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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.
Every new version of Mac hardware has traditionally shipped with a bumped version of MacOS, that includes device drivers specific to the new hardware.
They have EOLed MacOS 9, and are focusing development on X. They're not breaking compatibility deliberately. They're just not devoting resources to make a dead operating system run on the new hardware.
You'll still be able to use OS 9 from Classic mode. They're just not providing device drivers to boot it.
Chill.
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
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
though I'm not sure that I agree with it. First, MacOS X adoption is essential for Apple. The adoption rate directly influences what software gets ported to MacOS X. Look at Microsoft's recent comments ahout OfficeX. From their point of view their lack of sales is attributable to poor adoption of MacOS X. This is probably false, more likely its due to Office X not being worth the money, but facts don't matter.
Second, it will in the long run cut down on their support costs. "Officially" supporting two operating systems is more expensive than supporting one. In the short term they will have to do this, but at some point they'll be able to cut back on MacOS Classic support.
Third, it may allow them more freedom in hardware design. MacOS Classic has often required enabler extensions to run on new hardware. MacOS X obviously needs some level of tweaking as well. If they can relegate Classic to running in a stable virtual Mac running under MacOS X its a win for Apple. They can concentrate on making MacOS X, their actual breadwinner, run better and halt development on MacOS Classic.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Mac OS 9 is no longer being actively developed by Apple, therefore there will be no drivers for new hardware, therefore it will not boot.
Just like Mac OS 7/8 will not boot on current Mac hardware. I know, I've tried. I use a much older Mac (Quadra 700) to play some really old games (Pax Imperia) that no longer work properly in Mac OS 9.
So, what's the big deal?
Gabriel Ricard
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
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......
They all have to be modified. In order to be fully OS X native, they need to be re-written.
You're overstating the situation. The Carbon API is a subset of the ancient (in computer terms) Mac OS Toolbox APIs. You don't have to "re-write" applications, but you may need to modify them if you were using Toolbox APIs that are not included in Carbon.
There have been many cases of Classic applications being Carbonized without changing any code at all. Granted, those were some fairly small applications, but the point holds just the same.
To stay in bisiness, we need to buy components to build our systems.
If we can't boot into OS 9, we can't get at the hardware. Sure, we can re-write our drivers for OS X, but it is going to be a pain to reverse engineer our card vendors' libraries.
Apple has always done this. I have a beige G3 300 at home. It is from 1998. I tried to install System 7 on it for kicks, and it reported that my computer can't run that OS. Get a newer Mac and try to install OS 8 and it won't let you. If a computer is shipped with a certain OS, you cannot install the generation below it. Recent computers are shipped with both OS 9 and X.
This is not news. It is how it has always been.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
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.
I was so angry when my new dual G4 wouldn't boot under my OS of choice, System 4.1. Grudgingly, I upgraded to 6.0.8 (ugh, I just hate the inefficiency of MultiFinder!). If Apple tries to force me to use even later operating systems, I'm through with them. I'll just get a Pentium 4 and a copy of Windows 3.11.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I apologize for not understanding that you were talking about Cocoa there. But it's an overstatement to say that Carbon is just a transition. Carbon apps are first-class citizens in OS X. Cocoa and Carbon are peer APIs.
And also, Apple has to support the warranty on the new hardware on the off chance that an untested old version of MacOS fries the hardware or nukes the hard drive. Do you honestly expect them to continually make sure that MacOS 9 is compatible with every new release of hardware? Do you think Microsoft tests Windows XP on your 5 year old Dell?
And also, the Windows 95 link you have there is a different situation, that's about microsoft no longer making their most current libraries available for windows 95. A completely sensible thing to do, but assine to do without ample warning time of the change.
t.
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.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I might have missed something here but I don't see where anybody is being forced to do anything.
I.e. if you have to be able to boot to OS9 then don't buy a new machine! (Or if you do then keep your old one around as well).
QED
Please give an example of something that the Cocoa APIs can do that the Carbon APIs cannot. According to this article, Cocoa and Carbon are functionally equivalent. Cocoa is the Objective C API. Carbon is the C/C++ API.
Is Cocoa Better than Carbon?
The short answer is no. The Cocoa and Carbon APIs both call functions in the Application Services and Core Services layers of Mac OS X. Contrary to what some people think, Carbon APIs do not call Cocoa APIs. There is no more overhead in calling Carbon APIs than there is in calling Cocoa APIs. The long answer is that if you were going to start writing a new application in a language such as C or Java, and you were only concerned with your application running on Mac OS X, you might choose to learn the Cocoa APIs because they are a higher level API than Carbon. Most Mac developers want to utilize the large base of code they have written over the years as well as their knowledge of C or C++ so they are likely to stick with Carbon rather than learn Objective-C and rewrite their code using the Cocoa APIs.
Can applications that use Cocoa do more things than applications that use Carbon?
The short answer is no. The Cocoa and Carbon APIs both call into the same parts of Mac OS X. However, there is a small set of functions that Apple has not yet made available to Carbon simply because they weren't needed for Mac applications to be made native on Mac OS X. The reverse is also true. There is a small set of functions that Carbon applications can access on Mac OS X that Cocoa-based applications can't simply because Cocoa applications didn't need them because they weren't used to having those functions anyway. Apple is working to reduce these differences to zero.
Are Cocoa-based applications "more native" than Carbon-based applications?
No. Both Cocoa and Carbon call into the same parts of Mac OS X. Cocoa applications are no more or less native than Carbon applications. The Carbon APIs are newer to Mac OS X than the Cocoa APIs and as a result there may be more problems with them in the short term than there are with Cocoa but that is a problem that Apple will solve.
cpeterso
Some of the newer things like the services menu and the font panel, goodies like that.
I haven't done any Cocoa programming, but it sounds like writing a Cocoa app is way easier with Objective-C (or can be done in Java as well) and the tools provided than Carbon apps.
Of course the Real Basic page doesn't mention the Cocoa programming advantages because they claim their own product that they want to sell you is the easiest.
Not Earth-shattering stuff, but I feel like Cocoa is the best place to end up for any program at some point down the road.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Carbon isn't bad by any means, but you don't get all the goodies.
Like what, exactly? We all know that the Carbon libraries were incomplete in 10.0 and 10.1, but what about now?
You overlook a few of OS X's current security measures. If you want, you can lock the System Preferences for the startup disk, and then it can only be changed by an admin. This eliminates the ability of normal users to go into OS 9 to get into folders that they do not have the file permissions for under OS X. You may argue that people who admin abilites on a machine could just switch to OS 9 to view locked files, but this is pointless because anyone with admin powers can change file permissions in OS X if they know a few basic UNIX commands.
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.
I work at a newspaper where all of the layout and printing is done from systems running OS 9. It's not because we don't want to run OS X, but because a lot of our software just isn't available for it. If we buy a new system without OS 9 support we'll suddenly lose the ability to natively run QuarkXPress with its numerous 3rd-party XTensions, all of our custom Associated Press applications break, we can no longer connect to our all-important Tandem server (not to mention the Exchange system too), and there's no telling what havoc will be wrought upon our OPI, RIPs, and imagesetters with the new OS X printing services...those things aren't exactly free to replace!
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
... Remember all the slack that Apple got for removing the Floppy Drive? ... People grumbled for a little while and realized, hey, Apple made the right move for me ...
Not quite. The flack Apple received was not really over the floppy itslef, it was over the complete lack of writable removable media in the early iMacs. People did not eventually agree with Apple, Apple reversed itself and eventually equipped some iMacs with removable writable media, CD-R, and later CD-RW. The original Apple line that all people need is ethernet was a cover story for the fact that rev A iMacs with CD-R would have been too expensive.
The OS X install CD has DriveUtility on it, you can boot and run that, or if the Mac boots at all from the hard drive, boot into single user mode and run fsck.
Also for diagnostics, most new Macs come with the hardware check CD
But this is nothing new. The Norton 5 CD wont boot, or fix my G4, and even some of the newer NUM CDs wont boot some newer machines.
I suppose by that time new bootable utility CDs will be out.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
I doubt it. Apple usually releases a new OS once a year and an update six months later for free.
So it was like 8.0-8.1, 8.5-8.6, 9.0-9.1, 10.0-10.1, 10.2-10.x
You pay for the first one, and get the next one either free, or for $19.95 with a coupon (like I did with 9.1)
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
If you're going to be working on a new machine such as these much ballyhooed ones, then why not just use an external firewire device? These new machines are most certainly going to have the ports to do so.
Install OS X onto an external drive, put your favorite utilities on there, and have at it.
As a tech now, I look forward to the day when I can eliminate my CDs from my toolkit, and use strictly an external drive. Easier to update the software, and much quicker than running from CD.
As much as this has been debated to *death* in various Apple forums (including /.) -- and as much as I still think that it is unlikely to happen -- this move doesn't look so dumb if Andrew Neff (no, I'd never head of him either) is to be believed. The more Apple can force users and ISVs over to OSX the less technical problems they might/will have if they port Classic over to x86 to retain some sort of backwards compatibility (a'la 68k to PPC).
Man, this latest "Apple will use x86 chips eventually" sure has some legs.
Carbon is around for the long haul, but its not the preferred platform.
New stuff should and will be developed in cocoa-unless you're a diehard fanatic of the toolbox. Even for diehard fanatics, cocoa is a much faster development environment.
Cocoa, and specifically, Objective-C based cocoa is the preferred platform. Java/cocoa when you need cross platform, or carbon when you're porting an older mac app.
You can access carbon apis from cocoa, no problem.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
This article is just plane wrong.
Yes, you can do things with cocoa that you can't with carbon. Carbon has sufficient aaccess to the machine to do all the important things you want to do-- but cocoa is a whole different way of working, and it is much superior to carbon.
Yes, Cocoa applications are MORE NATIVE than carbon. Cocoa is the development environemtn Next made...
Use Cocoa. They are not equivilent. Carbon is great if you need to move a lot of old mac os code over, but otherwise, you should use cocoa. In the areas where you need to call carbon apis (because apple moved the stuff over rather than rewriting it, like quicktime) you can... no problemo. But cocoa is a lot better.
And more native.
And provides things you cannot do in carbon, no way, no how. (Like delegation, protocols, nibs, and categories are glorious.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
We already know that OS X doesn't run on 5 year old Macs.
Its running just fine on my SEVEN year old PowerMac 9500.
The problem is that Apple is just not going to constrain future hardware by legacy OS stuff.
Mcirosoft has spent 10 year moving people to os that is "modern" so that tehy don't ahve this problem.
Apple did it in one OS release. thats' the only diffrence.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
No, you're missing the point --- Apple is no longer updating Mac OS 9 as a bootable OS on new systems. You can run Mac OS 9 in the Classic Compatibility mode, where any low level calls are passed up to Mac OS X which then talks to the hardware (eventually). This doesn't affect any of the PPC Linux distros.
OSX has already won.
Software developers are forced to make the OSX transition because the competition is doing the same in most software categories.
Most Mac users are learning to appreciate the features and look of OSX, and use OS9 because they need to for hardware, software compatibility. As an OS9 user i don't expect new drivers for an OS which will eventually be abandoned, nor i demand support from Apple for issues with old OS9 software. If i needed to change machine and the new ones couldn't boot OS9 i'd settle for an used mac, would it be healthy for Apple sales?
If letting OS9 boot on newer machines has a big cost for Apple, please open the project up as it has been done for darwin (and Mac on Linux, in a different way) and let the community do the work, but please don't limit the possibilities for new Macs.
The Carbon API is a subset of the ancient (in computer terms) Mac OS Toolbox APIs.
Umm, not exactly. Carbon is a new framework that includes the subset of the toolbox you mention, but it also has a new event-handling system and many other improvements and updates.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That article is the opinion of one carbon developer.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Probably nothing, but that's not the point; you can do anything computable with any Turing-complete language, but nobody's advocating writing all software in assembly. In terms of developer productivity, Cocoa is *much* better than Carbon, as well as every other API I've seen.
That article is written by the CEO of RealBasic, a Carbon-based RAD tool, so he naturally sees Cocoa as a threat and is hardly going to be an impartial source of information.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Did I imagine I would find myself laughing at Multifinder joke. It makes me sad I threw out that old Mac Plus....
Exactly. i think they wanted to get OS X out sooner than later. I had no problem with a few things missing, I could always boot back into OS 9, and I was used to using BeOS and Linux, both of which are less polished than OS 9.
So Apple had a lot of small bug fixes along the way.
i don't personally have any complaints about paying for 10.2. i bought a new mac with 10.0.4 on it and got 10.1 for free. my father however just paid $130 for 10.1 3 months ago, and is now expected to pay another $130 for 10.2. sure, he doesn't have to buy it, but the principle of the thing sucks.
I agree that does suck. When I bought my Mac it came with 9.0.3, so I've done three upgrades so far. 9.1 was $19.95, and I paid for 10.0. I think Apple needs to make some kind of discount for people who bought 10.1 within five months or so.
I'm pretty sure 10.3 will be a paid upgrade. so, is pinot 10.3? if so, it's looking like it's going to be unveiled in January. i suppose that doesn't automatically mean it's going to be RELEASED then.
I think pinot is too soon to be a paid upgrade. The way Apple has always done it is to follow up a major paid release with an update about six months later. I think it will be 10.2.5, or somthing like that. 10.2 is early, but January is too soon for another paid upgrade, unless they are getting greedy! Still, it's nice to have more progress sooner. We could have to wait more than two years between updates like Windows users. ;)
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
It's not just "gee whiz, it sure would be nice if our users would use OS X more than OS 9" -- Apple is doing an OS switch. This is a massive undertaking. There need to be enough users on the new OS to warrant development for the platform---but the users would not generally switch until the apps are in place, created by developers for the new OS. Chicken and Egg.
This is one way Apple is pushing the issue. Not the only way. But the adoption of OS X must take place in a widespread fashion, and soon.
This just makes sense. For Apple to survive / profit, folks must move to OS X en masse. They're not just being mean!
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
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