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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?
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.
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.
You've got an easy breezy wind at your back...most of the time.
If Apple does not include functionality to use OS7/8/9 apps in OSX, then it will hurt them.
This doesn't sound like the usual troll, so I'm assuming you just really don't know what you are talking about. Apple's Classic environment (mentioned in the article) is provides exactly the functionality you seem to think is lacking in Mac OS X. It gives you the ability to run almost all OS 7/8/9 apps.
The reason Apple is dropping Mac OS 9 is no different from what Microsoft and other OS makers have done for years. Try installing Windows 3.1 on your latest snazzy desktop. Probably not going to find native drivers for that Gf4 Ti, or that DVD burner, etc... Apple doesn't care to write drivers to support their new hardware in an old operating system.
This isn't new, this isn't suprising, and this isn't going to hurt Apple.
Spyky
I think that people are missing some of this. Yes they are removing the ability from Mac OS X to boot into 9.
When a PC user buys an upgrade to their OS they now only have the ability to boot into that OS.
So this isn't anything really new in the computer world. A PC user circumvents this by installing a desired older OS on a seperate partition.
Apple's approach is just one of foward thinking. Why go back? Not really a bad or terrible thing to do. In all honesty Microsoft is guilty of the same thinking.
You could argue that even most linux distro's do the same as you are encouraged to upgrade your kernal after a new release.
To strive, to seek, but not to yield
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!"
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
This isn't about gaining marketshare, this is about putting the screws to major developers who are dragging their feet (like Quark).
Apple's done this before with success. Remember USB? It came to the PC world first, but nobody moved on it because the PC manufacturers weren't getting rid of legacy ports, so peripheral manufacturers stayed on the "Most Compatible" route of PS/2 and Serial. It took Apple introducing USB-only iMacs to jump-start the USB peripheral market.
I mean, good grief, how long did it take the PC industry to drop 5 1/4" floppy drives? The 3.5" came out with the first Mac in 1984, and 10 years later PC's still had both drives. And the 3.5" drive is definitely a technology that has overstayed its welcome; but the fact that it continues to hang on means that suitable replacements took much longer to come to market.
It's good that Apple is driving their market, not just trying to make everything backwards-compatible until we have this overbloated OS running on overbloated hardware. Apple's got the balls to do what most of the PC world won't do. Believe it or not, the market will adapt; Apple has proven this.
Wanna run legacy DOS games? Drop a new hard drive in that old Pentium 233 you have laying around. Or buy VirtualPC for Windows. You've got options. But don't suggest that an entire sector of the tech market should slow progress because you want to play a "golden oldie".
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.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Ha!
1) When she can afford to upgrade she will. Its not like any of these programs just stop working today because Apple announced the death of OS 9. She can still use these programs until she can upgrade. And all of those work perfectly in classic mode anyways.
2) Trust me when I say this. As a serious graphic designer, Linux is not an option yet. Two words: Colour Management. This is something that Apple is vastly superior. Maybe one day Linux will be better, but it doesn't look like it'll be any time soon.
Really, this seems more like flamebait than anything else. She can afford to purchase a PC version of Photoshop for Windows to use with the crossover plugin but she can't afford to update it for the Mac.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Not so anecdotal evidence 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.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
It would be easy to make new machines non-9 bootable if they wanted to. While obviously new machines don't yet exist to know what they will or won't do, all versions of Mac OS since 7.1check hardware doing bootup to see if they're supposed to load on that machine, and if they're not, they put up a message that says "get a newer version of the OS". If a newer version hadn't yet been released, the OS the system came with had a "System Enabler " file which permitted booting on that machine, but a vanilla version of the same system (which didn't have the enabler) would not. Often this enabler would contain important patches to support hardware on that machine.
Their latest machines evidently identify themselves to vanilla OS 9.2.2 as supported hardware, so it loads ok. Their future machines may not work so well. Or, as you say, they may simply not have OS 9 installed on them, but a 9.2.2 CD (if you already have one, since they're nearly unavailable as a new product even now) *might* install on them.
But I doubt it. By ditching 9 support, they free themselves to make whatever architectural changes they like to the hardware without having to support it in both operating systems. It may be possible for someone to hack 9 to boot on new hardware, and they probably will. But if there are major changes on the board, it may not do much good.
By abandoning 9, they also are preparing people for a possible transition to another CPU at some point, which 9 certainly won't support (but Classic might be able to, if they add an instruction set emulator).
One final comment: while superficially similar to what Apple has always done when they introduce new hardware, it is worth considering that X is a completely different operating system than 9, and that has never happened before. Even with all of its changes, System 7 was still an evolution of System 6, and most software still ran on it -- probably
ALL software that followed the rules. Not so here. In my experience, MOST things work in Classic, but some things simply do not. Astarte CD-Copy (which is out of production anyway, since Apple bought Astarte and rolled the technology into their iApps) is a great utility, but it touches hardware, so it can't work in Classic, and there's no equivalent. As many noted, many games simply don't perform well in Classic.
I'm not saying Apple shouldn't do this, while I'm suprised they're doing it this quickly, but it was obvious that it was coming some day. But I'm also just saying it's not a case of "They've always done this." I don't think there's been a case where they've introduced new hardware that is incompatible with the percentage of software that will not work correctly in Classic.
A) No, but this story has already been discovered, posted, and argued into the ground within the Macintosh community, and this is the general consensus.
b) The latest dual G4s are not fully compatible: The ATA-100 bus cannot be used under 9. And what happens when Apple adds buses (gigawire, USB 2, Airport 2) that replace the old 9-supported buses completely? And what about when they finally overhaul the motherboard and OS 9 doesn't have drivers for that? I don't know enough about OS 9's internals to give a complete technical answer, but there's no reason for Apple to take OS 9 compatibility into consideration for anything these days.