOBODY is thinking of getting rid of all the old stuff and putting modern OS X running G4's in their places. Heck, some of these machines are still running 8.1 or even 7.6.1! The only thing I see happening is that some new machines run OS X "to test the new system". And even that is quite an investment. ATM doesn't exist anymore so a Suitcase has to be bought. Other programs need to be updated (Photoshop, Illustrator, Office or MacLink, VPC). Sometimes the company's servers have to be upgraded as well (under OS X the FileMaker and Retrospect clients only do TCP/IP, Retrospect 5 doesn't do any AppleTalk anymore forcing an upgrade on other older machines). And the customer has to be taught how to cope with the new OS. Everything is different! Count out the hours, the upgrades, the production time lost. This (OS X) is a huge investment. Some customers are wondering if it's all worth it at all. We've been telling them it's not worth switching to PC's for the same reasons, and now they have to move to OS X which is almost just as much work.

    So it's a good thing Apple's trying to force us. But it may be quite a pill to swallow for some. And I think "Classic" Mac OS machines will be around for some time to come.

    BTW: Personally I LOVE OS X. I'm never going back.
    • I know exactly how expensive the transition to OS X is. I am currently in the process of shepherding all of our Mac clients (the vast majority of the clients I work with) onto OS X.

      Frankly, no one is telling people to get rid of their old stuff and replace them with brand spanking new G4s RIGHT NOW. If you've been going well with old 9600s and 8100s for this long, and they're still functioning, who cares? It's not like you can get replacement parts anywhere but eBay or Preowned Electronics nowadays. They'll continue to run the old OSes until they just stop working.

      However, a changeover is eventually going to be coming, and me and my father have done yeoman's work in getting our clients moved over to OS X. Lotta hand-holding. Lotta panicked phone calls that they can't do X or Y. These people haven't the first clue what a file permission is. We were able to convince these people that it was going to hort whether they did it now or later. At least if they did it now, they'd have time to get used to it. Hell, these people still use Quark, even though they're all running X, as Classic mode works just fine. I feel sorry for people who refuse to make the switch. They're going to be in the most pain, make the switch to Windows they'll be so damn angry, and it won't be any better.
  • There is no carbonized port of Quark XPress, and there never will be. There is no carbonized port of Quark XPress, and there never will be. There is no carbonized port of Quark XPress, and there never will be.

    Seriously, though, those Quark guys must have used a crapload of totally custom code that wasn't in the Mac Toolkit, or else there surely would be a OS X version of XPress by now.

    Or, maybe they lost all of the source code in a freak accident and are just stalling while they code up their next Adobe killer (yeah right).
  • Talked to one of the IT guys where I'm working about the switch to X and, according to him, Xpress isn't the only hold up. Apparently there are no drivers available for any of the large format (24, 36 & 42 inch) printers.

    Now, I was all like, "Quark is, like, so committing corporate suicide by not releasing an OS X version of Xpress and InDesign, despite its many flaws, will, like, kick their asses and stuff," but not I think that perhaps Quark may be correct in waiting a wee bit. Despite no carbonized competition, InDesign has made almost no headway against Quark on the corporate side where it counts and, should Quark release a X-native version of Xpress in the first half of 2003 which Just Works, they may pull off quite a coup.

    My take on InDesign: while it has some nice features, it has no killer feature.

    • The large-format printer issue is a canard --- most of those printers have their own dedicated RIP which will happily chew-up a PDF. Any production artist worth their salt can dump a PDF in their sleep, even easier if you're running a strict Adobe workflow. (imho InDesign's killer feature: Nowhere near as schizophrenic as Quark when it comes to output problems. Even back in the Quark 3.x glory days we'd run into weird problems where a box would machine-greek if it didn't like where it was layered.)
  • I haven't seen anything like this on MacInTouch...is this just some cooked rumor? Not that I care either way :)
  • My Mac doesn't boot any Mac OS, but runs all apps from MacOS 7.5.2 to 9.2.2, 10.1 and 10.2 in their native enviroment :) you can forget classic mode, yet run OS9 and OS10 at the same time. http://www.maconlinux.org it's sweet

  • Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GMontag451 ( 230904 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @08:04PM (#4858787) Homepage
    I'm hoping that they push back the non-booting computers indefinitely. A computer that can't boot 9 is a computer that can't boot from a CD, at least not usefully. The OS X install CD boots straight to an installer when you boot from a CD, and doesn't let you access any kind of file manager. Until someone comes up with a way to boot into a file manager in X from a CD, stopping booting from 9 is a bad idea.

    • Re:Good. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Graymalkin ( 13732 )
      Try BootCD from CharlesSoft.

      For Jaguar [charlessoft.com]
      For Puma [charlessoft.com]
    • I HAVE POSTED IT TWICE ALREADY BUT NO ONE HAS LISTENED. SO PAY ATTENTION you can still get the mac to boot to os 9 you simply have to do a low level format to hose the old firmware (yes mac firmware is really on the boot sector of the hard drive) then boot to the fricken os 9 disk and install away or even just install firmware 4.1.9 and use 10.2 and 9.2 that way.
      • Here's a little experiment you can try at home:

        Get a Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) Software Install CD.

        Get a Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio) Software Install CD.

        Compare the two Mac OS ROM files in the System Folder of each CD. See how they're different?

        With each hardware revision--notice those two logic boards are different--Apple updates Mac OS 9 to boot on the damned thing.

        They do it with OS X, too, but it's not nearly as apparent.

        So, why do they do that? The 1-MB bootROM of NewWorld machines, of course. It contains Open Firmware instructions that initialize an OS from a boot device. Change the hardware in certain places, change the software to accomodate. (Note that this is not always the rule, but it's the general practice here.)

        Simply put, in the end, if Apple doesn't want you booting OS 9, dammit, you won't. (At least, not without some supa-leet hacksorin'.) The bootROM doesn't /have/ to initialize anything it doesn't want to--remember that OF can specify what toolbox ROM image gets loaded and which doesn't.

        Yes, there is more OF code in the toolbox ROM image, and there's the bootinfo file in the master directory block, but what you're talking about is not something a low-level format will circumvent/solve/whatever.

        Anyway, rather than exhaust myself explaining why you can't just low-level format a frickin' HD like you say--when have you ever needed to re-update the firmware on a Power Mac after a HD replacement?--I'll point you to some good reading you /should/ have done before making an ass out of yourself:

        http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Dev ic eManagers/pci_srvcs/pci_cards_drivers/PCI_BOOK.35. html

        http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1167.h tm l

        If I'm wrong, I would love to know where and why. If Apple can be circumvented, who cares what Quark says? (Then again, who cares, anyway? Quark can eat a fat one.)

        -/-
        Mikey-San
      • Can you post links to documentation backing this up?

        From Apple's developer tech note on the current G4:

        Boot ROM

        "The boot ROM consists of 1 MB of on-board flash EPROM. The boot ROM includes the hardware-specific code and tables needed to start up the computer using Open Firmware, to load an operating system, and to provide common hardware access services."

        Link [apple.com]

        Entire document [apple.com]

        (Apologies for offtopic post)
      • All current Macs boot into 9, so I don't see what the big deal is. The issue was always that FUTURE Macs (after Jan 1, 2003) wouldn't be able to boot 9.

  • They had it coming. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:08PM (#4859170) Homepage
    You know, Quark has eschewed Mac standards for as long as I can remember. They're UI was (is) totally proprietary, and their key shortcuts are a pain to figure out. Learning Quark was about as easy as learning a whole new OS. I always got the feeling it was totally hacked together. Maybe if they'd spent a little time making their program more standard, they wouldn't have this problem. I have no sympathy.

    • Re:They had it coming. (Score:2, Informative)

      by SirOgre ( 610068 )
      Quark version 4 was written to run on system 7 and later...Therefore...they could not adopt the OS 8 Appearance manager (also called platinum)

      The statement about the UI being proprietary is sheer ignorance. The UI for version 4 is based on the OS 7 Appearance manager. Keep in mind that version 4 was released in 1997, when the Mac market was split between OS 7 and OS 8. Quark didn't adopt the OS 8 Appearance manager because that would have meant abandoning OS 7. Granted, using Quark version 4 today looks a little funny

      Version 5 of Quark runs in only 8.6 and higher...and does comply with the OS 8 Appearance Manager. My guess is you are one of the people that didn't upgrade to 5 because it wasn't carbon (or Quark's insane pricing scheme was a drawback). I can understand that, but don't fall into the trap of comparing software written in 1997 with software written today.

      On another note...I've never had any problems with Quark's shortcuts. To each his own I suppose

      • The statement about the UI being proprietary is sheer ignorance.

        I'm afraid not. The Appearance Manager was introduced with Mac OS 8 (not System 7), and it provided backwards compatibility for people who were using the standard System 7 UI widgets. Although adopting the Appearance Manager gave you access to lots of new widgets, if an application had been written correctly it would not have had to do anything to pick up the new "platinum" appearance.

        Quark's problem was the same as most of the other apps which had problems in that transition - they wrote their own UI widgets, which were designed to mimic the System 7 look. Which of course meant that they were left behind when the system UI was updated. There were several shim classes available ("Gray Council" was one of them I believe) for class libraries like PowerPlant, which would let you write apps that would select either the Appearance Manager widget, a facsimile of it to work around AM bugs, or the same widget with a System 7 look-and-feel.

        Quark could easily have updated their code to use the same technique (i.e., update their custom widgets to be able to draw in both styles), but why would then when people didn't have a choice?

        It wasn't just a Quark problem of course - NeXT apps had the same problem on Windows, as they drew all their own widgets rather than using the system widgets. Which worked great. And then Windows 95 came out... :-)
  • There is still no Mac OS X operating system CD. The Mac OS X installer CD boots straight into the Mac OS X installer, not into the Mac OS X operating system. Without a full operating system boot CD, it is very difficult to do basic recovery when the OS on the hard disk fails. It's still necessary to boot from a Mac OS 9 CD in order to perform some recovery actions.

    I had a nasty series of crashes a few months ago that left me with an unsuable operating system. I tried to reinstall the OS, but the disk was too full. In order to fix the problem without reformatting, I had to reboot from my Mac OS 9 CD and move a bunch of files from the OS partition to another volume. I was then able to reinstall the OS and get things working again. If I had been unable to reinstall the OS, I would have at least been able to save my important files before reformatting or discarding the damaged disk. If I had been unable to boot from a full operating system CD, I would have been in the uncomfortable position of having to part with my data.

    Until Apple has a bootable Mac OS X operating system CD, they won't likely release any Macs incapable of booting into Mac OS 9.

    Apple is aware of this problem, and it seems likely that the delay in releasing Mac OS X-only Macs could be related to putting the finishing touches on a bootable Mac OS X operating system CD.

    If Apple is smart, they'll also release a bootable DVD that includes additional applications, developer tools, and a thorough suite of diagnosis tools.

    It would also be nice if the boot CD/DVD could automatically write temporary files to a RAM disk in the even that the hard disk is damaged. This could also be triggered by holding down a key combination at boot time. AIX has a maintenence mode like this, and it makes the job of repairing file system and start up problems much easier.
    • ya know you can format when you are booted to the os x cd right? its that amazing thing called disk utility (click on the installer menu before you select language and go down to open disk utility) and hey if OS X is hosed hold down the command key (apple key) and S to boot into the command line and do what you need to do there.
  • This subject is of considerable interest to my company and Macintouch is a reasonably reliable source--but I can't find the cited item. I've just spent twenty minutes searching for it--I tried searching on "Quark", "reprieve", "boot OS 9," etc. It's not in today's news and it doesn't seem to be in the last few days' news.

  • We're budgeting for 2003 to finish converting all our Macs to G4 systems...and we ordered a LOT of computers with an eye toward keeping OS 9 on them. Why? Quark Publishing System. The way we're set up, three of our five magazines use QPS, based around Netware 4 servers running IPX. AFAIK there is no plan now or ever for IPX support under OS X...so we've got a long road ahead of us.

    Too, every time I talk to our Apple rep about the situation, I get the same answer: "Have you tried InDesign?"

    Personally, I'd love to make the jump: QPS is administered here by a separate group from the rest of the IS department, and if QPS goes away, my grip on complete world domination will tighten even more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    Ahem.

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