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?

Comments

Nearly 25% of NEW Macs don't use OS X at all!!

[mactari]

From the press release:
All new Macs sold since January 2002 have had Mac OS X factory-set as the default operating system. Over 75 percent of customers using these Macs have elected to keep Mac OS X as their default operating system...

Is nobody at Apple paying attention to this number? When Jobs acted like this was a good thing at the last MacWorld Expo in NY, my jaw hit the floor. In spite of the fact that Mac OS X is the default boot OS on new Macs, Mac users were going out of their way to switch to OS 9 as their boot-up OS.

This means a lot, if you think about it.

* Obviously one-fourth of new Mac users are not using any OS X specific applications. There's no "Futuristic box" in OS 9 to parallel Classic in OS X. :^)

* This quarter of new Mac buyers aren't happy with the "Classic from within X" compromise, for whatever reason.

* This number doesn't count the people who simply don't know how to switch to OS 9 as their default boot disk. That might sound crazy, but in one usability test for our software, we had a user insert the CD upside-down, and not by accident but by ignorance. You can, unfortunately, never underestimate your spectrum of users. Think of how many new Mac users, if they knew of OS 9, might prefer it.

* This also means that the number of OS 9-only users is still pretty solid. Take the users of all the Macs out there now that are still running that won't run OS X -- even if all the people buying new Macs are old Mac users you're only reducing their numbers by 75% the number of new Macs sold. That's pretty slow. Heaven forbid some of that nearly 25% are new Mac users are choosing to boot into OS 9 from the start! It's a hard sale for Apple. The most users in the Mac market, believe it or not, are still on OS 9 or below.

Regardless, and in a complete Jekell/Hyde move, I think Apple's doing the right thing, at least from the point of view of Apple's continued financial success. People must be forced to move to the new OS for a couple of reasons. First, if the users move, the pushers (software developers) will follow. Second, if Apple wants to move to x86, they aren't going to be bringing Classic along with them.