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

That was inflamatory.

[jkujawa]

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.

Re:That was inflamatory.

[BitGeek]

Yeah, you CAN"T run software that violated apple's programming guides going back to 1984!

Any software written for the Mac that does those things is software that violates the programming guides.

Software that doesn't runs great on Classic. And I've had a fun time finding the oldest piece of software I can and trying it out. I have software written in 1987 that runs under classic.

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?

[stux]

Windows 95 refuses to boot on an Athlon 1.3Ghz running at 1.3Ghz, or 1.1 or 1.2Ghz but will boot fine when running at 1Ghz, of course, It displays the speed as 999mhz...

Go figure...

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......

terrible!

[tps12]

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.

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.

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

[BitGeek]

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... .carbon is based on the old MAc OS.

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.)