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OS 9 Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Macs Won't Boot Into Mac OS in 2003 558

Posted by pudge from the no-booting-for-you dept.
Magnus Olsson writes "Apple announced at Apple Expo in Paris, that they are dropping the ability to boot into Mac OS after January 2003. It will still be possible to access Mac OS via the Classic environment under Mac OS X." Apparently, eWeek was right, and the final nail is being driven. So, where's mol for Mac OS X?
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Macs Won't Boot Into Mac OS in 2003 More

Macs Won't Boot Into Mac OS in 2003

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  • http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-09 -10-008-26-NW-SW

    straight off my little bar on the side there. Even today.
  • We're happy to see Apple take this next step to drive adoption of Mac OS X,

    And here I'd always that "adoption" was a matter of choice. Of course, if it's being driven, one can only guess.
    • it's still a choice: don't upgrade. i know people still running Win95, because they've got no need for the new "features", and the older stuff is smaller and nicer to older hardware.
  • I use OSX for most of the time - it's my OS of choice - but what about some games? Some games run pants within classic and some are ok - like Unreal Tournament - it runs way more smoothly in native 9. Is Apple gonna release patches for OS9 games? I don't see a problem goin full OS X except for playing my old games.

    • This only applies to new Macs, so your computer won't magically stop booting into OS9 when you want it too. And if you buy a new comp, just use the old one to play your old games.

    • Most of the popular games that do not have OS X versions like UT, Rogue Spear, or Rainbow Six are fairly old games. I'm sure any new computer bought in 2003 or later will be *plenty* powerful enough to run them in classic fine. Heck, I play Rainbow Six in Classic on a 500 mhz TiBook and I have no problems with it. PS - Looking over it again, I cannot think of any major game for the Mac besides the three mentioned above that hasn't been ported to X. Am I right or am I missing something?
    • Hopefully we'll see pure power overwhelm problems from OS 9 while newer games (UT2K3 for instance) will be built towards X not 9. I doubt Apple will get into the business of supporting other people's applications though.

  • had to happen at some point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alcimedes ( 398213 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:31AM (#4228450)
    i think everyone knew that this was coming. the machines (and people who use them) need to be pushed forward for OSX to be a viable OS for developers to make software for.



    it's annoying for those who have thousansd in software that will only run in OS9, they get a bit of a cold shoulder from Apple is seems as of late.



    this whole push towards OSX reminds me of one of those situations where everyone knows it has to be done, but no one is really dying to do it. Apple has a new OS that they're still trying to get the bugs worked out of, get it cleaned up and hopefully working to the point where it's a big enough incentive to move people over.



    at the same time, OS9 users don't really want to move. they have a lot of time and money invested in both OS9 itself and their software. learning something different after you've gone 10+ years with the same thing isn't something most people look forward to. they also have a legitimate argument that a lot of smaller titles are making it over to OSX. i know in the research community that i work with there are key apps that haven't been ported because they were written by some researcher on their own time, for free years ago. that guy isn't going to take the time to learn how to port his program to OSX most likely. (and yes there is classic mode, but that rather ruins the point of OSX)

    time will tell how this works out, but one way or another it had to happen. at least with 10.2 it's not a bad thing anymore.

    • All I can say is welcome to the world of microsoft in 1995-1996. when MS told the hordes of Windows 3.11 users to basically go jump in a lake with the release of windows 95 and how it wouldnt run many of the older apps/ dos apps and a large number of the expensive Financial apps and engineering apps. (I have a freelance client that still has an old dos machine for running a punchtape program that programs tapes for their old CNC machines. it will not run under windows 95/98/me/nt/2000/xp/eieio.... Just like the $75,000.00 woth of software I have running from Nexxus for photo ad channel's. no workie under anything but DOS.

      It's just that Mac users got the shove alot later in the game. :-) welcome to the fun that is the Intel world!

      • Re:had to happen at some point (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lamz ( 60321 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:30AM (#4229050) Homepage Journal
        <p><i>All I can say is welcome to the world of microsoft in 1995-1996.</i></p>

        <p>Hey! I don't even want into the world of Microsoft in 2002!</p>

        <p>Seriously, though. This is no big deal. The only people making a big deal about it are flame baiters. Apple has always done exactly this with their operating systems and hardware. Every new Mac released ships with and runs the current version of the OS, and nothing earlier.</p>

        <p>The only difference now is that Apple institued a multi-year phase-in to OS X, in recognition of the fact that it was a far more dramatic change than from 6 to 7, 7 to 8, 8 to 9, etc.</p>

        <p>Slashdotters are not giving Apple a lot of grief over this precisely because it is not a big deal.</p>

        <p><i>It's just that Mac users got the shove alot later in the game. :-) welcome to the fun that is the Intel world!</i></p>

        <p>Actually, there have been two momentous changes in Macintosh history. On the OS side, moving from OS 6 to OS 7 added all kinds of under-the-hood changes, such as multi-tasking. On the hardware side, moving from 68K to PPC was a change to a completely re-designed processor. The fact that Apple made those transitions so smoothly and gracefully is the reason that many people don't realize just how dramatic the changes were.</p>

        <p>Welcome to the world of Apple.</p>

    • (and yes there is classic mode, but that rather ruins the point of OSX)

      How so? Mac OS X provides Classic mode for this very reason -- so that those old legacy applications can still run. The only things that balk at running in Classic are a few old games.

      • The only things that balk at running in Classic are a few old games.

        And if this is truly the case, Microsoft leads the way again, in that WinXP balks at running a "few old games" in its emulation (or whatever) of DOS. Etc. Apple isn't stepping out of line with this press release. They're just being up-front about it.

        Of course, I don't see anyone else pointing this out. Perhaps there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to Microsoft's operating systems. Perhaps it was time for /. to host a rant-fest railing against Apple's. Whatever.

        DOS -> WinXP may be a farther leap than OS 9.x -> OS 10.x (by comparison), but it's still the same core issue of when and where to cut the cord in handling legacy applications for a given platform.

        Meanwhile, Linuxians are there, ever-ready to support yet another dead or dying set of software through emulation (or whatever). More power to them, I guess, though I would think there are plenty of Linux-specific apps in equal need of attention.

  • So, where's mol for Mac OS X?

    Help an uneducated brit here guys, what does "So, where's mol for Mac OS X? " mean? expression from across the pond or did I fall asleep in computer class again?... cheers ...

  • Maaan, I sure hope that Digidesign gets it together with pro tools by that time - the pro audio software companies seem to be dragging the most ass getting support for os x natively, and the 'classic environment' audio hardware support is still pretty much nil.
    Makes me wonder how much support they're getting from apple, since they've acquired Logic Audio (emagic) midi/audio recording software.
    Pro tools is pretty much the only reason I mess with os9 at all these days. I did see that mark of the unicorn has an osx beta coming for digital performer, so that's promising.....

    • avid hates apple... (Score:3, Informative)

      by eshefer ( 12336 )
      avid-digidesign hates apple for some time, Obiouvsly..

      stienberg are starting to hate apple, since apple basicly is killing VST by developing audio units in os X, and the interesting decision of dropping vst support in logic and fully embrace audio units.

      audio software for X is beeing developped these days. NI are about to release traktor 2.0 on osX, with the rest of there stuff over the next year or so. Propellerheads alredy released Reason2.0 for X (at the same time as the PC and macOS9 versions).

      but Protools... Nahhh.. I don't think you'll see that comming out for X. I'm not sure of the video market, but in audio it seems that, in the long run, protools will die at a software company (hardware is a differant issue, though)

    • Re:Digidesign (pro tools) - they are coming (Score:5, Funny)

      by victim ( 30647 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:59AM (#4228716)
      Audio is coming along. MOTU and Tascam have both gotten off their butts lately. I suspect that is enough pressure to make everyone else look late. There are two main reasons why audio apps are late to the OS-X party...
      • Audio applications should be using Core Audio for their work and this was not in a usable state until 10.1 or so.
      • In the past, all the audio companies have used their own audio architectures. They no longer need these and can just use Core Audio. There is no longer the lock in from software application to hardware. You should be able to choose your mixing software and your IO hardware independently. That has got to screw up the marketing plan.

      I'm glad for it. I've been booting back to OS9 for audio work (I usually work in ~4 hour sessions, so a reboot isn't a great annoyance), but I'm looking forward to Core Audio and being able to use my gear from different vendors simultaneously when I need just a few more channels.

      Hopefully the plugin folks won't scratch their butts too long now. Some of the backup singers I work with are going to get a rude shock if I can't get that pitch fixer patched in. :-)
  • Unlike WinOS/2 in the OS/2 world, OS X does not include an installation of the bits of OS 9 necessary for Classic mode.

    You MUST install OS 9 before installing OS X, otherwise you have no Classic mode.

    If they disable booting OS 9 (which is exactly how one starts an OS 9 install), I'm not sure how one would go about installing OS 9 before installing OS X.

    I suppose it's possible that Apple could follow IBM's lead and include the necessary parts of OS 9 as part of the OS X install. That would most likely be the simplest solution.

    • Re:Ummm, No. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bastion_xx ( 233612 )
      You *can* install OS9 afterwards (for Classic access).

      Did a fresh install of Jaguar on my TiBook. Didn't even think of OS9 since all my apps are OS X approved. Wait, except for that damned Toast CD which is only OS9 (for the install). Popped out my OS9 CD that came with OS X 10.1.2, 'c' during startup, and installed a fresh copy of OS9.

      Reboot back into Jaguar and launched Classic mode. It did its upgrade thang, and all was well.

      (after installing Toast Titanium I was then able to apply the patch to make it an OS X app).
      • Correct. The problem being that Apple is going to turn off the ability to boot OS 9. The question becomes, are they disabling OS 9 booting altogether (which means your installation CD will NOT work), or are they simply removing the option to select which system folder boots. If the latter, then we're OK. If the former, then we're out of luck.

        The strange thing is that in the Apple releases, they keep talking about the bundled Classic environment. I hardly call it bundled if you have to install the underlying OS 9 to make it work.

  • Classic mode (Score:5, Informative)

    by Draoi ( 99421 ) <draiocht@@@mac...com> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:41AM (#4228540)
    Before folks go ballistic without reading the article;
    Customers will be able to run older Mac OS 9 applications using the "Classic" software that will continue to be bundled with Mac OS X.
    Interestingly enough, MacOS 9.2.2 *wasn't* bundled with Jaguar but at least it still works and will continue to for the near future anyway.

    Oh, and yeah, Steve Jobs will not personally go around to Mac users' homes, deleting all old copies of MacOS 10 so you can all relax ...

    • old copies of MacOS 10

      That should read "old copies LESS THAN MacOS 10" - the < character got swallowed by SlashDot ...

    • Re:Classic mode (Score:5, Informative)

      by (H)olyGeekboy ( 595250 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:28AM (#4229024)
      "Customers will be able to run older Mac OS 9 applications using the "Classic" software that will continue to be bundled with Mac OS X. "

      Interestingly enough, MacOS 9.2.2 *wasn't* bundled with Jaguar...

      Huh??? It was bundled with Jaguar (notice how everyone refers to it as Jaguar, not "Macintosh OS X version 10.2"). MacOS 9.2 (required for Classic mode) was an optional component in the installation, installed by default. It's on the second of two installation CDs that you got.

      Jaguar just didn't include a bootable OS 9 Installation CD like the original OS X retail boxes did.

      Geez, is this where all the mod points are going these days?? :)

  • Sweet. (Score:5, Funny)

    by viper21 ( 16860 ) <scottNO@SPAMiqfoundry.com> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:43AM (#4228564) Homepage
    Now we just need computers that will refuse to boot windows.

    -S

  • Not really aimed at users... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 4minus0 ( 325645 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:43AM (#4228566)
    I'm not so sure this is aimed at Mac users so much as developers. Antecdotal evidence suggests that Mac users have no problem migrating to OS X. It's companies like Quark and alot of the printer and scanner manufacturers that are dragging their feet in supporting OS X. It seems like its a way for Apple to say, 'Look, no one is going to be using OS 9 on any of our new machines, so if you want people to continue to purchase your products then you need to develop programs and drivers for OS X'. Seems reasonable enough to me.

    • Uh, I don't think so... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Codex The Sloth ( 93427 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:53AM (#4229316)
      Not so anecdotal evidence [macworld.com] would suggest that users are not taking up OS X in droves. How anyone could use OS 9 at all is beyond me but that's the reality. Apple has already told developers to only do OS X development. The sad fact is that for the market share apple has, doing (what in the case of the drivers at least) is a total re-write is not a super high priority for alot of companies.
  • Seriously, (-1, troll) why optimise and improve then get bogged down by the compatibility-driven obsolescence?

    There should be continued support for older software for a reasonable period (No idea what this would be though), so I disagree on that, but It seems a better idea to just run native apps than kludge everything else to the detriment of the system as a whole.

    As long as incompatibilities are well-documented, this can only improve the performance of the computer. It's like the difference between running generic binary files compared to optimised ones for your architecture (e.g. why Gentoo linux is much faster if you can get past the install). Those who this would prevent from running software simply don't upgrade. Admittedly this is a gross oversimplification but essentially this just means that everyone involved ha to support all their applications twice.

  • Story has it backwards (Score:5, Informative)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @10:51AM (#4228638) Homepage
    Apple is not explicitly doing anything to the hardware to prevent OS 9 booting that could otherwise occur. They are simply not bothering to update OS 9 to boot on the new hardware, since it is legacy code.
  • there are lots of people here saying things like "what about quark?" or some other app. "we won't be able to run quark! Mac's will become less usefull." the reasoning seems to go. but the whole point of Apple droping System 9 is to encourage (okay, strongly encourage) the software vendors to get their act together, and start producing software for the modern system - or at least that works under Classic. by getting the software makers to stop dragging their feet, Apple is making OS X much more useful (and usable), and doing a service to their users.

    of course, there's the seperate problem of support for old peripherials like scanner drivers, but that's a different issue.
  • Think about this....

    Apple really wants to ditch OS 9. They have made this abundantly clear and they have dead-ended it. Right now Apple has to get people off Mac OS 9 so that developers will start targeting OS X. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

    Apple is in a position now where most of their major third party application providers (Photoshop, et al) are running on X. But these companies still support OS 9 and this is what has to be stopped. How do you stop it? Force users to jump to OS X. Now there's no reason to develop for OS 9 and Apple can declare it truly dead.

    But as another poster pointed out, forcing people to ditch their current OS doesn't make you many friends. So would Apple intentionally cripple their hardware to make sure it won't boot OS 9? I doubt it. But if you read between the lines on this one it may be implying something bigger - I'm thinking a processor change here.

    OS X affords Apple the opportunity to run on many platforms and ditching PPC is not an option if you have to support OS 9. So you have to ditch 9 to move forward.

    We all know that OS 9 runs emulated under OS X and Apple will keep this support. This most likely doesn't require platform support. I don't know for sure, but Apple is most likely emulating for OS 9 - and if it's not it will in future releases when they ditch Motorola.

    All the signs are pointing this way. Motorola's PPC development has stagnated. Apple needs more horsepower to make OS X shine. Apple needs to find a new processor and OS 9 simply doesn't fit into the picture. I'm willing to bet that this move is being made to clear the way for a new chip, maybe even to introduce it at Mac World 2003.

    • Apple needs more horsepower to make OS X shine.

      Well, that's the hardware geek take on it anyway. It's not like there are widespread complaints about OS X applications running slowly. The GUI side of things was fixed with Jaguar, and there are some specific applications that still need to be fixed. Otherwise, a 700 or 800 MHz G4 is snappy as all hell. I still think an 866MHz Pentium III is snappy as all hell too--I do high-end commercial software development on one--but the fanboys want more, more more.

  • I think saying that they are dropping the ability to boot into Mac OS [9] seems a bit misleading. It kind-of-if-you-look-at-it-differently implies that Apple is removing the feature from the firmware, however no mention of that is made in the announcement. All that they'll be doing (in my view, if I'm not missing something here) is removing OS 9 as a stand-alone OS from their new machines. It'll still live as part of OS X; Classic still needs OS 9 in order to run OS 9 apps. That said, there's no need for something like MOL, since Classic does the the same thing.

    So what's the big fuss about, anyway?

  • The article heading is misleading, it's only for new macintosh models, not currently shipping macs. Apple is not going to cripple any machine that currently boots into OS 9, they just will not add support to OS 9 to boot any new hardware that is introduced after January. A subtle but important distinction. And since eWeek was claiming that Apple would cripple existing machines...eWeek was wrong.

    Classic runs much better (and boots way faster) under Jaguar anyway, reducing the need for OS 9 booting. If Apple makes more improvments before they ship new hw (a given), there will be even fewer reasons to need to boot into OS 9.

    Press Release [apple.com]

    The quote: "all new Mac® models will only boot into Mac® OS X as the start-up operating system"

  • It's time to move on and forget about OS 9. OS X is the future. There's not time to waste.

    Of course, I also want to point out the fact that if MS did something similar, people would be going crazy. Hell, people went crazy when MS decided to stop supporting NT4 so imagine if they did something like that :)

  • OS X on Intel? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MediaBoy77 ( 469933 )
    So does this have anything to do with Apple's uber-secret (except when it's posted on /.) project that has OS X simultaneously running on Intel boxes?

    By forcing the migration away from OS 9, Apple moves closer to a processor-independent world where they could drop Motorola in 2-3 years.
  • The only thing that I have a worry with not being able to reboot into OS 9 are the older games - Myth, Myth II, Rune (granted, not a *good* game, but still...).

    If they had good 3D accelleration[sic] support under classic, this wouldn't be a worry at all.
  • This is obviously just a marketing ploy to sell more machines by the end of the year. Everyone's going to want to go out and buy a new Mac because there will *never* be a faster machine that will boots into OS 9... the Moore's Law holdouts no longer have anything to wait for.

    Of course, at MacWorld SF in January 2003, Jobs will announce that Apple was just kidding; that the real date OS 9 will be discontinued is January 2004. Right? Right? Guys? He's kidding, right? (runs out to buy a new Mac).

    In all seriousness, I can understand why Apple is making this apparently "stupid" move:

    Apple wants to force the abandonment of OS 9. The entire Macintosh user base combined is already not large enough to entice a lot of software/hardware developers to support Macs. The challenge Apple currently faces is that if it fragments its user base further, it may lose some of the developers who do support Macs but can't afford to spend the time/money coding for both OS X and OS 9.

    That would lead to fewer programs available for the Mac, which would lead to fewer incentives for the masses to use Macs, which would shrink the already-tiny user base (by Microsoft standards, it's tiny) further, which gives developers less incentive to support Macs, etc. It kicks off a vicious cycle that would ultimately kill the Macintosh. As Macintosh users, you and I bear the weight of this decision in the short term, but in the long term it ensures that the Macintosh will still be alive and kicking five years from now.

  • MoL lets you run Mac on Linux. MoL for OS X lets you run OS 9 on OS X. That's Classic.

  • About 5 years too late! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:18AM (#4228880) Homepage

    Sheesh. They should have dropped Mac OS in 1997.
    They bought NeXT in 1996. They were ready to go with Rhapsody in 1997, but developers were unwilling to make the switch wholesale... so we've spent the last 5 years with Apple creating carbon, supporting both OSes, updating classic Mac OS, creating the classic environment, and doing everything they could to support the legacy Macintosh market.

    Its been 5 frigging years. Its about time we moved over to Unix and dropped total support for the legacy software.

    Its not like nobody had warning, and its not like classic won't still run fine.

    I think they've been more than generous enough. Remember copeland was supposed to ship in 1997... they had reason to ship next as the new OS in 1997, as it would have moved them to a modern platform way back then.

    They have spent, essentially, the entirety of the last 5 years software wise supporting legacy Macintosh.

    Anyone still using OS 9 day to day is free to keep doing so, but don't expect new hardware to be hobbled to maintain that support.

    You want a modern machine, use the modern OS.

    Excuse me while I say "Sheesh!"

  • Don't quote me but with something like 3.5% of the desktop market I don't feel that Apple had their user base in mind when making this decision. Maybe Steve is losing touch with who his user base really is.
    For the most part Mac users are neither programmers nor systems people. They are an almost eccentric group of artistic and talented individuals who long ago chose to use a Macintosh because of it's simplicity, rock solid hardware design, and it's sophisticated array of available software designed to accomodate their creativity. Musicians, artists, authors, designers, engineers, etc..
    Software was available on both the PC platform as well as the Apple platform from day one. But I submit to you that IMHO it is within all likelyhood a fact that the software written for the Apple platforms was signifigantly more user-centric than was any DOS or Windows implementation of the same package. I.E. You wouldn't, and in in many instances still won't, find a keyboard player using a PC running Windows as his midi platform of choice. Nor would you have found an independent recording artist using a freekin soundblaster to record his gig.
    I'm not wandering off course here, I'm pointing out the fact that the typical Mac user is not a geek and has become accustomed to his or her pre OSX box and could really care less about OSX. Who has time to spend learning it and who has time to wait for software/hardware vendors to catch up? How many shareware and free apps are being used which will never be ported over? Thousands I would guess.
    My point is that Apple has made an error here by forcing one to boot into OSX. I don't want to do that. Why should I have to do that? Why will I have to change my bootloader and dump OSX off my machine? Why don't I have a choice if I am technically challanged? Shades of Microsoft.....

  • Security. (Score:2)

    by rew ( 6140 )
    I have a friend who specified: "data to be delivered in MS access '97 format", assuming that a Windows-98 CD and Access'97 CD would be bootable when the data is due (in 3 years from now). He'd be in trouble if MS decided to pull a trick like this on him.

    I maintain a machine (Linux) which by contract has to run until at least 2008. If my OS vendor would pull something like this on me I'd be pissed.

    Roger.
  • I would use only OS X if I could, but here are some things that don't work in Classic that work fine in OS 9.2 (I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that keep me in OS 9 most of the time):

    1. Microsoft Word 98. It does everything I want. Why do I have to spend $500 to upgrade to Office X? In OS 9, it's peachy. Under Classic, it crashes when Document->Format is chosen. Great. Can't change the format of a document in Classic.

    2. Endnote 4. Also does everything I want. Why pay $200 for an upgrade? Does not work with Word 98 under Classic.

    3. USB writer for RCA Lyra2 MP3 player. So, I gotta buy an iPod now for $400? RAM card doesn't appear on desktop.

    4. LaCie DD3 tape drive. Doesn't work under X with the Grappler 906F PCI SCSI card. I guess I'm supposed to buy the Firewire version ($800)?

    5. LaCie 4x4x16 CD-RW. Same as (4) above.

    It seems to me that eliminating booting into OS 9 is Apple's way of ending compatibility with a lot of legacy software and hardware. I don't necessarily think that's a terrible thing, but to imply you can do everything in Classic that you can do under OS 9 is just flat wrong.

  • Nearly 25% of NEW Macs don't use OS X at all!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mactari ( 220786 ) <rufwork.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:20AM (#4228904) Homepage
    From the press release:
    All new Macs sold since January 2002 have had Mac OS X factory-set as the default operating system. Over 75 percent of customers using these Macs have elected to keep Mac OS X as their default operating system...

    Is nobody at Apple paying attention to this number? When Jobs acted like this was a good thing at the last MacWorld Expo in NY, my jaw hit the floor. In spite of the fact that Mac OS X is the default boot OS on new Macs, Mac users were going out of their way to switch to OS 9 as their boot-up OS.

    This means a lot, if you think about it.

    * Obviously one-fourth of new Mac users are not using any OS X specific applications. There's no "Futuristic box" in OS 9 to parallel Classic in OS X. :^)

    * This quarter of new Mac buyers aren't happy with the "Classic from within X" compromise, for whatever reason.

    * This number doesn't count the people who simply don't know how to switch to OS 9 as their default boot disk. That might sound crazy, but in one usability test for our software, we had a user insert the CD upside-down, and not by accident but by ignorance. You can, unfortunately, never underestimate your spectrum of users. Think of how many new Mac users, if they knew of OS 9, might prefer it.

    * This also means that the number of OS 9-only users is still pretty solid. Take the users of all the Macs out there now that are still running that won't run OS X -- even if all the people buying new Macs are old Mac users you're only reducing their numbers by 75% the number of new Macs sold. That's pretty slow. Heaven forbid some of that nearly 25% are new Mac users are choosing to boot into OS 9 from the start! It's a hard sale for Apple. The most users in the Mac market, believe it or not, are still on OS 9 or below.

    Regardless, and in a complete Jekell/Hyde move, I think Apple's doing the right thing, at least from the point of view of Apple's continued financial success. People must be forced to move to the new OS for a couple of reasons. First, if the users move, the pushers (software developers) will follow. Second, if Apple wants to move to x86, they aren't going to be bringing Classic along with them.

  • This is after the release of their new hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wildcard023 ( 184139 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:22AM (#4228924) Homepage
    Now, possibly, Apple will have the time and resources to make the OS9 emulation under OX10+ fast and stable. Personally, I'd rather have a fast emulator running on a stable OS than have to reboot to another OS constantly (am I the only one that has separate 'doze and *nix boxes?).

    Also, with hardware moving forward (g5? power4?), the emulator under OS10 (as shared libraries?) will probably run at the same speed as original OS9 on the G3/G4. After all, Apple can optimize the software for the new hardware in ways Microsoft never could due to their control over their hardware market. The older machines out there can still run OS9 natively or dual boot.

    --
    Mike
  • Booting into OS 9 saved my bacon twice in the last week:

    First, I'm running OS X 10.2 on a Lombard G3 powerbook, with a WaveLan Silver for 802.11 wireless access. The problem is that the open-source drivers [sourceforge.net] (yay open source!) for that card failed under 10.2, until fixes were posted.

    With no LAN access, the only way I could access the net was to boot into OS 9, where the Wavelan card was still considered an official Airport device. Then I could surf until the fix was posted, and was able to get the fix. I couldn't have done this in classic.

    Also, several programs I use for school (Nyquist as a good example) flail badly in Classic, needing better hardware access. Booting into 9, their intended environment, handles this problem nicely.

    Granted, the first problem would never happen with new hardware, as I'd be able to get an internal AirPort card that's supported by Apple, and most of my classic problems were speed related, so a gigahertz TiBook (oh please, apple...) would do much better than my 400Mhz G3, but I'm sure mine aren't the only cases out there...
  • It's not like Macs running OS 9 are going to stop booting on January 1, 2003. The headline should be changed to reflect the fact Apple is simply (smartly!) dropping support for it.

    - A.P.

  • Well there's a lot they need to fix first! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 47Ronin ( 39566 ) <glenn@47ronin. c o m> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @11:30AM (#4229042) Homepage
    If they're going to kill the ability to boot into OS 9, they better find a way to:

    (1) Give Mac OS X the ability to upgrade firmware, whether it be the computer itself or hardware components. Currently you can only flash firmware or ROM updates from Mac OS 9

    (2) Get bootable Mac OS X rescue disks for things like Norton Utilities or Diskwarrior, because sometimes fsck -y doesn't solve everything

    (3) Update all Mac OS X software components so that they are as complete as the OS 9 equivalents. For example, Apple System Profiler. So far the Jaguar version still doesn't tell you everything like the OS 9 one does, like the Uni-North CPU version, which tells you if an older Mac can accept a dual-cpu upgrade.

    The great thing about having OS 9 bootable is that you could use it for troubleshooting.
  • ...there will be so few legacy apps left that people will actually want to run that it will mostly be unnecessary to boot into OS 9. Classic compatibility under OS X is already quite good.

    Here's the important part: Apps that don't currently work under Classic are very unlikely to ever work under MOL for OS X. If it doesn't work under Classic it's probably trying to talk directly to the hardware, so an emulation layer within OS X will still not afford this access.

  • Oh YEAH? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @12:04PM (#4229439) Journal
    <FUNNY>

    I bought a Power Macintosh 8600/250 in 1997...

    ...AND IT WOULDN'T EVEN BOOT INTO System 4!!!!!!

    WTF. How is anyone supposed to get anything done? I can't even play StuntCopter or Cairo Shootout in the right resolution/screen depth! MacPaint becomes garbled and unstable under the "Finder", really just the damn MultiFinder in disguise! What a marketing ploy! Thanks ALOT, Apple!!!!!

    </FUNNY>
    <INSIGHTFUL LIKELY="maybe">

    Seriously, if tons of people are worried about paying thousands to replace old shareware programs on the Mac with new commercial software, why not just write to your favorate Mac OS X shareware developer and request they create a replacement product? Be sure to elaborate on exactly what it would replace, and why such a thing would be popular with whoever needs that particular product. Panic [panic.com] and Ambrosia [ambrosiasw.com] are probably two good places to start, and I'm sure there are hundreds more.

    Trust me, the Mac shareware scene WANTS your feedback.

    </INSIGHTFUL>

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