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Macs Won't Boot Into Mac OS in 2003
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?
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.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Can they really do this?
Apple has required minimum versions of system software to boot a Macintosh computer since at least 7.0.1, when the Classic II, LC II, and Quadra series couldn't boot anything before 7.0.1. It lets Apple gradually get rid of legacy hardware in a computer, something the PC side can't seem to do for some reason.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I presume "mol" is referring to the Mac-on-Linux project.
Meep meep
Apple even watched it happen once before, when they switched from 68k architecture, to PowerPC. They ended up having to include an interperater/emulator for 68k apps in later versions of Mac0S.
This is completely untrue.. PowerPC machines emulated 68K code from the start, which is often lauded as one of the most graceful computer transition in the industry's short history. Completely transparent, totally useable.
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 ...
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Why boot launch the classic OS emulator just to delete a file just type "rm fileName"? at the terminal?
Of course OSX tries to prevent you from using root (arguably for good reasons) but if you need more permissions to delete a file that won't go away try "sudo rm fileName" the mac will prompt you for your administrator password and give you admin rights on the console for five minutes.
Now that we bought Photoshop 7 I hope to never launch classic again.
They ended up having to include an interperater/emulator for 68k apps in later versions of Mac0S.
Actually, support for 68K applications was in MacOS from day one of the PowerPC launch. In fact, device drivers had to be written in 68K, so the whole device system was run through the emulator. I was writing a lot of Mac device drivers in those days...
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
Apple *does* include the functionality to use OS7/8/9 apps in OSX, you just didn't bother to find that out. This article is about *ne hardware* not booting OS9 anymore - something that was bound to happen eventually, and not suprising if you know anything about the pairing of the Mac OS and Apple hardware. Essentially, Apple is just choosing not to continue to update OS9 for new hardware - which they've always had to do previously whenever new hardware was launched. Why should they update an OS they've long-since put on EOL, and which they already provide a solution for? Regardless, OS9 will still continune to boot within OSX, as it always has been able to, in the form of "Classic" - which will provide the exact capabilities you are attacking them for not providing.
Get your facts straight. You have a right not to like Apple - but at least know what you're talking about.
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.
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.....
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.
isn't Classic that interpreter/emulator for OS 9?
No.
Don't think of Classic as an emulator, like Virtual PC. Think of it instead as just a program. Mac OS 9 was a shared-memory, cooperative multitasking system. Classic implements that entire system as a UNIX process. Within the process's address space, you have the entire Mac OS 9 operating system and all your apps. But the apps aren't running under emulation. They're executing native PowerPC binary code. In some cases, apps run faster under Classic than they did under OS 9.
Of course, some stuff had to change. Since Classic isn't really an OS, but just a process running under UNIX, it can't talk directly to the hardware. Some software-- not much, but some-- can't work under Classic because of this.
But it's not an emulator. It's more like vmware than it is like an emulator.
Yeah, but a lot of Macs are bought by schools and universities, and they like to have homogenous environments and haven't upgraded yet. At my institute of higher learning, all of the Macs (even the brand-new ones) run OS9.2 and a good portion of the PCs are still running NT4.
Maybe this will convince them to upgrade.
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