Apple To Prevent Booting Into Mac OS 9?

A user writes that eWeek reports "A tweak to new models in its Macintosh line of desktop and portable computers will prevent booting into Mac OS 9, sources said, leaving the Unix-based Mac OS X as the sole operating system." That's a great idea, if they want to prevent people from upgrading their hardware, and to future versions of Mac OS X. I hope it's merely a rumor; there's apparently no technical reason for it, so if true, I imagine it is just to force more people to adopt the Mac OS X.

Comments

Why is this so terrible?

[Dephex Twin]

First of all, this will accomplish something... namely it gets the message across to developers that when you're developing for Mac, you're developing for OS X, get on the ball.

Why is this bad? OS 9 development has stopped. New computers won't be able to boot into 9. If you are currently running OS 9 on your computer, who is taking that away from you? This isn't a retroactive declaration that Apple is coming in and removing OS 9 from your computers.

If you are running OS 9 and like it, then you're all set. If you want to run some OS 9 apps still, classic mode isn't going anywhere. And if your favorite software can't run in classic mode and doesn't have an OS X version, then this action might be just the nudge needed to get your OS X version.

mark

Re:Why is this so terrible?

[eXtro]

I don't think that Apple cares if you can boot MacOS 9 via a third party application. What Apple cares about is that they don't have to support MacOS 9 running natively on new hardware. I'm thinking back to the various Macs and operating systems versions I've run on them, and often an enabler would be required to run on the newest systems.

If Apple can make modern hardware look like a generic Mac under MacOS X then they only have to port MacOS 9 once and never spend engineering resources on enablers. They'll still do this for MacOS X, but thats where they plan to make money and gain market share.

Re:Why is this so terrible?

[DavidRavenMoon]

You're missing a very real likelihood here which is that some older software that people still use, rely on, or enjoy may no longer be supported by its developers. I can think of lots of older games that have no chance of being ported to OS X because the companies that made them have since moved on.

I have a LOT of software back from when I first got a PowerMac 6100 running System 7.5.5 that wont run in OS 9... it wouldn't even run in OS 8!

We have an old PowerMac 7100 at work with a 266G3 upgrade. We installed Mac OS 9.1 on that machine, but 9.2 wont install. And this is no different than if I tried to install OS 8.0 in this G4... I'm sure it wouldn't run, and I couldn't even boot it from a CD. I've tried it.

At some point you have to give up on old software. Every OS upgrade breaks something, and unless the software developer fixes it you are out of luck.

If someone really needs to run OS 9, keep the machine you have ... this is why I still have my old Mac Clone (and also to run LinuxPPC, and it used to run BeOS... but what's the point?).

The only time I run 9 on my G4 is for CubaseVST, and sometimes if Quark is acting up in Classic. As soon as CubaseSX is out, that's it for 9!

Re:Why is this so terrible?

[larkost]

Actually, there is a good chance that many of those OS's would not boot on a brand new machine. Some of them would have problems with that amount of memory, but in most cases they simply wouldn't have the drivers needed to use the motherboard. This is exactly what Apple announced, that they are not going to be making the newer versions of MacOS 9 that would be required to drive newer motherboards.

Apple knows one thing:

[ClaraBow]

Poeple don't like to change their habits, so Apple helps them do it. Remember all the slack that Apple got for removing the Floppy Drive? Getting rid of legacy serial ports and going with USB only? People grumbled for a little while and realized, hey, Apple made the right move for me. In the end most people will be glad that they switch to OS X , or should I say, that Apple made them switch. You can always buy an older Mac on E-bay and run OS 1.0 - 9.0 until the end of time as you know it. I love change bring it on......

This article is moronic.

[akgunkel]

This article has it bass akwards.
For the non-expert mac users, let me explain.

MacOS only boots motherbords it was designed to support. Mac Mobos aren't like PCs, they change (sometimes significantly) with each model. Virtually everytime a new mac comes out, Apple has to tweek the OS to run on it correctly. That's why new macs always ship with the brandspankingest new version of MacOS: because that's the only thing that will boot on it.

All this really means is that Apple isn't going to continue tweeking MacOS 9 for new hardware.
That's no surprise, they said they were stopping development on it months ago.

Since every Mac knows in it's ROMs what the lowest version of MacOS it can boot is, these new macs will refuse to boot MacOS 9. Just like how you can't run System 7.5.5 on a classic iMac, but you can run OS X.

Some points.

[BitGeek]

First off this story's premise flat out WRONG. Apple is not going tweak the hardware to prevent OS 9 from running. Apple doesn't work that way-- hell they went out of their way to make OS X work on machines that aren't officially supported (like my 9500) by providing drivers for hardware they haven't shipped yet.

OS 9-- and OS's 8 all the way back to the original Macintosh contain hardware specific code. Whenever Apple released a new version of the hardware, they'd release an extention to the OS to support it. So, it was very common to have hardware that couldn't run some versions of the OS without extensions.

All apple is doing is that going forward, they are not going to constrain their hardware by the design assumptions of OS 9. OS 9 is 1984 technology and assumes its in control of the hardware. Under OS X the hardware is far more abstracted.

So, Apple is going to design its hardware to run OS X and not *worry* about OS 9. Given the way Apple migrates its computers, if there's some controller chip for which 9 is not compatible, it will still take a year before the whole line is refreshed and os 9 will likely run on those new machines that don't yet have the controller chip, while it doesn't run on other new machines with the newer controller chip-- even though none of them are "officially supported"

The reason windows 95 runs on current hardware is that there has been no innovation in PC hardware. Clock rates have gone up, but nothing new has been done.

Finally this article is full of errors large and small (the coffin was not rolled onto stage-- why include a detail like that to make us think you were there and not making it up, and then get it WRONG?)

That a newspaper publisher in florida is stuck on 9 is NOT news. Check out "Crazy Apple Rumors Site" for a great parody of this kind of reporting.

It will take time for all the applications to migrate, but OS X is clearly moving in the right direction.

To characterize this as apple "tweaking" teh software so it won't run on hardware is to flat out lie about what's going on, and is unfair as well.

This is the kind of bullshit reporting that mac users have to deal with-- if its not claiming that apple is bankrupt when they have $5 billion in the bank, its claiming that apple or steve jobs go out of their way to annoy people, when in fact there's a much more plausible business decision behind it. This is a great example of the idiots at eWeek not understanging anything about how OS 9 works and how hardware is designed and integrated with the OS.

Re:Some points.

[g4dget]

The reason windows 95 runs on current hardware is that there has been no innovation in PC hardware.

PC hardware today ships with USB2, FireWire, AGP, much improved disk controllers, 100Mb and Gigabit Ethernet, graphics accelerators, new power management hardware, accelerated audio hardware, and lots of other stuff. Windows 95 knows nothing about most of these.

The reason why you may be able to install Windows 95 on new PC hardware is because, for better or for worse, a lot of that hardware has backwards compatibility modes and because Microsoft does, in fact, support their software for many years beyond when it is discontinued.

Apple evidently doesn't worry as much about backwards compatibility in their hardware. That may be fine, too, for Apple's market. I am glad to see Mac OS 9 go, which was an antiquated and unreliable system that should have been retired a decade ago, and it's the first thing I removed from my OSX-based Mac.

But your assertion that the PC hasn't innovated except for faster clock speeds is just completely off the mark. Quite to the contrary, a lot of the PC innovations have been picked up by Apple--much of the Macintosh platform is now a well-designed, high-end PC that happens to have a PowerPC for its processor. As a Mac user myself, I often feel that one of the worst things about the Mac is the large number of zealous but uninformed users that hang on to it.

System Security?

[kris_lang]

Could the real reason be that booting up in OS X necessitates password entry and systel level protection of files under BSD whereas booting up in System 9 allows any user to trash ANY part of the hard drive without any permissions checking at all?

Currently, dual boot OS X and 9 systems can be trashed by booting up in 9. Single boot OS X systems can be "rooted" instead by booting up with a CD that boots up on System 9 with the right key sequence at powerup. I don't deny that not having to support older software on newer hardware may play a role, but the security issue may also be a big part for Admins who want to lock down publicly accesible systems.

Re:Stupid user: Explain to me

[jcr]

That article is the opinion of one carbon developer.

-jcr