Boot OS 9 on new PowerMacs? [Archive]

PeteyKohut

Feb 23, 2003, 12:52 AM

Originally posted by iJon
may be fast, but in my opinion thats all it was good for. ive never had so many force quits, lock ups, bomb errors, and all that stuff in my life. thats probably why i refuse to use anything other than os x. but hey, if its working for you than thats fantastic, i hope you can get a new mac soon and enjoy the wonders of x.

iJon

Could it be that I simply like the interface better. Perhaps I like running a leaner OS that doesn't suck up so much, in terms of resources. There shouldn't even be a need for something like Quartz Extreme. Why is there so much darn eye candy on the screen anyway? Who needs it?!!?!?! I would rather have the resources going to Photoshop for FCP something. The ol' OS is what attracted me to the Mac in the first place.....and take note that there are a lot of people who would rather use OS 9. It is a beautifully simple OS that is way faster than OS X. I say.....take that sleek, simple, and beautiful OS 9 interface and put it atop of that UNIX kernal, and let me have it!!!!! Of course anyone who knows anything about Macs will tell you I am describing Rhapsody, which I wish had actually hit the market, but hey, I can dream.
OS 9 RULES!!! Re-Elect G.W. BUSH 2004!

rideahyperLite

Feb 23, 2003, 12:57 AM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
Re-Elect G.W. BUSH 2004!

word

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 01:08 AM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut

OS 9 RULES!!! Re-Elect G.W. BUSH 2004!

I was with you until this last sentence...

iJon

Feb 23, 2003, 01:28 AM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
Could it be that I simply like the interface better. Perhaps I like running a leaner OS that doesn't suck up so much, in terms of resources. There shouldn't even be a need for something like Quartz Extreme. Why is there so much darn eye candy on the screen anyway? Who needs it?!!?!?! I would rather have the resources going to Photoshop for FCP something. The ol' OS is what attracted me to the Mac in the first place.....and take note that there are a lot of people who would rather use OS 9. It is a beautifully simple OS that is way faster than OS X. I say.....take that sleek, simple, and beautiful OS 9 interface and put it atop of that UNIX kernal, and let me have it!!!!! Of course anyone who knows anything about Macs will tell you I am describing Rhapsody, which I wish had actually hit the market, but hey, I can dream.
OS 9 RULES!!! Re-Elect G.W. BUSH 2004!
well thats cool that you still like os 9. i just hope you dont mind being left in the dust from here on out.

iJon

weev

Feb 23, 2003, 01:32 AM

Originally posted by john123
I was with you until this last sentence...

so was i then he shot himself in the foot:p

X is too eye candy rich yes, seems to be appealing to the new user/switcher.

You know what I'd like to see (drumroll pls ....) OS X PRO

Less resources spent on candy, more on power. Essentially, a cut down no frills (or a lot less frills) version of what we have now: I just want zip zip zip when opening windows, etc, no need for the bouncing/sliding/pulsing stuff!

Anyone agree?

iJon

Feb 23, 2003, 01:34 AM

Originally posted by weev
so was i then he shot himself in the foot:p

X is too eye candy rich yes, seems to be appealing to the new user/switcher.

You know what I'd like to see (drumroll pls ....) OS X PRO

Less resources spent on candy, more on power. Essentially, a cut down no frills (or a lot less frills) version of what we have now: I just want zip zip zip when opening windows, etc, no need for the bouncing/sliding/pulsing stuff!

Anyone agree?
my windows are zip zip zip without the crash crash crash.

iJon

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 01:38 AM

Originally posted by iJon
well thats cool that you still like os 9. i just hope you dont mind being left in the dust from here on out.

iJon

He -- and I -- don't have to be left in the dust. I am finding myself seriously becoming a switcher...to PCs. I've owned 7 macs in about 8 years, and I am seriously considering making this one my last if OS X doesn't get some critical 9-like features I demand.

FYI, with Apple having under 5% market share, I would suggest that you folks not come back with stupid comments like "good riddance." There's a better solution: INCORPORATE THE FEATURES TO APPEASE 9 USERS.

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 01:39 AM

Originally posted by iJon
my windows are zip zip zip without the crash crash crash.

iJon

They aren't zip zip zip compared to the same machine in 9. If you think they are, honestly, no offense, but you're deluding yourself. The proof lies in Let1Kwindowsbloom's numbers.

FredAkbar

Feb 23, 2003, 01:41 AM

Originally posted by iJon
my windows are zip zip zip without the crash crash crash.

Same here. Like iJon said, if you like OS 9, then there's nothing wrong with that, but personally, I can't stand the constant crashes, memory management, and the rest of the "older features" in OS 9 (I got the "older features" thing from this Apple site (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/compare.html)). I was okay with it when before I had OS X, but now that I do have it, I could never go back. And the zip zip zip is just fine in OS X, as long as you have a pretty new machine with a good bit of RAM.

avus

Feb 23, 2003, 01:44 AM

Originally posted by weev
Anyone agree?

No. I get so mad everytime I go back to OS 9 with my vintage Mac as it freezes so many times, it isn't even funny. And my main machine is PowerMac G4 533 Dual, a two-year old machine, and it just feels fast in the OS X 10.2.4 as in the OS 9.2.2.

OS X Rules!

weev

Feb 23, 2003, 01:45 AM

Originally posted by iJon
my windows are zip zip zip without the crash crash crash.

iJon

Heh, that's great. So which machines achieve this OS 9 level of speed?

I know the machines that don't (thorugh experience):
any ibook
Ti Powerbook 667
Duel 867 PM MD (the os doesn't feel as fast as my 500 mhz G3 imac)

weev

Feb 23, 2003, 02:02 AM

Originally posted by john123
He -- and I -- don't have to be left in the dust. I am finding myself seriously becoming a switcher...to PCs. I've owned 7 macs in about 8 years, and I am seriously considering making this one my last if OS X doesn't get some critical 9-like features I demand.

FYI, with Apple having under 5% market share, I would suggest that you folks not come back with stupid comments like "good riddance." There's a better solution: INCORPORATE THE FEATURES TO APPEASE 9 USERS.

On one hand I'd would have liked to see some 9 features maintained. This might sound silly but I like:

a) alias's that are in italics, so you know they are an alias
b) Labels - maybe I'm the only one who uses them, eg, I have a folder of 30 client jobs all as aliases, colored thus
green - waiting for approval
red - needs extra info
purple - ready for final proof
blue - finished (or whatever, something like this)

I couldn't get X to do this so my work process was slower as I had to use paper and pen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And on the other hand, I'll never ever use a PC. I don't dislike OS X, quite the contrary. It's just work that needs to be done -why - so I can afford a faster machine:D

weev

iJon

Feb 23, 2003, 02:09 AM

moss84

Feb 23, 2003, 02:19 AM

Originally posted by weev
On one hand I'd would have liked to see some 9 features maintained. This might sound silly but I like:

a) alias's that are in italics, so you know they are an alias
b) Labels - maybe I'm the only one who uses them, eg, I have a folder of 30 client jobs all as aliases, colored thus
green - waiting for approval
red - needs extra info
purple - ready for final proof
blue - finished (or whatever, something like this)

I couldn't get X to do this so my work process was slower as I had to use paper and pen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

weev

Have you tried Labels X from Unsanity (http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/labels/)? That may solve the label problem.

squatch

Feb 23, 2003, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by weev
On one hand I'd would have liked to see some 9 features maintained. This might sound silly but I like:

a) alias's that are in italics, so you know they are an alias
b) Labels - maybe I'm the only one who uses them, eg, I have a folder of 30 client jobs all as aliases, colored thus
green - waiting for approval
red - needs extra info
purple - ready for final proof
blue - finished (or whatever, something like this)

I couldn't get X to do this so my work process was slower as I had to use paper and pen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And on the other hand, I'll never ever use a PC. I don't dislike OS X, quite the contrary. It's just work that needs to be done -why - so I can afford a faster machine:D

weev

Check out Labels X....it provides you with the colored labels under OS X just like in OS 9. :)

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by iJon
please, let us know your demands that are so important. this should be interesting. by the way, apple is doing just fine with 5%. and they are getting more and more each day to switch. they are less concerned about people like you stuck in the old times.

iJon

Haha, even after I warned you, you fell into the same trap of dismissing me and users like me, insisting that Apple is "doing fine."

The company's economic fundamentals are not much improved, as demonstrated by fact that the stock price is only about 20% higher now than where it was when Jobs first came on board (after taking into account the stock split). And when the market had its periods of rallying in the Nasdaq in the last part of 2002, Apple's stock was conspicuously absent from those rallies. Its PE ratio is extremely high, too. The gap between PC speeds and Mac speeds continues to grow every day. And while I understand programmers' and sysadmins' like for OS X, the obsession of Joe Q. Public with the GUI in OS X is eerily reminiscent of a retarded kid's obsession with a bouncing ball.

So what are my demands? They are, in reality, very simple.

They amount to speed and GUI options (not even changes -- just options!).

I want OS X to be, at the GUI level, as fast as OS 9. Get rid of Quartz -- or at least let me turn it off. Antialiased fonts? With the low-resolution LCDs used in the PowerBooks, where font smoothing means that you're going to have a relatively large pixel some shade of gray, I don't want them...I far prefer the fonts in OS 9 which, while "blocky," are very readable and clear to me. I hate that in OS X, the lowercase "L" in the menubar font has a line of red pixels to the right of it. I want my text to be all black pixels. It would seem not much to ask Apple to have a very simple "OS 9 fonts" checkbox in the General pane. TinkerTool tries to do it but doesn't do a very good job. Silk tries to play with fonts but again has its share of problems. Why not make it an OS option? Would it really be that bad? Let's add a "Use OpenGL instead of Quartz" option as well. MAKE MY INTERFACE JUST LIKE I HAD IT IN OS 9, WITH ALL THE SPEED INHERENT THERIN. I want my desktop icon font to be Geneva 10, unsmoothed, and I want my menubar font to be Charcoal, again unsmoothed. And I want to get rid of those horizontal striping lines which just make things hard to read (yes, you can do this via third party themes, but again, why should I have to bother?). And I want my Apple menu back, and to be able to turn off the Dock, and no, I don't want to have to use FruitMenu.

You people claim that you love the stability of OS X. 9 doesn't crash on me much at all. I run a pretty lean OS and I know my computer. I work with a dozen apps open and crash maybe once a week, on average. And far more often than not, I can avert the crash by knowing, "OK, there's a problem," and saving my work in open apps and then restarting rather than running it into the ground. I am quite sure, after having used both OSes extensively, that I am more productive and waste less time in 9 than in X.

This is not to say that X doesn't have advantages. If you want a Apache server, it's the place to be. If you want to run Java 2 applets, you ain't gonna do it in 9.

But why do these things and stability have to be mutually exclusive with GUI performance and responsiveness? In trying to make the GUI pretty and cute, Apple has quite intentionally crippled its performance. All I'm asking for is a user-level option to turn that crap off.

ultrafiel

Feb 23, 2003, 02:31 AM

I've had only OS X on my home computer for almost a year now (no classic). At one of my jobs we use 9, and the other X with classic. I wouldn't use 9 if I didn't have to. X is so much better, and for those of you who complain that it isn't zippy we should have a test. Use the same computer with each operating system to see which is more time-effective (remember to count in crashes). I had this computer up for 8 days without a problem until the power went out. I could have never had done that with 9. I restarted multiple times a day without fail. Force-quit an app and you most likely would freeze up your comp. And for those of you wanting more 9-like features, what would those be? Rendevous, usb printer sharing, print as a pdf are just a few options that I couldn't live without now. Anything you want as a 9 feature can probably be found as a freeware/shareware program anyway. While your at it though go try to install 7.5 on your G3, it won't work, why should it? Same with today's computers, why waste the money and cripple your hardware by supporting an old OS. Doesn't make sense. Go to Windows for all I care, that sure won't be speedier, and won't have the 9-like features you want either.

iJon

Feb 23, 2003, 02:35 AM

Originally posted by john123
Haha, even after I warned you, you fell into the same trap of dismissing me and users like me, insisting that Apple is "doing fine."

The company's economic fundamentals are not much improved, as demonstrated by fact that the stock price is only about 20% higher now than where it was when Jobs first came on board (after taking into account the stock split). And when the market had its periods of rallying in the Nasdaq in the last part of 2002, Apple's stock was conspicuously absent from those rallies. Its PE ratio is extremely high, too. The gap between PC speeds and Mac speeds continues to grow every day. And while I understand programmers' and sysadmins' like for OS X, the obsession of Joe Q. Public with the GUI in OS X is eerily reminiscent of a retarded kid's obsession with a bouncing ball.

So what are my demands? They are, in reality, very simple.

They amount to speed and GUI options (not even changes -- just options!).

I want OS X to be, at the GUI level, as fast as OS 9. Get rid of Quartz -- or at least let me turn it off. Antialiased fonts? With the low-resolution LCDs used in the PowerBooks, where font smoothing means that you're going to have a relatively large pixel some shade of gray, I don't want them...I far prefer the fonts in OS 9 which, while "blocky," are very readable and clear to me. I hate that in OS X, the lowercase "L" in the menubar font has a line of red pixels to the right of it. I want my text to be all black pixels. It would seem not much to ask Apple to have a very simple "OS 9 fonts" checkbox in the General pane. TinkerTool tries to do it but doesn't do a very good job. Silk tries to play with fonts but again has its share of problems. Why not make it an OS option? Would it really be that bad? Let's add a "Use OpenGL instead of Quartz" option as well. MAKE MY INTERFACE JUST LIKE I HAD IT IN OS 9, WITH ALL THE SPEED INHERENT THERIN. I want my desktop icon font to be Geneva 10, unsmoothed, and I want my menubar font to be Charcoal, again unsmoothed. And I want to get rid of those horizontal striping lines which just make things hard to read (yes, you can do this via third party themes, but again, why should I have to bother?). And I want my Apple menu back, and to be able to turn off the Dock, and no, I don't want to have to use FruitMenu.

You people claim that you love the stability of OS X. 9 doesn't crash on me much at all. I run a pretty lean OS and I know my computer. I work with a dozen apps open and crash maybe once a week, on average. And far more often than not, I can avert the crash by knowing, "OK, there's a problem," and saving my work in open apps and then restarting rather than running it into the ground. I am quite sure, after having used both OSes extensively, that I am more productive and waste less time in 9 than in X.

This is not to say that X doesn't have advantages. If you want a Apache server, it's the place to be. If you want to run Java 2 applets, you ain't gonna do it in 9.

But why do these things and stability have to be mutually exclusive with GUI performance and responsiveness? In trying to make the GUI pretty and cute, Apple has quite intentionally crippled its performance. All I'm asking for is a user-level option to turn that crap off.
this is exactly what people dont want. when they are being sold a mac, they dont want to know that there computer will probably crash once a week, i cant rememember the last time my os x crashed. os x is the future, it has just about anything most people could as for in an os (besides your). just because you ahve an old computer doesnt mean apple should stop everything for you, technology changes, os 9 is old. just about every mac made now can run os x extremly well and people never will have the need to go back into os 9. i want to know what kind of computer you are running cause i wanna know what your basing your statements on. i think you are one of the few who feel this way. when os x first came out we all had to sacrifice speed for the gorgeous look of the os with the seemless workflow without any crashes. now times have changed and we have macs that run os x great. and enough with the mhz myth, we know we are behind but i sure dont care. unless you are rendering jar jar for the next star wars, the processors now are just fine.

iJon

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 02:39 AM

Originally posted by iJon
this is exactly what people dont want. when they are being sold a mac, they dont want to know that there computer will probably crash once a week, i cant rememember the last time my os x crashed. os x is the future, it has just about anything most people could as for in an os (besides your). just because you ahve an old computer doesnt mean apple should stop everything for you, technology changes, os 9 is old. just about every mac made now can run os x extremly well and people never will have the need to go back into os 9. i want to know what kind of computer you are running cause i wanna know what your basing your statements on. i think you are one of the few who feel this way. when os x first came out we all had to sacrifice speed for the gorgeous look of the os with the seemless workflow without any crashes. now times have changed and we have macs that run os x great. and enough with the mhz myth, we know we are behind but i sure dont care. unless you are rendering jar jar for the next star wars, the processors now are just fine.

iJon

Old computer? LOL. I have a 1Ghz PowerBook with 1GB of RAM and the 60GB harddrive (with SuperDrive). And I'll tell you, 9 runs significantly faster than X.

You've been sold a bill of goods with OS X. Besides, honestly, how much development would really have to go into doing most of the stuff I suggested in my post? Not much.

iJon

Feb 23, 2003, 02:46 AM

Originally posted by john123
Old computer? LOL. I have a 1Ghz PowerBook with 1GB of RAM and the 60GB harddrive (with SuperDrive). And I'll tell you, 9 runs significantly faster than X.

You've been sold a bill of goods with OS X.
ok fair enough. this argument is going no where fast. you have a mac, thats great. you like os 9, thats great. im not gonna stop you because that would be stupid. you bought it with your own money and you use it how you wish. im glad a crash a week doesnt bother you. personally i feel your a little too picky about the speeds, i have a 12 inch powerbook, which isnt near as good as yours, and it runs os x like a dream. hope you stay with the mac, but i can understand why you would want a pc considering your speed issues with os 9 & X on a 1ghz powerbook.

iJon

edenwaith

Feb 23, 2003, 02:51 AM

Originally posted by rjrufo
Why would someone want to boot into OS-9 if they went out and bought a new computer? I would think that those who still use OS-9 wouldn't buy anything new, until the software that they need is ported to OS-X.
I use OS-X exclusively, I've only started Classic a few times. I may be a new Mac user, but my PowerBook came with OS-9 and used that as my primary computer that way for almost a year before I decided to move to OS-X - at that time it was at version 10.1.3. I now use 10.2, and have no software that uses OS-9, because I upgraded everything that I use at the same time.

Good question, one I wish I had an answer for. Perhaps some people, companies or labs have all of their systems running OS 9, and they know what they are doing and how they want things to be set up and don't want to try and learn OS X. But then, maybe they still run some app which is still only OS 9, or they don't want or have the money to upgrade to the latest version, and decide to stick with OS 9 instead, since being in OS 9 is faster than trying to run an app under Classic.

tjwett

Feb 23, 2003, 03:53 AM

Originally posted by john123
Old computer? LOL. I have a 1Ghz PowerBook with 1GB of RAM and the 60GB harddrive (with SuperDrive). And I'll tell you, 9 runs significantly faster than X.

You've been sold a bill of goods with OS X. Besides, honestly, how much development would really have to go into doing most of the stuff I suggested in my post? Not much.

seriously, well said. don't get me wrong, i think OS X is pretty and i've been using it since it's birth but its as slow as a crippled turtle and it isn't much use to me right now. i do sound design and composition for a living, i'm a Logic user, and feel totally shafted by Apple for dropping VST. it's cute to think they are going to start a new "standard" but come on. i still, and will continue to boot into OS 9 to run all my VSTis and plug-ins that have not, or will not ever make it to OS X. i don't think Audio Units will "make it". i thought Apple was trying to conform to standards, not make silly ones that don't exist. yeah, AU is a great concept but when the market is saturated with VST , just allow it and move on. why **** me out of hundreds of dollars worth of software just for bragging rights?

Foocha

Feb 23, 2003, 03:58 AM

Rhapsody was released - it was Mac OS X Server 1.0.

It's funny to hear an OS 9 fan claiming that Rhapsody is the answer, since it did not include the Carbon framework, and so in effect it was more different to OS 9 than today's OS X is. In addition, OS 9 apps running in the classic environment could not run in their own application windows, they ran in an OS 9 emulation window, a bit like Virtual PC.

From what I read of OS 9 users who are not happy with OS X, they tend to focus on the superficial aspects - mainly the GUI.

There are problems with OS X, but they're nothing in comparison to the problems with OS 9. The fact that OS 9 is faster is not an indication that it is a better OS - you'll find that Windows 95 runs faster than Windows 2000, but no one would make an arguement that Windows 95 is better, would they?

My biggest nostagia for OS 9/8/7 concerns networking & sharing. In the olden days, you could just hook up a bunch of Macs on a network and they would all talk to each other and share with no problems. Everyone could browse everyone else on the network, and no one had to think about issues like LDAP, SMB, Long File Names... The truth is, the reason OS X is more complex than OS 9 is because we expect to do so much more with it. Try setting up an SMB share or Apache on OS 9. Try copying a file from one Mac to another with a file name of longer than 32 characters. Hmm, OS 9 not so great now, huh?

scorpion

Feb 23, 2003, 04:12 AM

This is basically a silly argument. Some people are early adopters and some aren't. (I've bought 30 year old cameras because I like their "feel" -- but today's cameras are optically superior, in most cases.) I was a diehard 9 user but I think it's pretty hard to make the argument that 10 offers more hassle and fewer features. They're actually quite similar -- and I run X on my iMac 333 because it's prbably close to the same speed!

X has a ton of features which are great for even the casual user. But many 9 users aren't comfortable. That's OK -- you can always buy older computers on eBay, much like my 30 year old cameras. And you can run 9 on them. But it's an uphill battle for sentimentality, in my opinion. The (relatively) minor differences that many seem wedded to in 9 are a small sacrifice for the stability and flexibility of X.

In fact, X really reignited my love for Macs. i've always loved them but there's so much more functionality in X than before.

And of course, the only reason I have to use 9 is my old scanner which we now have VueScan for, so no reason now.

Office X is also better than Office 2001.

That's all. Good night.

welborn

Feb 23, 2003, 04:53 AM

Originally posted by john123
I want OS X to be, at the GUI level, as fast as OS 9. Get rid of Quartz -- or at least let me turn it off. Antialiased fonts? With the low-resolution LCDs used in the PowerBooks, where font smoothing means that you're going to have a relatively large pixel some shade of gray, I don't want them...I far prefer the fonts in OS 9 which, while "blocky," are very readable and clear to me. I hate that in OS X, the lowercase "L" in the menubar font has a line of red pixels to the right of it. I want my text to be all black pixels. It would seem not much to ask Apple to have a very simple "OS 9 fonts" checkbox in the General pane. TinkerTool tries to do it but doesn't do a very good job. Silk tries to play with fonts but again has its share of problems. Why not make it an OS option? Would it really be that bad? Let's add a "Use OpenGL instead of Quartz" option as well. MAKE MY INTERFACE JUST LIKE I HAD IT IN OS 9, WITH ALL THE SPEED INHERENT THERIN. I want my desktop icon font to be Geneva 10, unsmoothed, and I want my menubar font to be Charcoal, again unsmoothed. And I want to get rid of those horizontal striping lines which just make things hard to read (yes, you can do this via third party themes, but again, why should I have to bother?). And I want my Apple menu back, and to be able to turn off the Dock, and no, I don't want to have to use FruitMenu.

You people claim that you love the stability of OS X. 9 doesn't crash on me much at all. I run a pretty lean OS and I know my computer. I work with a dozen apps open and crash maybe once a week, on average. And far more often than not, I can avert the crash by knowing, "OK, there's a problem," and saving my work in open apps and then restarting rather than running it into the ground. I am quite sure, after having used both OSes extensively, that I am more productive and waste less time in 9 than in X.

This is not to say that X doesn't have advantages. If you want a Apache server, it's the place to be. If you want to run Java 2 applets, you ain't gonna do it in 9.

But why do these things and stability have to be mutually exclusive with GUI performance and responsiveness? In trying to make the GUI pretty and cute, Apple has quite intentionally crippled its performance. All I'm asking for is a user-level option to turn that crap off.

For the record -- I don't think you can turn off Quartz. It's the compositing engine that draws the screen. It's the guts of OS X. And now, with Quartz Extreme, it really doesn't slow things down any more. (I understand what your point was, though.)

I agree with your general message here. If Apple had introduced OS X with a 9-looking appearance and then made the stoplight widgets, stripey backgrounds and candy buttons an option (even if default!), I think we'd all be better off.

It seems that Apple of old made decisions based on what was demonstrably more intuitive and better. For example, having the close, minimize and maximize widgets on opposite ends of the window just works better.

The problem is that Apple is now several years down this path, and there's not enough outcry to make changes like this. If they did, it would look like they were admitting a long-standing mistake. I can't imagine they want to do that.

I've just had to get over my prejudices. Now, I love OS 10! I've learned that I just really have to pay attention when I am clicking near the stoplight stuff. I now use a multi-button mouse, also, despite knowing that a single-button is easier to learn and a little more elegant.

Apple could have made my computer experience sublime -- with TRULY the power of Unix and the elegance and simplicity of the Macintosh. I have settled for what they've given us instead -- a better Unix box than anyone, with a "lickable" GUI that's not necessarily up to the standard of excellence I expected. Life goes on.

gotohamish

Feb 23, 2003, 05:01 AM

Originally posted by scorpion
This is basically a silly argument. Some people are early adopters and some aren't. (I've bought 30 year old cameras because I like their "feel" -- but today's cameras are optically superior, in most cases.) I was a diehard 9 user but I think it's pretty hard to make the argument that 10 offers more hassle and fewer features. They're actually quite similar -- and I run X on my iMac 333 because it's prbably close to the same speed!

X has a ton of features which are great for even the casual user. But many 9 users aren't comfortable. That's OK -- you can always buy older computers on eBay, much like my 30 year old cameras. And you can run 9 on them. But it's an uphill battle for sentimentality, in my opinion. The (relatively) minor differences that many seem wedded to in 9 are a small sacrifice for the stability and flexibility of X.

In fact, X really reignited my love for Macs. i've always loved them but there's so much more functionality in X than before.

And of course, the only reason I have to use 9 is my old scanner which we now have VueScan for, so no reason now.

Office X is also better than Office 2001.

That's all. Good night.

Well said.

I think of the "speed" of OS X to be something a little different from the majority of you. I have a G4 500 tower, and a G4 TiBook 500. OSX runs fine, sure it could be faster but it's fine.

I had to boot into 9 the other day for a little task, and it was the first time I'd been in 9 in ages. And it was SLOW. Don't get me wrong, opening windows, and menus is a lot snappier (!) but it's the OTHER SPEED issues:

1) Finding files in 'Open' dialogs TAKES FOREVER. Thank God for column view in X!

2) Opening Apps is tedious unless you've taken the time to make alias', launchers, and Apple menu items. Thank God for the dock in X!

3) This little App I had to run in 9 crashed due to lack of memory (I have 1.5GB) - so I had to go into the 'Get Info' and up it's memory allowance. This took time, now I know Apps have problems in X and you have to force quit them, but then you just reopen them - thank God for protected memory in X.

So, my point is, raw speed in 9 is there, but overall speed of productivity and navigation is much more a feature of X. It's a common sense, intuitive OS. I've used the classic os' since the first Mac, and I'm no slouch in the Finder, but X wipes the floor with it.

Do you get my point?

greenfruit

Feb 23, 2003, 06:20 AM

Apple are never gonna change the OSX interface to look like 9 at this point, itd be worse than the NEW Coca-Cola fiasco.

Ive NEVER found OSX particularly slower than 9, and ive been playing with it since the beta. I would say though, that when it looses a server on the network (ie if you pull the network cable out without disconnecting first) then the finder goes mad and i normally have to force quit it. Also, the way that servers seem to use IP addresses to get to each other is annoying. I dont know if it has changed from 9, but if i make an alias of a server and then that servers IP address changes the alias wont work - which is hella-annoying.

I installed OSX on my work mac last week, to give it a try as the only programs i use in classic are Quark, Distiller (because of Quark and presumably Quark 6 will have PDF capabilities built in) and whamnet transmission manager (for sending isdns) and i must say its gone fairly well, some fonts seem to have issues with OSX, but apart from that very few problems.

BTW, the last time i had to update my mac firmware, i had to boot into OS9 first, any ideas on how you update firmware on nonOS9-bootable macs?

awulf

Feb 23, 2003, 06:23 AM

I have found that OS 9 crashes more on some CPU's then others. OS 9 seems pretty stable on a G3, and 603e. On a G4 or 604 OS 9 likes to crash.

I use OS X on my G4 and it is pretty slow, I currently only have 128MB of RAM, and OS 9 beats the hell out of OS X in speed on my Mac. But I use OS X because it doesn't crash, for its cocoa apps and for its multitasking abilities.

I am going to get 512MB of RAM soon so that will speed things up.

greenfruit

Feb 23, 2003, 06:29 AM

MORE RAM definately helps, my G4/450 has 550something, and my ibook has 384meg, and theyre both fine.

Ive not had major OS9 crashes EVER, my work mac before i upgraded was generally up constantly for about a week (as i never shut down, just turned the screen off) before needing a reboot to defrag ram.

any crashes were (generally) quark related.

but with the same ram (384meg i think), OSX can happily have more apps open than 9, i now pretty much constantly have Quark, Photoshop, Flash, Mail, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and various other helpful apps open all the time.

jamilecrire

Feb 23, 2003, 07:34 AM

Originally posted by john123
I was with you until this last sentence...

Lol, GWB has spent more than the last 12 administrations in any calendar year. He has also taken a trillion dollar surplus and turned it into a deficit of 384 billion in only 3 years (unnecessary tax cut anyone?) and he's a complete fool. This is a man that has never worked for a damn thing in his entire life and the morons of this country (actually a minority by the popular vote) wonder why things so quickly went to crap.

I hope by the time GWB is out of office he hasn't completely ruinned everything the Clinton administration did to help "everyone" instead of "the rich". Oh wait he has undone everything. Sad really. Foreign Policy == Joke, Economic Policy == Joke, Religion in Govt == Joke, Our President == Fscking Moron.

If that is what you want for a president, I'd rather have a Rhodes Scholor (on merit) who gets a BJ than some shmuck who can't even say terrorist (he says something like "tourist" or "terraist").

Centris 650

Feb 23, 2003, 07:36 AM

I am a late adopter of X. I got 10.2.2 for Christmas from the Ed. Store for $78. I figured if I was going to switch to X I'd better jump on it. It does feel slower on my iBook 466 SE (FW). But I'm living with it. It has been hard adapting to some core Mac OS things that had been around since I had started in 87 but I'm adapting. (I had all my programs listed in the Apple Menu. I still have a habit of hitting it and dragging down it. That's why my dock in on the left, to ease me in. :D )

I really like X. Though the Doc is a space hogger on my iBook's screen. I'm still getting used to it and hopefully by summer I'll have made a full transition to X. (I'm upgrading my programs to X one by one. Way to expensive to do them all at once!)

From 6-9 not much was changed at once. (Something added in one upgrade, another in another upgrade.) It took me a while just to upgrade from 8.5 to 9. Though I upgraded immediately from 6 to 7 just so I could easily make my own folder and disk icons!:) All in all, X is a different OS than we've EVER had. I'm enjoying the learning curve.

NicoMan

Feb 23, 2003, 07:41 AM

Originally posted by weev
Heh, that's great. So which machines achieve this OS 9 level of speed?

I know the machines that don't (thorugh experience):
any ibook
Ti Powerbook 667
Duel 867 PM MD (the os doesn't feel as fast as my 500 mhz G3 imac)

My PB667 (VGA) is not very fast I'll grant you that, but my DP 867 MD (at work) is reaaaaallly fast...
If people still like OS9 that's fine, and I am not saying good riddance to you if you choose the PC world instead of staying with Macs and making the transition to OSX, but I am telling you if you think that OSX is too different from OS9 for you, then forget about Windows... OSX, even if visually very different from OS9, is still true to the Apple philosophy of designing UIs that work... Now try a PC and you will remember why you became a Mac user in the first place. So I say to you (yes you my dear john123) BULLS**T if you are thinking of moving to PCs instead of going to OSX...
Just give OSX a chance. You don't have to do it now. As long as your current hardware answers your needs adequately, FINE, stay with OS9, but when you get a new machine (as in: more powerful, more geared towards OSX), well you will see what OSX is capable of.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 23, 2003, 07:52 AM

Lupin Addams

Feb 23, 2003, 07:55 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax
15" TiBooks still boot 9 :)

I know, thanks... in fact I boot from a 9 partition for FTP and such - but someday I would like to get a new machine and still be able to use it fully!

Foocha

Feb 23, 2003, 07:59 AM

A thought. The speed problem some users encounter with OS X is more to do with hardware rather than software. It's naturally that the progression from OS 9 to OS X results in a performance penalty - it's the same with Windows. The extra work which the OS is doing to give you OS X's rock solid performance slows things down a little.

The move to NT/2000/XP took its toll on Windows performance too, however the extrodinary increase in Pentium performance more than compensated for this. Sadly, PowerPC never came up with the goods, making OS X a little on the slow side.

Let's not get our knives out for Quartz - it's revolutionary and way ahead of Windows - it's one of the few areas where OS X clearly has an advantage over XP - i.e. something to be proud of. It'll take some time before Windows supports features like transparency and alpha channels.

Rocketman

Feb 23, 2003, 09:07 AM

Originally posted by blakespot
The real question is how to downclock the CPU by 200MHz or so...
blakespot

Powerbooks have a powersaving utility that do just that. I wonder if it works on the desktop macs.

I find it in the task bar under sleep options on a Ti.

Rocketman

Rocketman

Feb 23, 2003, 09:10 AM

Originally posted by weev

X is too eye candy rich yes, seems to be appealing to the new user/switcher.

You know what I'd like to see (drumroll pls ....) OS X PRO

Less resources spent on candy, more on power. Essentially, a cut down no frills (or a lot less frills) version of what we have now: I just want zip zip zip when opening windows, etc, no need for the bouncing/sliding/pulsing stuff!

Anyone agree?

I agree. Apple could call it "expert mode" and make it sound really impressive so they can sell more macs to lemmings. Meantime power users would switch to it after they learn X.

Rocketman

Rocketman

Feb 23, 2003, 09:21 AM

Originally posted by iJon
just because you ahve an old computer doesnt mean apple should stop everything for you,

iJon

I agree. But what OS6,7,8,9 users need is ability to run their legacy programs and files on the new platform. They need to be able to maintain workflow habits that work for them. Labels and italic aliases being small examples. Supporting these features would be a boon to OSX users. Not because it is some insanely great new application to attract new users, but because it is backward compatibuility to keep the millions of existing users productive.

Consider this. If you use an 0x0 or older PowerPC chip because it provides the compatibility you need. You are not going to buy a new CPU no matter how much money is burning a hole in your pocket.

BUT if you can use those old MacDraw files you have megabytes of, and keep all those colorfully labeled folders you felt so mission critical, and can open, modify and write whatever file I have left out, then you will have no reason NOT to buy the latest CPU.

Just because it is cool.

Rocketman

Jimong5

Feb 23, 2003, 09:27 AM

I'd just like to say OSX is faster on my Dual 867 then in OS 9 by feel and such. The fact that OSX also has double the horsepower level since it can take advantage of its second G4 and Quartz extreme. Everything basic is instant, and the whole system is snappy. as for the reelect GWB, if you don't like the man, don't vote for him, this isn't the time or place to whine about how he's running things.

greenfruit

Feb 23, 2003, 09:29 AM

im not sure being able to open macdraw is so important, after all i would imagine PhotoShop can do this, and pretty much any old file can be opened by some kind of OSX app.

the italic alias and labels are more important, and yes apple should fix it, but id rather they keep to the more core first, in the meantime theres always 3rd party solutions to these relativly minor problems.

afterall OSX is still a relativly young OS.

Jimong5

Feb 23, 2003, 09:32 AM

Originally posted by Rocketman
I agree. But what OS6,7,8,9 users need is ability to run their legacy programs and files on the new platform. They need to be able to maintain workflow habits that work for them. Labels and italic aliases being small examples. Supporting these features would be a boon to OSX users. Not because it is some insanely great new application to attract new users, but because it is backward compatibuility to keep the millions of existing users productive.

Consider this. If you use an 0x0 or older PowerPC chip because it provides the compatibility you need. You are not going to buy a new CPU no matter how much money is burning a hole in your pocket.

BUT if you can use those old MacDraw files you have megabytes of, and keep all those colorfully labeled folders you felt so mission critical, and can open, modify and write whatever file I have left out, then you will have no reason NOT to buy the latest CPU.

Just because it is cool.

Rocketman

I dont think Apple still needs to boot 9, I think apple needs to improve the Classic environment to be even more compatible, and maybe incorporate Quickdraw into the Quartz system. right now, my biggest complaint of classic is the issue with quick draw and quartz overlapping.

biscool

Feb 23, 2003, 09:35 AM

I agree. But what OS6,7,8,9 users need is ability to run their legacy programs and files on the new platform. They need to be able to maintain workflow habits that work for them. Labels and italic aliases being small examples. Supporting these features would be a boon to OSX users. Not because it is some insanely great new application to attract new users, but because it is backward compatibuility to keep the millions of existing users productive.

Consider this. If you use an 0x0 or older PowerPC chip because it provides the compatibility you need. You are not going to buy a new CPU no matter how much money is burning a hole in your pocket.

BUT if you can use those old MacDraw files you have megabytes of, and keep all those colorfully labeled folders you felt so mission critical, and can open, modify and write whatever file I have left out, then you will have no reason NOT to buy the latest CPU.

Just because it is cool.

Rocketman

Like others have said, you can add labels to OS X. Why do you need italic aliases? You can use the dock and aliases on the desktop, or anywhere else, have an easy to see arrow thing...

deepkid

Feb 23, 2003, 09:46 AM

the main reason (other than cost!!) that I won't be updating my battered old TiBook 550 anytime soon.

Hey!!! The ti550 isn't really *old*! :)
This is still a very competitive powerbook.
Just a little tipaint on it and voila. Max out the ram, fast HDs.

BTW, is it still possible to have that combo drive upgrade anywhere? Is Apple or any third party still performing these for tibooks?

Jimong5

Feb 23, 2003, 09:54 AM

Originally posted by deepkid
Hey!!! The ti550 isn't really *old*! :)
This is still a very competitive powerbook.
Just a little tipaint on it and voila. Max out the ram, fast HDs.

BTW, is it still possible to have that combo drive upgrade anywhere? Is Apple or any third party still performing these for tibooks?
I don't remember where, but I heard that a 3rd party was doing Superdrive upgrades for the Ti.

greenfruit

Feb 23, 2003, 09:54 AM

Originally posted by Jimong5
I dont think Apple still needs to boot 9, I think apple needs to improve the Classic environment to be even more compatible, and maybe incorporate Quickdraw into the Quartz system. right now, my biggest complaint of classic is the issue with quick draw and quartz overlapping.

I think thats *somewhat* true, however, i imagine what with the dwindling amount of classic/os9 apps, by the time apple implimented this there wouldnt be any apps to run under classic or indeed any need for classic.

As it is, i never run classic at home, and only use quark/distiller/whamnet at work.

Something ive noticed is that games seem FAR slower in X than 9, Medal of Honor is jerky as hell in X while in a higher screen res in 9 its silky smooth.

though the new games (ghost recon for example) seem to be better in X but it looks like ill need a new mac for UT2003.

UnixMac

Feb 23, 2003, 10:27 AM

A point of interest.... the new Mac's will not boot drive 10 either.. I tried to defrag my friends new Dual1.25 and it didn't read the disk.... Apple says it's possibly due to the boot sector of the Drive 10 disk being readable by older macs???

go figure..

Over Achiever

Feb 23, 2003, 10:40 AM

Originally posted by Jimong5
I don't remember where, but I heard that a 3rd party was doing Superdrive upgrades for the Ti.

MCE is doing the upgrades.

http://www.mcetech.com/sdpbg4.html

Costs $500, and is expected to be available in two days (2/25)

zac4mac

Feb 23, 2003, 11:04 AM

When is this issue gonna die?

If you've got an old Mac(like my 7500/604e233 and 8500/G3-454) or older, run 9.x, that's the best it'll do, they're primitive. If you use software that's OS 9 only, buy an old Mac. (They're cheaper than the new ones)

If you've got a newer Mac, especially a duallie, get as far away from OS 9 as you can. Any speed increase in OS 9 on a duallie is purely illusory. Very few windows in 9 are "live draw", while most in OS X are. Try iTunes. Drag a window around in 9 & X, I think you'll be surprised at how slow OS 9 really is.

If 9 works, spend your money on something besides a new Mac. I finally got a 22"Cinema Display and it's better than a new CPU, IMO.
I think my DP550/1GB/.24TB/Radeon32/Orion16/22"ACD/20"MS/10.2.4 will last a little longer, especially after adding a Sonnet Raid 133 card and an ATi 9000 Pro.

p.s to the guy with red lines on his text - set your convergence(if you can) flat panels don't suffer this; my ACD is so clear and crisp, it makes my old Apple Multi-Sync look like it has tissue paper over the front.

Zack

mattmack

Feb 23, 2003, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by deepkid
Is Apple or any third party still performing these for tibooks? Try www.mcetech.com. I believe they're even coming out with a superdrive upgrade

Wry Cooter

Feb 23, 2003, 11:08 AM

There was a period where I found it necessary to boot into OS 9, but I don't have to any more... the things that were not working via classic now are.

But I am doing something officially non-approved by Apple... My version of OS 9 for classic is 9.1. I simply cannot upgrade it to 9.2.2 without losing the registration on several of my illustrator and photoshop plug ins, or having to reinstall printer drivers. And guess what? To reinstall the printer drivers, I WOULD have to boot into OS 9.

But everything is stable for now.

For most of those having to boot into 9 I hope it is a case of NEED rather than want... I don't know anyone that has actually spent a month in OS X that even wants to deal with the classic layer if they do not have to.

Quartz Extreme should get your slower mac over the speed issue some, if you can pop in a card. Other than that, if you miss your snappy OS 9, or for some other reason can't let go, don't ask for someone to build you an "Expert" version of OS X to get around the quartz overhead, Be your own expert and learn how to cut off those bounces and shadows you think are
slowing down your finder experience... the tweaks are out there. And actually spend some time with OS X to the point your old muscle memory of going for the other corner of the window have dissapated... you will find it has its own ways of speeding up finder usage... not the same as the ones you are used to in OS 9, but more direct.

idkew

Feb 23, 2003, 11:10 AM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
Could it be that I simply like the interface better. Perhaps I like running a leaner OS that doesn't suck up so much, in terms of resources. There shouldn't even be a need for something like Quartz Extreme. Why is there so much darn eye candy on the screen anyway? Who needs it?!!?!?! I would rather have the resources going to Photoshop for FCP something. The ol' OS is what attracted me to the Mac in the first place.....and take note that there are a lot of people who would rather use OS 9. It is a beautifully simple OS that is way faster than OS X. I say.....take that sleek, simple, and beautiful OS 9 interface and put it atop of that UNIX kernal, and let me have it!!!!! Of course anyone who knows anything about Macs will tell you I am describing Rhapsody, which I wish had actually hit the market, but hey, I can dream.
OS 9 RULES!!! Re-Elect G.W. BUSH 2004!

why even use a gui then? just drop down to darwin and use the command line all the time.

in other words, your argument makes little sense.

chmorley

Feb 23, 2003, 11:17 AM

Generally speaking, people fear change. This is especially true when they are happy with the status quo. For people who like OS 9 so much that they can't take OS X for more than an hour or so, they don't get to experience the benefits. Sure, it's slower. For me, however, the benefits outweigh the costs. (Granted, the ftp problem isn't relevant to me.)

For anyone not sold on OS X, try it for two weeks. If you're not sold, oh well. Without having tried this, though, your opinion is not informed.

Chris

Edit: However, OS X missing critical functionality that had been in OS 9 (e.g., the ftp issue mentioned) is not acceptable. It is odd that Apple would not have corrected this by 10.2.

elmimmo

Feb 23, 2003, 11:35 AM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
Perhaps I like running a leaner OS that doesn't suck up so much, in terms of resources

That is relative. I can open far more applications in OS X than in OS 9, and with the max number of apps I can open in 9, OS X behaves quite quite better.

OS 9 behaves better if you have an old computer (i.e., little HDD and little memory). Once you have a system with certain amplitude, OS 9 does not know what to do with what OS X loves to play.

But again, all is relative. OS X Finder is slower by design, which IMHO does not imply your workflow will be slower (because, Photoshop, for instance, is as fast in OSX).

Orion27

Feb 23, 2003, 11:42 AM

When I ordered my new PowerMac I had the choice of an old or new version of the 1.25. I figured I could live with OS 9 within X. I regret
I did not purchase the bootable version of the
PowerMac. I use a very expensive design program
which requires a security dongle. Silly me hoping
it would launch within OS 9 in X. I would love to
take advantage of my new machine bootable
in OS 9. Would there still be an issue with the
20" Cinema Display, also X non- compliant according to initial reports by Apple but which may
also have a work around now. If there is a way,
I'd like to boot in OS9

deepkid

Feb 23, 2003, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by Over Achiever
MCE is doing the upgrades.

http://www.mcetech.com/sdpbg4.html

Costs $500, and is expected to be available in two days (2/25)

Thanks to everyone who replied. This is a more afforable solution that will allow me to wait for rev B aluminum books.

robguz

Feb 23, 2003, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by jamilecrire
Lol, GWB has spent more than the last 12 administrations in any calendar year. He has also taken a trillion dollar surplus and turned it into a deficit of 384 billion in only 3 years (unnecessary tax cut anyone?) and he's a complete fool. This is a man that has never worked for a damn thing in his entire life and the morons of this country (actually a minority by the popular vote) wonder why things so quickly went to crap.

I hope by the time GWB is out of office he hasn't completely ruinned everything the Clinton administration did to help "everyone" instead of "the rich". Oh wait he has undone everything. Sad really. Foreign Policy == Joke, Economic Policy == Joke, Religion in Govt == Joke, Our President == Fscking Moron.

If that is what you want for a president, I'd rather have a Rhodes Scholor (on merit) who gets a BJ than some shmuck who can't even say terrorist (he says something like "tourist" or "terraist").

You know what's even more frightening? The man who controls the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, enough to kill everyone on the planet many times over, does not even know how to pronounce the word "nuclear." Like your typical 3rd grade educated country bumpkin, he says "nuke-u-lar." I agree, total fscking moron!

DavPeanut

Feb 23, 2003, 11:48 AM

Apple sells OS9 booting machines. Here! (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/23/wo/pJ2JvcldhpCu37jhzRxEk5fLWmI/1.3.0.3.27.3.0.PowerMacOS9Promo.0.0.0.0.3.1.1.0?80,23)

The Grimace

Feb 23, 2003, 12:23 PM

Download the pictures off of my HP 315 dig. camera without crashing the OS. The solution? Boot into OS 9, plug in the camera, and drag-n-drop the picts. And yes, it's a HARD crash, not just Quartz going belly up. Cursor freezes, cmd-alt-esc does nada, no keyboard input, gotta do a hard reboot.

Also, I do a bit o' FTPing, and OS X does not, in my exp., retain long file names. I inevitably end up adding whatever extension it was that was dropped. And on this point, lose the extensions. OS 9 knows it's an mp3 without a '.mp3', why doesn't X? And why do some of my '.app' files suddenly become documents, and refuse to launch? Most notably, REALbasic 4 does this, although it has happened to other apps.

I also like to keep an alias of the hard drive in the dock, so I can use it as a hierarchal menu ala the old Apple menu. I can guarantee that the old Apple menu was MUCH quicker. It would probably be just as fast if X loaded the menu items in when the Dock launches, but it doesn't. Instead, I gotta wait for the items to load when I use it, and it's SLOW.

Just for the record, I use an iMac DV 400 and a PB Wallstreet 300. 10.2 on the iMac, 10.1.5 on the PB (Jag refuses to install; won't even boot the install disk), and I use X almost exclusively. Love it, even the eye-candy. But the simple fact is that there are certain things that 9 does better, faster, and more intuitively. Hopefully someday X will fully replace ALL the functionality of 9, but right now this is not the case.

(tig)

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by zac4mac

p.s to the guy with red lines on his text - set your convergence(if you can) flat panels don't suffer this; my ACD is so clear and crisp, it makes my old Apple Multi-Sync look like it has tissue paper over the front.

Zack

There is NO CONVERGENCE. This is a PowerBook LCD. Go look at them some time. Look close.

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by Wry Cooter

For most of those having to boot into 9 I hope it is a case of NEED rather than want... I don't know anyone that has actually spent a month in OS X that even wants to deal with the classic layer if they do not have to.

Quartz Extreme should get your slower mac over the speed issue some, if you can pop in a card. Other than that, if you miss your snappy OS 9, or for some other reason can't let go, don't ask for someone to build you an "Expert" version of OS X to get around the quartz overhead, Be your own expert and learn how to cut off those bounces and shadows you think are
slowing down your finder experience... the tweaks are out there. And actually spend some time with OS X to the point your old muscle memory of going for the other corner of the window have dissapated... you will find it has its own ways of speeding up finder usage... not the same as the ones you are used to in OS 9, but more direct.

Okay this is nuts. It's a MACINTOSH for the love of Jobs!

I shouldn't have to turn into a programmer to get these BASIC things done. And if you'd read the rest of this thread, you'd have seen that I already DISCUSSED the third party hacks that are out there.

I've used OS X extensively. I gave it a fair shot on my TiBook 667DVI and on my 1Ghz TiBook. And I'm back in 9. X is slower at the GUI level, and anyone saying otherwise -- not to be mean here -- is either lying or deceiving themselves.

And for those making the Windows 2000/Windows 95 comparison...it's not so noticeable, just as it wasn't so noticeable from OS 7 to 8 and OS 8 to 9. Moreover, my 2.53Ghz P4 positively flies with Windows 2000, so I don't find myself longing for speed. The cursed beachball and other waiting times in OS X makes me long for speed, however.

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 12:32 PM

Originally posted by idkew
why even use a gui then? just drop down to darwin and use the command line all the time.

in other words, your argument makes little sense.

This is bull. He and I like having a GUI. We just don't like the excessive focus on making it pretty at the cost of performance. We find the 9 GUI to be a perfect blend of form and function.

Rocketman

Feb 23, 2003, 12:52 PM

Originally posted by greenfruit
im not sure being able to open macdraw is so important, after all i would imagine PhotoShop can do this, and pretty much any old file can be opened by some kind of OSX app.
afterall OSX is still a relativly young OS.

Nope these are application specific files that almost NO other applications will open. So what is needed is the ability to run old apps in a compatibility window (PPC601 had a virtual 020) so if nothing else really old dead end apps can least be opened and run under OSX.

I like to use MacDraw as an example precisely because of this AND that it is an APPLE product and STILL is not forward supported.

I know of several firms with dedicated MacDraw workstations too :)

Rocketman

achmafooma

Feb 23, 2003, 01:07 PM

I couldn't help but chime in on this whole OS 9 vs. OS X stuff.

Yes, OS X isn't perfect... but when you really think about it, for every feature missing there are like 3 new ones. Yeah, doesn't help much for somebody who needs that one missing feature but still...

Anyway, OS X will keep improving. OS 9 has plenty of problems, but none of them are slated to be solved (except by an OS X upgrade).

And for the few who are so anti-OS X that they'd actually switch to Windows, I assure you that you are in a minority. While I'm sure Apple hates to lose any customers, for every OS9=>Windows transition there are like 4 Windows=>OSX transitions.

I'm one of them. OS X is why I became a Mac user after being a PC user from 1986 to 2001. OS X is why my girlfriend did the exact same thing. OS X is why three other people I know bought their first Mac in the last year and a half. The hardware is fine too, but it's OS X that made for a lot of switchers.

I cannot believe that market share remains level, with as many Windows to Mac switchers I know and as I start to see more and more iBooks and PowerBooks around my university. OS X is what is making it happen. If you still need OS 9 and Classic mode won't do, there are plenty of older machines available and Apple even sells some lower-end new ones that will boot in OS 9.

But for me and most everybody I know with a Mac even though we still have a bootable OS 9 system folder on our hard drive we haven't booted into it in months, if ever at all.

PeteyKohut

Feb 23, 2003, 01:16 PM

Originally posted by jamilecrire
Lol, GWB has spent more than the last 12 administrations in any calendar year. He has also taken a trillion dollar surplus and turned it into a deficit of 384 billion in only 3 years (unnecessary tax cut anyone?) and he's a complete fool. This is a man that has never worked for a damn thing in his entire life and the morons of this country (actually a minority by the popular vote) wonder why things so quickly went to crap.

I hope by the time GWB is out of office he hasn't completely ruinned everything the Clinton administration did to help "everyone" instead of "the rich". Oh wait he has undone everything. Sad really. Foreign Policy == Joke, Economic Policy == Joke, Religion in Govt == Joke, Our President == Fscking Moron.

If that is what you want for a president, I'd rather have a Rhodes Scholor (on merit) who gets a BJ than some shmuck who can't even say terrorist (he says something like "tourist" or "terraist").

News flash buddy....economic policies don't go into effect overnight. Any good economist will tell you it takes several years to see the impact of an economic policy. What we are seeing now is Clinton's work.

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 01:16 PM

Originally posted by achmafooma

And for the few who are so anti-OS X that they'd actually switch to Windows, I assure you that you are in a minority. While I'm sure Apple hates to lose any customers, for every OS9=>Windows transition there are like 4 Windows=>OSX transitions.

Where's your market research? Oh yeah, you have none...you just have a couple anecdotes.

Jon the Heretic

Feb 23, 2003, 01:17 PM

I find it amusing that many former Mac users here, now running OS X, pretend that the performance issue with X and its questionable if attractive interface is the inevitable result of going with a stable UNIX, foundation. If this were true, one would expect that Linux systems would be slower on Macs than MacOS 9.x, but this is hardly the case. MacOS 9.x is not really a lean, mean OS---it is fairly inefficient. Many Linux installations on fairly old hardware (604-based) actually run Linux quite a bit faster than MacOS 9.x while conveying the same level of stability and multitasking as X. The fact that X is much slower than 9.x is a travesty by comparison, stemming from Apple's obstinate refusal to even consider a monolithic (non-Mach) kernel to (far more substantially) creating such a horrifically slow user interface as Aqua, on the sluggish and overengineered Quartz foundation.

Granted, while Linux shows that preemptive multitasking and stability do not come at the Great Cost to performance that Apple pretends, the usability of Linux isn't so hot. Quite true; this is why I'd pick a Mac over lean, mean and fast Linux box anyday. But by the same measure, the glitzy Aqua interface really isn't in the same league in terms of usability as the original Mac interface either, and despite self-accolades (unproven of course) that X is better for novices (for only the most rudimentary tasks of course), the original Mac interface is far more polished and consistent than Aqua, if less PrEtTy.

This doesn't stem from the much ballyhooed "fear of change" that some imagine (unproven again) but from a central change in how Apple designs its interfaces. Apple USED to employ human factors professionals to test every aspect of its interface, from abstract theory to concrete implementation. What isn't well known is that Apple fired their world famous human factors people back in the mid-90s (under Amelio). The Second Comings of Jobs brought back leading edge industrial design of the boxes and some talent marketing/graphics people, but He made no effort to restore any of the talent that was lost when Apple was going under. Frankly, the Mac interface has gone down hill since MacOS 8.6, and as attractive as the new industrial design was, it was sometimes seriously lacking in usability as well, such as the infamous hockey puck mouse. The new Apple doesn't test with users anymore, not in creating the initial constructs behind the interface (very instrumental in the first days of the Mac) nor in testing even a single idea out on real users before it ships. (It is *much* harder, sometimes impossible economically, to change something after it has shipped or even been coded). Apple does public "beta testing"; that is about it, which is virtually worthless in enhancing the usability of a system: it is too sporadic, utilizes self-selected (techie loudmouths, for example) users, and inconsistent in demonstrating the real need for a given improvement (a "feedback" form is just opinion and you can't really rank the seriousness of an issue except by frequency count; a usability test provides objective error data, but since Apple doesn't do these, they collect *nothing* objective).

Why is everyone so obsessed with booting 9? Don't they know it is unstable and ancient to the core? Yes, sadly they do; but the interface is X is a tough sell to those used to cutting edge usability, where a polished interface is more important than anything else. We have lost metadata, relative pathnames, the ability to create bootdisks through drag and drop, a simple and elegant implementation of the Desktop metaphor that actually remembered where you put your icons, etc. We got greater stability but now also have forced file extensions, a thorny command line that wants to get fsck'd way too often for my taste, a Dock with a confusing jumble of icons which doesn't even comply to Fitt's Law, destructive and constructive icon-less window widgets all mixed together, a broken Desktop where you are forced to use a bookmark/channel model because user files are so deeply buried, a UI where you can't scratch your ass without getting permission, and a countless other inconsistently implemented UI elements that JUST PLAIN WORKED on the original MacOS. What a waste; this is the cost of Apple marketing, not of increased stability, folks.

I have been waiting for a modern OS version of the MacOS for over a decade. What we GOT is NOT it. There was never any GOOD reason to go with the untested Aqua interface except marketing, pure and simple, and that is a very bad basis for building a user interface. Ironically, Apple has already spent more time working on X and its interface longer than they had in dreaming up the original Mac interface and refining it into the elegant MacOS 6.x GUI, despite having only scanty details on what a GUI should be like from the Xerox PARC work (did you know Xerox didn't even have dropdown menus? Or icons that mapped to actual files? Or could even overlap windows!? Apple created all of that for the first time in such a small amount of time. They had the right people for the job back then). Despite having had as much time to create Aqua as the entire original Mac GUI----and working from two *complete* GUIs to base it off of, the NeXT and the Mac GUIs---as well as a completely working code base for the OS that has had decades of enhancements and improvements, Apple managed to release a GUI so utterly lacking in the small details that made the original Mac interface so absolutely amazing. We could have had both top notch usability AND stability/preemptive multitasking; we got only the later. But hey, isn't it pretty?

So yes, some of us care very much about what happens to MacOS 9.x and want to keep our options open for booting it. X has promise but it is NOT the Mac. Let me boot 9.x for work and play with X as a toy until Apple figures out (again) that what made the Mac great in the first place was cutting edge science, not pretty (slow) icons and gumball graphics.

andrewlandry

Feb 23, 2003, 01:20 PM

I take it that most of the people that post here are graphic/video people. I'm an audio person, and I can't run in os x because the applications i use and the plug-ins i need haven't even come out on os x yet. I just had to buy an "old" dual-gig (w/mirror drive doors) for $2,000, when I could have gotten a dual 1.25 gig for the same price that only booted into ten. I dig os x and use it for my video stuff, e-mail and everything else - but although much audio software has recently been announced by Native Instruments, Cycling 74 etc., it ain't shipping until at least Summer. I just wanted to put that out there because the attitude on this thread seems to be that anyone who wants the option to boot into os 9 is a blow-hard from a bygone era. And I just wanted to point out that there are people that use their macs for more than photoshop, final cut, e-mail and web browsing whose needs have not yet been met by os x. That said, I hope it's all straightened out by the end of the year, as I think os x is a step forward overall.

scorpion

Feb 23, 2003, 01:20 PM

Originally posted by zac4mac
When is this issue gonna die?

If you've got an old Mac(like my 7500/604e233 and 8500/G3-454) or older, run 9.x, that's the best it'll do, they're primitive. If you use software that's OS 9 only, buy an old Mac. (They're cheaper than the new ones)

If you've got a newer Mac, especially a duallie, get as far away from OS 9 as you can. Any speed increase in OS 9 on a duallie is purely illusory. Very few windows in 9 are "live draw", while most in OS X are. Try iTunes. Drag a window around in 9 & X, I think you'll be surprised at how slow OS 9 really is.

If 9 works, spend your money on something besides a new Mac. I finally got a 22"Cinema Display and it's better than a new CPU, IMO.
I think my DP550/1GB/.24TB/Radeon32/Orion16/22"ACD/20"MS/10.2.4 will last a little longer, especially after adding a Sonnet Raid 133 card and an ATi 9000 Pro.

p.s to the guy with red lines on his text - set your convergence(if you can) flat panels don't suffer this; my ACD is so clear and crisp, it makes my old Apple Multi-Sync look like it has tissue paper over the front.

Zack

Just got my flat panel too -- all I can say is wow! Worth every penny. Nicest screen I have ever seen or worked on, period. Now I have to go back to my washed-out fuzzy iMac on Monday!

PeteyKohut

Feb 23, 2003, 01:23 PM

Originally posted by elmimmo
OS X Finder is slower by design, which IMHO does not imply your workflow will be slower (because, Photoshop, for instance, is as fast in OSX).

And that IS a problem..... shouldn't the OSX Finder be as snappy as the OS 9 finder? I think it should. I have a Quicksilver G4 867 with 1.12 GB or RAM and let me tell you, that OS 9 flies!!!

fixyourthinking

Feb 23, 2003, 01:38 PM

Why would someone want to boot into OS-9 if they went out and bought a new computer?

I have on order a 17" PowerBook, most everything I use is OS X compatible, I use OS X about 90% of the time now.

However, I'm an Apple Tech and have customers that use 9 and 8.1 for that matter. I need to test and open files/hardware that is OS 9 only on occasion for them.

Plus, currently there is no decent Playstation emulator in X. I still use Connectix Virtual Game Station (OS 9 Only) on a regular basis.

ncbill

Feb 23, 2003, 01:45 PM

that OS X is slower than 9.

As the Techie points out, there was no real reason the new GUI should have had to be as slow as it is.

Or to overwhelm the Desktop.

Anyone using the X Windows implementation?

Kwyjibo

Feb 23, 2003, 02:23 PM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
News flash buddy....economic policies don't go into effect overnight. Any good economist will tell you it takes several years to see the impact of an economic policy. What we are seeing now is Clinton's work.

I don't want to start a poltical arguement (well actually I do). Several years, good economic polcy can make changes overnight. Most presidential actions to combat serious economic problems do make changes overngiht simply because they increase public confidence and hopefully all the other more important factors follow. I'll agree that there is no "band-Aid" but theres no way most of our current economic troubles can be blamed on Clinton. I'm sorry if you see things like little exectuvie action and trying to balance the budget as negative effects of the Clinton Admin. Also any good economist might mention the "Business Cycle" which looks much like a sine curve. It has its peaks and troughs and it always works this way over 20 year periods typical, ever since america's foundation. We were at Peak Prosperity in the Tech Bubble and now were in a depression; its how capitalism is. One mroe point if Clintons polcies were sooooo terrible why didn't they bite him in 96 or 97, he did server 8 years and it seems like somewhere along the line before 00 we would have seen big trouble. Instead we had unmatched prosperity for most of his term. Its quite amazing how some people can alter history so radically that somehow the Republcians have done everytihng to create our economy yet the democrats took all the credit. its convoluted at best and maybe you shoudl actually talk to a economics professor(better yet; work towards a degree in Economics and eventually and MBA) than just picking out he words and phrases

hugemullens

Feb 23, 2003, 02:34 PM

i used OS 8 at my schools labs and HATED it. Even if it is slightly faster, os 8 and 9 just didnt "feel" right to me. I used windows 2000 on both my laptop and desktop. I got some money together, took a chance and bought a powermac, and OS X made it the smartest thing i ever did. Since then i got my girlfriend, best friend, and my mom to buy macs. I am saving up for a 12 inch powerbook, and my mom is waiting for exchange support and she will buy a powerbook too. Thats atleast 4 people, 2 of us with multiple computers that have switch to mac simpley because of OS X. I think its fine that people still use os 9, but overall apple is going to stick with os X, and will gain many more windows users than it will lose os 9 users.

beatle888

Feb 23, 2003, 02:39 PM

Originally posted by andrewlandry
That said, I hope it's all straightened out by the end of the year, as I think os x is a step forward overall.

more like a leap, but oh well :D

beatle888

Feb 23, 2003, 02:49 PM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Apple's obstinate refusal to even consider a monolithic (non-Mach) kernel to (far more substantially) creating such a horrifically slow user interface as Aqua, on the sluggish and overengineered Quartz foundation.

thats where i stopped reading :D

horrifically slow
:rolleyes: what system have you experienced X on?

ultrafiel

Feb 23, 2003, 02:56 PM

Originally posted by Kwyjibo
I don't want to start a poltical arguement (well actually I do). Several years, good economic polcy can make changes overnight. Most presidential actions to combat serious economic problems do make changes overngiht simply because they increase public confidence and hopefully all the other more important factors follow. I'll agree that there is no "band-Aid" but theres no way most of our current economic troubles can be blamed on Clinton. I'm sorry if you see things like little exectuvie action and trying to balance the budget as negative effects of the Clinton Admin. Also any good economist might mention the "Business Cycle" which looks much like a sine curve. It has its peaks and troughs and it always works this way over 20 year periods typical, ever since america's foundation. We were at Peak Prosperity in the Tech Bubble and now were in a depression; its how capitalism is. One mroe point if Clintons polcies were sooooo terrible why didn't they bite him in 96 or 97, he did server 8 years and it seems like somewhere along the line before 00 we would have seen big trouble. Instead we had unmatched prosperity for most of his term. Its quite amazing how some people can alter history so radically that somehow the Republcians have done everytihng to create our economy yet the democrats took all the credit. its convoluted at best and maybe you shoudl actually talk to a economics professor(better yet; work towards a degree in Economics and eventually and MBA) than just picking out he words and phrases

Don't forget to mention that some of the reasons the economy is in a slump is the whole September 11th deal, and all the corporate scandals, which I might add occured during the Clinton administration but are now being brought to light. Also consider the new Home Land Security and the budget to that and you will see where a lot of money has gone. I'm sure Al Gore wouldn't have done better then Bush is doing. Actually I think he would have done worse but that is personal opinion.

bigjohn

Feb 23, 2003, 02:59 PM

So you bought a new power mac and you have to boot into OS 9? I just want to be able to run Apple II games on my iBook, anyone know how to effect that? I miss Hard Hat Mack, Conan the Barbarian, Rescue Raiders and Top Fuel Eliminator!

beatle888

Feb 23, 2003, 03:02 PM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
Could it be that I simply like the interface better. Perhaps I like running a leaner OS that doesn't suck up so much, in terms of resources. There shouldn't even be a need for something like Quartz Extreme.

uhoh, you just lost some credibility to your
arugument.....quartz extreme allows programs
like photoshop to use the 3d graphics card to
speed up performance in screen redraws.
something that os9 doesnt offer. in os9 photo
shop screen redraws were painful if you were
working on a huge gig file. in osx you dont have
this issue as much. its a major perk when
working in photoshop.

panicX

Feb 23, 2003, 03:16 PM

Hi all,

I think the OS9 crowd should get over it...
or stick with it.
I always hated the fact that aliases where
italic...
And in Mac OS X... never noticed that BIG
arrow on the left of the icon?

The finder of OSX?
A lot more st(r)eamlined.. try to get 25
levels down in OS 9 in a single window...
Columnview rules!

As for the interface... Mac OS X is a NEW
Operating System, you dont go around
giving it the old interface of a 'dying' OS.
If someone wants that look so badly, download
a theme and install that haxie that'll
take the shadows away.

Want to switch to XP becoz of OS X?
I can't see why, if anythin looks horrible
its XP... but be my guest.

Just try to see Mac OS X for what it is...
Mac OS X, NOT Mac OS 9.

What u get these days with Mac OSX..
iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, iTunes (etc, etc, etc)
a browser , an email program, etc, etc
pretty soon an Office suite, etc etc
I think its wonderful!!

I would never go back!
Anyway, anyhow, thats my view.

beatle888

Feb 23, 2003, 03:19 PM

Originally posted by weev
Heh, that's great. So which machines achieve this OS 9 level of speed?

I know the machines that don't (thorugh experience):
any ibook
Ti Powerbook 667
Duel 867 PM MD (the os doesn't feel as fast as my 500 mhz G3 imac)

excuse me, but i have an older ti and its fine
in ten...and a dual 867 feels slower then your
500mhz g3 imac?

um so dont you think that you might need to
do a reinstall on that 867? you stated above
that osx is slow on any ti book 667 AND on
a dual 867 which actually feels slower then your
500 mhz G3? hahahahahaha jeeze:rolleyes:
thats a boat load of bs right there. im here to
tell you that the 867 that you experienced must
of had software issues, a good install of X
on that machine will toast your g3 imac.

jacka55

Feb 23, 2003, 03:25 PM

Let's see, that's about 6 people who say OS X is fast. 6 for OS X is slow. 6 people say OS X crashes less. 6 for OS 9 doesn't crash either. 6 people who say it's fast on my TiBook 667, and 6 who say it's slow on my TiBook 667. 6 for OS 9 is more productive, and 6 for OS X is more productive. And there's 6 people who realize that individual people have vastly different experiences.

In my opinion, scorpion had the right idea with the 30 year-old cameras. The only thing that isn't productive is this argument. Use whatever works for you, and whatever provides all the features you need and few of the ones you don't.

In other news, did anyone else try booting OS 9 on a new machine?

DakotaGuy

Feb 23, 2003, 03:30 PM

Originally posted by bigjohn
So you bought a new power mac and you have to boot into OS 9? I just want to be able to run Apple II games on my iBook, anyone know how to effect that? I miss Hard Hat Mack, Conan the Barbarian, Rescue Raiders and Top Fuel Eliminator!

Actually back in the earlier days they did have an Apple II emulator for the Macs, but I think that was years ago.

Your point is taken, sometimes you just have to move on. I sometimes hate it when certain products get replaced by new things, but that is the way it works. Just as Apple could not market the Apple IIe forever, even though it still had a lot of fans when it was finally pulled from the market.

OSX is very usable on anything with at least a 400Mhz G3 and plenty of RAM. There are not a lot of machines left out there still in service with specs less then that. Sure there are a few and for those they have a good solid OS9 to stay with until they buy a new computer.

Kwyjibo

Feb 23, 2003, 03:46 PM

Originally posted by ultrafiel
Don't forget to mention that some of the reasons the economy is in a slump is the whole September 11th deal, and all the corporate scandals, which I might add occured during the Clinton administration but are now being brought to light. Also consider the new Home Land Security and the budget to that and you will see where a lot of money has gone. I'm sure Al Gore wouldn't have done better then Bush is doing. Actually I think he would have done worse but that is personal opinion.

Typically government spending especially on things liek HOme Land security is good for the economy. Also the US was not in the best of postiions pre-terror; terrorism jsut made it worse. IMO i think Al gore would be doing as well or better than Bush but he he would face mroe opposition in Washington with things like a Patriot Act or all the allegations that the administration had distinct warnings signs before 9/11. This would either cause Gore to lose points with the public or to lose power.

jac-smac

Feb 23, 2003, 04:33 PM

nonsense
been there -done that
one week new 2003 g4 1.25 mdd
same trick as described on macosxhints - going back to october 2002 for then new mdd g4 that didnt come with os9 install disk
without tinkertool -
using terminal command line- "does same thing" this procedure works to copy 9 system folder to hard drive - but it doesnt boot in 9
:(

Jon the Heretic

Feb 23, 2003, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by beatle888
thats where i stopped reading :D

horrifically slow

Having a closed mind is a leading cause of illiteracy. :D

achmafooma

Feb 23, 2003, 04:46 PM

Originally posted by john123
Where's your market research? Oh yeah, you have none...you just have a couple anecdotes.
Sheesh, no need to come down on me like that man.

You're right, I have a couple anecdotes, but are you going to tell me it's a coincidence when you combine those anecdotes with Apple's own stats (which show a pretty good percentage of their sales are going to PC users - I don't remember the exact number) and with other scattered evidence that is around out there?

For example, I'm not the only one who has seen the percentage of Mac visitors increase significantly in their website visitor logs over the last year or two. Some people I know in webdev have been reporting moves from 2% of hits to upwards of 5% over that time (though, admittedly, my personal site is probably not as good an example since myself and several of my close friends have made the switch).

But regardless I wasn't writing a research paper or conducting any formal investigation, and I have no intention to, I was simply just making a point based on my personal experiences and observations. There is evidence to support that market share is moving up, there is evidence to the contrary as well, but I'm not in the business of searching it out and parsing it for a detractor or two on the boards.

I'm in the business of stating my INDIVIDUAL OBSERVATIONS and thoughts and opinions about Apple news and rumors ... at least when I'm hanging out here at Mac Rumors ;-)

beatle888

Feb 23, 2003, 05:46 PM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Having a closed mind is a leading cause of illiteracy. :D

your an asole, why should i continue reading
something that isnt true? and since when has
being able to spot misinformation being closed
minded? quartz extreme is a plus for photoshop.
and osx

john123

Feb 23, 2003, 05:49 PM

Originally posted by PeteyKohut
News flash buddy....economic policies don't go into effect overnight. Any good economist will tell you it takes several years to see the impact of an economic policy. What we are seeing now is Clinton's work.

Haha, why oh why do I suspect that if the economy were grooving along nicely you'd be crediting it to Bush.

We saw Clinton's work throughout the 1990s...enterprize and empowerment zones cropped up, and economic growth, employment, and wages shot through the roof. What we see now is poor management hindering the economy, and perceptions of that management creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that hinders the market as well.

Traceegee

Feb 23, 2003, 05:58 PM

Here's a crazy, but dooable proposition for Apple;

Let new hardware boot MacOS9.2.2 by creating an app to modify/Install the Firmware/Enablers reqired to boot 9 on the new machines, and feel free to charge us OS9'ers a fee for this app. Call it "iBoot9"!

Apple wins completely (they sell more new Hardware, allow users to boot into 9 as they should always be able to, cover their costs of producing the BootOS9 app, and make some extra profit in the process)...

This is dooable. A new logic board is not needed. The Airport Extreme port can be coupled with a new BootRom (obviously, you will lose wireless capability), or just a new Flash image for the BootRom allowing OS9 to boot again.

If Apple implements this, all will be well. If not, .....well, just look at the Quarterly sales figures, and losses as we go from Quarter to quarter. That ought to sober you up.

stonysleep

Feb 23, 2003, 07:40 PM

I got bored around page 5 of this post, but am very surprised no one mentioned one of the few reasons i boot into OS9:

Alsoft Disk Warrior!!

The OSX version is still not here with no scheduled release date. OS9 version is over 2 years old but is THE repair tool and i would not be without it. Has fixed hard drives too many times, even if the last time it took 4 hours to repair my OSX partition!

Bring on the OSX version, THEN i'd have few reasons to use OS9. Other uses are - when OSX screws up it permissions and leaves files scattered around, OS9 can clean it up, also some theme mods are easier in OS9 cos the packages are just folders.

Ok, here is my current stance on the OSX/OS9 thingy:

I use OSX because of Rendezvous, SMB, Seti Units can be processed twice as fast, and there's more software for it these days.

Why i dont like OSX: Menus are too slow - somebody please get rid of the fade away effect. My machine is too slow for it to look nice. Have removed shadows with shadow killer now all i need is those darn effects removed - if that happened most would think OSX was of similar speed to OS9. I generally like aqua and have not found a theme i like more yet. Yes, it feels slow, has a lot of eye candy but the general feel has grown on me over the past year.

Comparing OSX with pre OSX OS's (or as i'll call them classic OS's):
I think u CANNOT compare OS9 to 10.2 - why? cos 10.2 is the best implementation of OSX so far OS9 is not the best implementation of Classic OS's. That honour remains with OS8.6 which i have genuinely had running for two days without a crash - seriously! OS9 is a bit of a mish mash OS - has some nice features but is mostly there as a foil for OSX - i wished my G4 would boot into 8.6 but it cant (except for the custom made mac test pro cd).

However, having said that, i still say OSX has more going for it than the classic OS does. I couldnt live without rendezvous now - my PC users find it hilarious that i can see their machines on the network while they spend half an hour installing protocols etc. to see each other or my machine. The dock has grown on me though it has to be done my way - modded. I still say i need an application menu in addition in the top right - am gonna try ASM again to see if it feels right this time. Fruit menu customisation is essential - apple menu is useless otherwise.

What do i miss? Being able to simply move a system folder from one partition to another and boot off it. Knowing what almost every extension and control panel did and getting the speed boosts through well done extension sets. Having to think in a windows mentality - every time u install something restart, even if it doesnt tell u to - i crashed 10.2 after installing Shockwave and not restarting. Pop up folders though the dock has kinda taken over that role but still i liked the folder 90% hidden at the bottom of the screen. The dock is too big when visible and invisible when hidden. So i hide it.

That's all i can think of for the moment on this topic.

jac-smac

Feb 23, 2003, 09:38 PM

diskwarrior 3 beta is available at many holine and carracho servers{use your diskwarrior 2 sn]
installed on both my HD

try- 'xassist" for os 9 style right sidemenu or "fruit menu" os 9 style apple menu and finder pop style contextual menu

yes x still not as snappy as 9 but thats about it really no contest besides its over- finished get used to it.

apple has dug itself into a hardware hole over the past couple of years
thats the major problem with x

kcmac

Feb 23, 2003, 10:04 PM

For those that want an OS X Pro. What! Are you nuts?

I see this as one of the distinct advantages of OS X over Windows. One OS that allows for the most basic user, a mac power user or the terminally efficient to explore at their hearts content. Advanced features are always there as you want to learn but hidden from obvious view if you don't want to go there yet.

Look at the arguments/discussions that the powermac/imac features bring about. Crippling firmware, Apple catering too much to the home consumer and not enough to the professional and vice versa.

No, no, no. Develop a powerful OS. Stay focused on improving it and adding what we ask for and need. Fracturing OS X into consumer/pro level product lines would be a disaster.

Pedro Estarque

Feb 23, 2003, 10:37 PM

I have mixed feelings about both of them. I think OS 9's core is a 20 year old technology that I'm very happy to live without. I don't consider managing memory to be "user-friendly". Most people don't know the difference between RAM and HD. I've seen people emptying their trash after receiving an "out of memory message". And I simply can't stand the crashes, something that I used to consider unavoidable.

On the other hand Aqua is inexcusably slow. And Apple's recent policy to prevent us from customizing our mac is very annoying. I think Aqua was not meant to attract Pro customers, but the ones that buy a computer just for its look. A shame

That being said, I find Quartz a wonderful technology, it does 10 times the amount of work that QuickDraw did and the result is only a little slower.If QuickDraw was the one doing the drawing in OSX, it would be unusable.

I'll tell you what I miss. I miss the desktop in the root of the system, and not a folder deep inside the hard disk. I miss the application menu, apple menu, Labels, the speed of menus, and most of all, the simplicity of the system.I could make my iBook boot from a RAM disk to get maximum battery life out of it , or just copy my system folder to a zip disk to make it bootable. And that is truly gone.

The problem is that after you get used to force quit anything that is not responding for more then 10 seg and still have the OS up and running for days, or listen itunes playing your songs perfectly while checking your email and rendering a filter in Photoshop, there is no turning back. All OSX flaws are highly compensated by its stability. I used to work on a PC with NT and combustion made me restart it many times in front of my clients. I can trust that won't happen with OSX, and that is a huge adventage.

I think OSX will leave beta stage when it gets to 10.5, but until then it's the best OS there is.

macmusix

Feb 23, 2003, 11:19 PM

The only reason why I'm not buying a new powerbook is that it CAN'T boot onto OS 9 and EVERYBODY who tuns music applications will tell you the same. There is a zillion of "VST" format plug-ins that are not and will not be implemented into Emagic Logic (Apple's own) for OS X. The Emagic folks are aware of it, it is for this reason that their latest version 6 is still released for OS 9 / OS X.

Cheers
J

Hugh

Feb 23, 2003, 11:33 PM

Originally posted by weev
Heh, that's great. So which machines achieve this OS 9 level of speed?

I know the machines that don't (thorugh experience):
any ibook
Ti Powerbook 667
Duel 867 PM MD (the os doesn't feel as fast as my 500 mhz G3 imac)

Actally my iBook 700 with 256MB of RAM runs OS X fine. Yes it's not as fast as OS 9, but it's not dog slow.

Now I used to own an iBook 500 (same ram), that was god slow on OS X. So I would say it depends on what speed your iBook was.

As for the OS 9 vs OS X issuse. I mixed feelings on this. I think it's time we move on. I feel this debate is like the Wintel had when it came DOS and Windows.

I've pretty muched switched over to os X completely a year ago with 10.1. I hardly use OS 9 for any thing any more.

Sad thing is, when I do boot in 9 I find my self looking for stuff that is in OS X that isn't in OS 9.

Features I would love to see in OS X for me.. Have the control panels be independent apps like they are in OS 9. I wish I didn't have to load the System Preferences. That just feels like OS 6 again. :(

-Hugh

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 12:59 AM

Okay, this debate seems to have lost any semblance of rationality.

Are the criticisms and desires of "the 9 crowd" really that much? Are any of us asking for any great feats of programming here? I think the answer is unequivocally "no." A lot of you come back with the standard response of, "That's too bad...keep your old Mac...live in the past...buy a Windows machine; I don't care."

While not only bad for Apple, these kinds of lines are also...how can I put it tactfully...friggin' moronic. It would not take much to satisfy most of the 9 users' preferences (audio users notwithstanding...sorry guys, you've been given the shaft by Apple on this one). But to enable 9-like fonts across the system would seem to be fairly simple, especially given that third party hacks do it to some extent without having access to the full OS source code and Apple's programming expertise.

It just boggles my mind why so many OS X users seem to think that UNIX/protected memory/stability have to be mutually exclusive with GUI performance.

engpjp

Feb 24, 2003, 04:25 AM

Originally posted by Foocha
From what I read of OS 9 users who are not happy with OS X, they tend to focus on the superficial aspects - mainly the GUI.

*EVERY* time this discussion breaks out - OS9 vs OSX - it ends with this gap of incomprehensibility.

"OSX is better because it never crashes!"

"OS9 is better because it is faster and has a better UI!"

And so both groups yell across the chasm without listening to the others. Dumb.

While OS9 hardly ever crashes on me - it's a lot to do with giving it enough RAM - I accept that OSX generally is more stable. While the OSX speed issues are being solved by throwing bigger iron at them, OS9 will be faster by far for a long time to come - no matter which setup you test on. And Let1KWindowsBloom is not the best test - scrolling and window resizing are the main issues here.

But OS9 is arguably the MOST COHERENT and intuitive UI of the two - once four basic behaviour tenets are learned by the user, everything else can be "explored" and understood (aided, of course, by the far better Help system in OS9). And the UI is not just a superficial feature: the basis of the Mac idea (or "experience", if you will) is precisely the mode of interaction, rather than the algorithms or the hardware used. Nor is the UI about specific, individual features, important though they might be.

Here is my point: why weren't we given both things? Why didn't Apple put the polished, coherent User Interface they already had, on top of the true and tested *nix underpinnings, thus creating a best-of-class OS? They could still have jazzed up the graphics, and even introduced a Quartz layer. That is not the issue of contention.

Why did Jobs and his NeXTians insist on rejecting a well researched, optimized UI paradigm in favor of the present jumble of loose ideas, NONE of which (!) have be subjected to any human-interaction testing and research?

The answer, I suspect, lies in the realm of psychology. And the future of the OS9 experience is moot, not w00t...

engpjp

engpjp

Feb 24, 2003, 04:33 AM

[double post - sorry. engpjp]

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 04:49 AM

What irks me is the Apple apologists. I mean, cmon...if we're here, odds are good that we're not PC trolls.

Yet you breathe a bit about the good ole days of OS 9 and you get called every name under the sun. It's like we've sinned or something!

I suspect that a good deal of the criticism of "my people" comes from folks who are recent switchers...OS X is the first thing they saw and used, and to use 9 becomes incomprehensible to them. I can see that perspective.

But to those of us who grew up with it -- 9 provides a very workable and clear interface. You know where every single dadgum file is. Invisible files? Ha. The only ones that really matter pre-exist from OS 8 days -- DesktopDB and DesktopDF. Preferences were stored cleanly in the Prefs folder, extensions in the extensions folder, etc...all neatly placed within the System Folder. Conflicts? Easy to isolate via the Extensions Manager.

But I guess this mode of thinking is foreign to many Mac users, for better or for worse. I think, though, that if you don't have a clue what ResEdit is, you shouldn't be bashing OS 9.

Just one old Mac user's opinion...

Jon the Heretic

Feb 24, 2003, 07:45 AM

Originally posted by beatle888
your an asole, why should i continue reading
something that isnt true? and since when has
being able to spot misinformation being closed
minded? quartz extreme is a plus for photoshop.
and osx

Got it: you are closed minded AND a rude little turd.

Quartz is a ridiculously overengineered graphics engine. Apple created it because it was EASY for them. NeXTStep used Display Postscript, another sluggish graphics technology if there ever was one. However, Adobe had stopped developing Display Postscript AND charged hefty royalties for this obsolete technology. What is a company whose entire graphics technology depends on a third-party framework to do?

They write their own. So Apple wrote an API-level equivalent version of Display Postscript using royalty-free equivalents, also available from Adobe. The PDF renderer, formerly known as the Bravo Postscript engine, was the way out. So Apple plugged into the same exact framework a technology with their own framework based on a very similar technology to Display Postscript, and being more up to date, it was more advanced, too. Apple did NOT have to rewrite the API completely for drawing windows, etc----they had a direct plug-in equivalent, with pretty much the same problems it exhibited back in the late 80's------slow as hell....

Notice how that rude little turd "Beetle666" confuses Quartz with the hardware acceleration technology moronically dubbed "Quartz Extreme". Yes, if you have to live with such an overengineered graphics engine, you have damn well better get an assist from the GPU, and this is what Quartz Extreme does. That you need such ridiculous memory bandwidth requirements, CPU computational power, AND 3D graphics acceleration technology just to render a window at the speed of an 8Mhz Mac Plus is a bit ridiculous. Quartz Extreme is an acknowledgement by Apple that every single machine they released at the X introduction is woefully underpowered. Eventually, we will get that "snap" back to X that we had in the MacOS, but not until after we have all upgraded sometimes multiple times. MacOS X is critical to Apple's planned obsolescence strategy. Steve sez: "Buy new and buy often". Some of you idiots will do just that.

Oddly, text is rendered very poorly in X compared to MacOS 9.x, one practical area where this was supposed to help. Quartz is not what it is cracked up to be. Quartz Extreme, on the otherhand, can only be a good thing to those who don't mind ponying up for a new Mac every year or two and who secretly desire that snap back they used to have under the MacOS, while at the same time defensively denying that they mind the dramatic slow down inherent in using X.

allpar

Feb 24, 2003, 07:48 AM

Geez, the OS X crowd LOVES to jump on anyone who DARES criticize it or say ANYTHING NICE about OS 9.

We bought Macs for their superior OS. In my case, it was version 4. (I think I started at OS 1 but I didn't buy until System 4, and was soon as System 6).

Up until System 7, the Mac OS was uncluttered and surprisingly speedy. Try it on an 8 MHz Mac Plus someday. Yes, you'll be dismayed at some things you can't do - throw things away without the mouse! - but you'll also be amazed that with 1 meg of RAM, System 6 can function faster on a 7.7 MHz Mac Plus than OS X can on a 333 MHz G3.

I use OS X now and then - I'm using it right now. But I still prefer OS 9 for its user interface. No, it hardly ever crashes on me. Yes, it's FAR faster for me - I have a biege G3 upgraded with a G4-400. What's that you say? Screw you, with your old machine, you should use Windows if you don't like OS X? That's a great way to make friends and influence people.

As it happens, some of us can't just drop $1,500 on an overpriced new machine that will suddenly become obsolete when the G5s come out (August or February depending on rumor). We work wtih what we have because we want to pay our other bills on time.

I guess this message is mostly a reaction against the childish rants I see here and in other forums against anyone who doesn't use OS X. Personally I don't understand why OS X is still so half-baked. File locations often seem nonsensical, the Dock is a mess, and most users seem to need third-party enhancements. By now, Apple should have bought some of those enhancements and incorproated them into the system, as well as (as john123 suggested) giving individual users more options.

Microsoft isn't standing still, you know. I upgraded my PC box to a Athlon 2000 XP, complete with enhanced motherboard and new case, for about $300. It flies. I can't buy a whole lot of new speed for this beige G3, and the cheapest Mac without a built in screen is $1,500, last I looked. At some point, with Apple regressing in user interfaces and Microsoft gaining speed, being the lone holdout ain't gonna pay for me and for thousands of others like me. Then the OS X snobs can be snotty to each other while Microsoft and Linux fight it out over 99% of the computing world. OR the OS X snobs can count to ten and move on before writing an obnoxious reply to attack other Mac users.

We're all in the same boat here.

hedrix

Feb 24, 2003, 08:03 AM

Originally posted by Traceegee
Here's a crazy, but dooable proposition for Apple;

Let new hardware boot MacOS9.2.2 by creating an app to modify/Install the Firmware/Enablers reqired to boot 9 on the new machines, and feel free to charge us OS9'ers a fee for this app. Call it "iBoot9"!

nice idea, but...

This is dooable. A new logic board is not needed. The Airport Extreme port can be coupled with a new BootRom (obviously, you will lose wireless capability), or just a new Flash image for the BootRom allowing OS9 to boot again.
Do you really think its so simple, just a new BootROM? You mentioned that may be lose wireless capability, but I think you would also lose FireWire capability, because FireWire 800 is not surported by Mac OS < X, and...
I don't wont to know how many would cry at apple, "I buy a new Apple, pay extra for the capabilty of booting in OS 9 and one half of my Mac is useless (Airport, FireWire, ...), You have to change this!"

just my 2 cents

-hh

Feb 24, 2003, 08:06 AM

Originally posted by ultrafiel
I've had only OS X on my home computer for almost a year now (no classic)...Use the same computer with each operating system to see which is more time-effective (remember to count in crashes). I had this computer up for 8 days without a problem until the power went out. I could have never had done that with 9. I restarted multiple times a day without fail.

8 Days? My home Mac has been running it 24/7 for the past 8 months with OS 9.x and I figure its MTBS (Mean Time Between Stoppages) easily exceeds 500 hours (20+ days); the layman's translation is "less than one crash per month".

FWIW, I also had similar uptime a Win98 PC at work...something else that people complain is patently impossible. It was also 24/7 and until an "software install event" a month ago that messed it up, it was also a <1x/month reboot machine. Its now been rebuilt and up for the past ~10 days and counting.

To do this on either platform isn't rocket science:

If you're crashing multiple times per day in OS 9 or any other OS, then you have too much extra crap installed messing up your system.

Basic OS underpinning differences aside, it is always patently unfair to compare a "clean" (unmodified) OS to one that's had a couple of years worth of patches and extensions installed on top of it. No OS is automatically immune from this disease, including Unix and its derivatives.

And for those of you wanting more 9-like features, what would those be?

Well, I have an older peripheral that won't run under OS X due to a lack of drivers from the manufacturer.

And while its easy enough to say "Replace it" with a new model from the same manufacturer, I'll do so as soon as the "Kill OS 9" Camp coughs up their share of my out-of-pocket cost to do so: an equivalent replacement toay will cost me: $1,689.95 + S/H + tax.

Can I put you down to pay for $500 of this expense?

-hh

-hh

Feb 24, 2003, 08:32 AM

Originally posted by Pedro Estarque
I have mixed feelings about both of them.

I'm in the same boat as well.

I'll repeat your sentiments about OS 9 being an older technology (although I do know the difference between HD & RAM :-), as well as Aqua being amazingly slow, which I presume is due to a boatload of "look pretty" features at a time when Apple knows that they're behind the CPU power curve: to fail to offer the User the option of disabling GUI overhead is a disservice.

Being that my current Mac is 6 years old (400MHz G4 running on a 8500 with a 45MHz bus), I recently went out to test-drive the new 12" 867MHz Powerbook. I was underwhelmed.

Bottom line for me was that when I'm looking at a computer whose CPU is 2x faster than my current one, 2x the RAM, and a 3x faster system bus, I reasonably expected some neck-whipping performance.

But it wasn't there.

At best, it felt equal to my current system, and the "bouncy, bouncy" of app's on the Dock made it feel slower.

YMMV, but I'm not particularly endeared to run out and drop $2K for a machine that doesn't feel any faster than my current one - - afterall, if we're buying for "better spec's" instead of real performance, then we would be all buying a 2.8GHz Pentium.

-hh

Traceegee

Feb 24, 2003, 08:50 AM

Do you really think its so simple, just a new BootROM? You mentioned that may be lose wireless capability, but I think you would also lose FireWire capability, because FireWire 800 is not surported by Mac OS < X, and...

I imagine that there will be things that don't work in newer macs as the technology improves (FW 800, airport, and Bluetooth as examples). I'm not so concerned about Apple supporting major changes like these.

On my 12" PowerBook, I have only Enet100, FW400, USB 1.1, ATA HD, Audio In & Out. As long as Apple provides support for these Basic technologies currently supported by OS9, it is acceptable to lose future technologies (Bluetooth, Enet10k, FW 800, USB2.0, Serial HD, and possibly any new Tech PCMCIA cards as well).

I bought the Powerbook for the speed of the processor and portability as a workstation ( I would be using it mostly in the field of Audio using VST, MOTU, Reason, etc). If I had the option to boot OS9 on this machine, then I could actually use it for what I origionally intended for. Thanks to Apple, all I can do is let it sit in the box and collect dust in a closet until OSX has had it's 30 minutes of fame, and Apple realizes that OS9 IS worth keepingand supporting as an alternate "Workstation only" OS.

I Thought Steve Jobs said, "I LIKE options"......well heres the easiest option they could have ...... ***iBoot9 ***

Inunyan

Feb 24, 2003, 09:41 AM

Well, OS9 folks, we will have to face the reality. All transitions are painful. (My first Mac OS was sys6) Remember the transition from Lp to CD? - if you are old enough, that is.. Apple will have to drop OS9 support sometime - if not now, then this summer, or next year.. And Papa Stephanus has given us already more than half year period for conversion, has he not? Let's move on. No point in complaing. Apple has to speed up the developement of OSX, even just to survive between Windows and Linux. There's no alternative, really.

wumpus

Feb 24, 2003, 11:16 AM

Jon the Heretic is right - and I do detect a defensive yet agressive tone on here that sounds like desperate Amiga users trying to justify their existence...

...Quartz is an overengineered dog's dinner of an imaging engine - its looks flashy,
but is an unnecessary performance drain, even on the newest Macs. I am the bitter (as I was left out of the AGP party by a lazy Apple) owner of a B/W G3/400 with 768mb and (luckily for all that X disk usage) twin 9gb 10,000rpm Cheetahs. My faster disks and RAM probably make my X experience better than for most B/W folk, but the sluggishness does make me sad - especially when I want to preach the virtues of the Mac to others. Even if I could afford it, I will not upgrade until the 970 or something makes Macs competitive again with Wintel on price/performance (1.3gb/sec max FSB memory bandwidth is SAD in 2003)..Like others I have popped into the shop to play with newer Macs and X. In terms of everyday usage (not FCP rendering, etc -though I do that to), they have felt a tick snappier. Thats not how I felt going from a Quadra 660AV to a 7500 to a 7300 and from a 7300 to the B/W. Each upgrade felt BIG. One reason for this is the s l o w development of PPC - another is Quartz. Even on the fastest new G4s, it is a heavy hit. Why Apple has done this, other than to inject our machines with sloth so we will upgrade faster, is beyond me...

Check out this extract from an Ars article by John Siracusa:

'In classic Mac OS, each text editor window, for example, would require only a small amount of memory for the window itself, plus whatever backing store the editor keeps for the (ASCII) text in each window. In Mac OS X, each simple text editor window becomes a giant 32-bit image (in addition to the other information, of course). Multiply this phenomenon across all the other applications, each with many windows of their own, and you quickly run into trouble.

Take a look at this window list from a typical work day on my G4. The total memory used by window buffers alone is an astounding 120MB! And remember, this is before even accounting for things like, say, the memory required by the actual applications and the core OS itself!

The window server uses the same virtual memory system as every other part of OS X, of course. That means that the memory that makes up each window buffer is eligible to be paged out just like any other piece of memory. This is where the real performance hit comes in. Attempting to manipulate a window that has had some or all of its window buffer pages swapped out is a painful, stuttering, disk grinding experience as the virtual memory system rapidly tries to bring those pages back into physical memory from disk (evicting other resident pages while doing so, of course). ' Quartz 'Extreme' only speeds up some of the final compositing:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/macosx-10.2-8.html#quartz-nut

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 11:32 AM

Originally posted by Inunyan
Well, OS9 folks, we will have to face the reality. All transitions are painful. (My first Mac OS was sys6) Remember the transition from Lp to CD? - if you are old enough, that is.. Apple will have to drop OS9 support sometime - if not now, then this summer, or next year.. And Papa Stephanus has given us already more than half year period for conversion, has he not? Let's move on. No point in complaing. Apple has to speed up the developement of OSX, even just to survive between Windows and Linux. There's no alternative, really.

The problem, newbie, if you'd read the posts above, has nothing to do with Steveo giving us "warning time." The problem is that he cut off 9 *WAY* too early. X is not a mature OS. I'll say it again: X is not a mature OS.

So his giving us "more than half (a) year" does really no good, because he and his boys sat on their butts during that time coming up with stupid iApps instead of getting OS performance where it should be. Instead of investing money in a STUPID BACKLIT KEYBOARD DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION or FIREWIRE800 WHICH IS A TOTAL WASTE SINCE ALMOST NO DEVICES SATURATE FIREWIRE400, how about hiring some non-moron programmers to optimize that bloated excuse of an OS?

NicoMan

Feb 24, 2003, 11:37 AM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Having a closed mind is a leading cause of illiteracy. :D

My friend, even if I do not doubt your intelligence and/or degree of literacy (no proof to the contrary so far), I think you will find that you are not helped by the way you express yourself (at least in that long post). Those very convoluted sentences do not make it easy for the reader, any reader. Don't take it personally, but I think you will find that conveying your ideas is almost as important as having them, and a few short sentences more to the point would have served you better. Now I enjoy reading, and I enjoy those forums, and don't respond with a personal attack (me being arrogant, or whatever...) because I am not trying to flame you or take you (or the content of your post) down. I am just saying that I understand why some other people didn't go to the end of your long post. And it's not a sign of closed minds IMHO.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 24, 2003, 11:40 AM

Originally posted by achmafooma
Sheesh, no need to come down on me like that man.

You're right, I have a couple anecdotes, but are you going to tell me it's a coincidence when you combine those anecdotes with Apple's own stats (which show a pretty good percentage of their sales are going to PC users - I don't remember the exact number) and with other scattered evidence that is around out there?

For example, I'm not the only one who has seen the percentage of Mac visitors increase significantly in their website visitor logs over the last year or two. Some people I know in webdev have been reporting moves from 2% of hits to upwards of 5% over that time (though, admittedly, my personal site is probably not as good an example since myself and several of my close friends have made the switch).

But regardless I wasn't writing a research paper or conducting any formal investigation, and I have no intention to, I was simply just making a point based on my personal experiences and observations. There is evidence to support that market share is moving up, there is evidence to the contrary as well, but I'm not in the business of searching it out and parsing it for a detractor or two on the boards.

I'm in the business of stating my INDIVIDUAL OBSERVATIONS and thoughts and opinions about Apple news and rumors ... at least when I'm hanging out here at Mac Rumors ;-)

Just for your info, john123 is known in these forums to be rather trigger-happy and he is always up for a fight (any fight, give him an opening and woosh he is on you)... And usually it is just for the fun of the fight itself.

NicoMan

jelloshotsrule

Feb 24, 2003, 11:56 AM

for those of you who prefer os 9, that's fine. use it.

but for those who take it a step further and say "if apple doesn't do this and this to make os x more like os 9, i'm getting a pc"... my question is... why?

is it because you feel apple betrayed you?

or because you actually think win xp (or any other version) is better than os x?

because i think that for all the problems with os x, it is still better than windows. the real problem is the slower hardware. so perhaps that's your reasoning... the os is no longer better than windows by a big enough margin to make me give up the hefty hardware? i guess that could make sense

anyhoo, curious on what your reasons are.

Jon the Heretic

Feb 24, 2003, 11:56 AM

Originally posted by NicoMan
I am just saying that I understand why some other people didn't go to the end of your long post. And it's not a sign of closed minds IMHO.

NicoMan

I have to disagree with you about my writing style, but would prefer not to spend any time discussing its merits nor the many accolades that I have received about both the style and the substance of my arguments. As it is not becoming to boast, you have me at a disadvantage. I can only add that everyone is a critic :p And so it goes...

As to that irritating turd, Beetle666, he didn't read more of the post "because it was long" --- I skip most long posts myself. He claims he skipped it because of my comments about "Quartz Extreme" [sic]. Rather, Beetle666 skipped the post because of an unwillingness to read more completely on the basis of a comment he didn't agree with --- or even understand (I was criticising Quartz, not Quartz Extreme). My response re: 'illiteracy' was a gentle jab, nothing more, and at a play at words.

Frankly, if you think the post is too long, just skip it already There is no reason to proclaim this in front of the entire Macrumors readership. They already know it is a long post (as do I).

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by NicoMan
Just for your info, john123 is known in these forums to be rather trigger-happy and he is always up for a fight (any fight, give him an opening and woosh he is on you)... And usually it is just for the fun of the fight itself.

NicoMan

Nico, in part, you're right...I do like to stir it up, because it's only when debates get heated do you start to both enjoy them and and also get past the hemming and hawing.

But in this case, I'm growing pretty passionate. I'm downright offended by a lot of the assumptions of the OS X crowd. They remind me in geekspeak of the kinds of taunts that fans of NL World Series-contending teams in the late 1990s after being beaten by the Yankees: "We won, so deal with it."

I don't think the 9 crowd is unaware of the advantages that OS X offers. We just find the tradeoff in terms of what we care about to be unacceptable.

By contrast, the OS X crowd often seems unaware of what 9 offered. I suspect that more than one poster here has never even really used 9 and instead is taking the Apple Gospel as truth that 9 was an unstable, buggy OS.

Our point is, it wasn't...it was not *AS* stable as OS X, but it was more than useable. And in my mind, it was a pleasure to use for its interface and its simplicity.

I can live without some of the things I love about 9 (such as the System Folder...ahh...). But I can't live without performance. And to wait for hardware to catch up, so that a PowerBook Gx runs OS X as fast as my current 1Ghz PowerBook runs OS 9, is pretty unacceptable. Why? Because by then, PC laptops will be at 3Ghz, and the platform performance gap will only have increased.

The more obstinate this OS X crowd gets, the more I think this is going to be my last Mac.

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
for those of you who prefer os 9, that's fine. use it.

but for those who take it a step further and say "if apple doesn't do this and this to make os x more like os 9, i'm getting a pc"... my question is... why?

is it because you feel apple betrayed you?

or because you actually think win xp (or any other version) is better than os x?

because i think that for all the problems with os x, it is still better than windows. the real problem is the slower hardware. so perhaps that's your reasoning... the os is no longer better than windows by a big enough margin to make me give up the hefty hardware? i guess that could make sense

anyhoo, curious on what your reasons are.

No, it's not a betrayal issue. I'm not nearly that petty! It comes to workability and functionality for me. I found OS 9 very workable for me -- very productive and enjoyable for me to use.

I'd frankly put Windows 2000 (I don't use XP) above OS X. I find it more useable and more enjoyable. That really pains me to say, but it's true. When I got my current PowerBook, I tried to force myself to like OS X. But I just couldn't do it.

Jon the Heretic

Feb 24, 2003, 12:10 PM

Originally posted by john123
Nico, in part, you're right...I do like to stir it up, because it's only when debates get heated do you start to both enjoy them and and also get past the hemming and hawing.

John ---- Nico is trying to discredit you on the basis of your passion rather than on the substance of your argument. He is not an objective voice here or his criticisms would fall on the pro-X and anti-X crowds alike. Don't get me wrong: he doesn't appear to be a nasty flaming turd like some of the pro-X crowd that act like gloating teenage boys shouting nyah nyah nyah. Nevertheless, given that he tried to discredit you and myself only a post apart without making any attmept to do so on the basis of the merits of our arguments is telling. He is not an objective voice and shouldn't be treated as one.

I should also add that he does not deserve to be 'flamed' either...he is sneaky but not rude. Be nice to him. Just be aware that he is not your friend...:eek:

john123

Feb 24, 2003, 12:12 PM

jelloshotsrule

Feb 24, 2003, 12:18 PM

Originally posted by john123
No, it's not a betrayal issue. I'm not nearly that petty! It comes to workability and functionality for me. I found OS 9 very workable for me -- very productive and enjoyable for me to use.

I'd frankly put Windows 2000 (I don't use XP) above OS X. I find it more useable and more enjoyable. That really pains me to say, but it's true. When I got my current PowerBook, I tried to force myself to like OS X. But I just couldn't do it.

what kind of stuff do you do? (curiousity, not a tough guy question. just for clarity)

i use stuff like after effects, photoshop, maya, combustion along with of course mail and all that... and i love being able to hop between them without any problems. this is something that i think was coming around in os 9 (for instance, you could finally burn something in toast and do something else at the same time with the latest versions of toast for 9)... and while the toast example may have been software specific (ie, toast, and not os 9), i certainly had my share of problems trying to run many apps at once....

that said, it certainly wasn't a crash monster (until i had os 9 as a backup, and since then when i boot into it it seems much less stable...). the main place i see speed problems is with maya (of course) and rendering in some apps (combustion, after effects)...

if/when i become a professional 3D artist, i might have to get a pc to handle it if macs haven't improved by then. and i could see certain other professional areas feeling this need. but as an os and a daily use system. i feel x is coming along nicely. not flawless. still have some slow downs. but it's getting there.

we definitely need some new hardware though.

jelloshotsrule

Feb 24, 2003, 12:20 PM

Originally posted by john123
Oh, I sort of felt like my arguments stood on their own. I have yet to hear an OS X apologist give me one good answer to any of my criticisms, other than "tough beenie weenies." :-)

i'm not an x apologist. i happen to prefer it as you prefer 9. and i certainly will give you the fact that 9 is faster. most of us would.... and i hope my "arguments" are level headed enough to at least show you where i, personally, am coming from.

word.

-hh

Feb 24, 2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by Inunyan
Well, OS9 folks, we will have to face the reality. All transitions are painful. (My first Mac OS was sys6) Remember the transition from Lp to CD? - if you are old enough, that is..

Condescending attitude aside, my first Apple OS was 3.2 ... on the Apple ][. On the Mac side it was OS 3.2 - - an interesting coincidence!

In any event, I think I know a little bit about Information System transitions, "sonny". :D

(BTW, have you read the book,Silicon Snake Oil (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385419945/qid=1046111286/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-8634938-0133713?v=glance&s=books)? Its a very worthwhile read on this subject).

Apple will have to drop OS9 support sometime - if not now, then this summer, or next year.. And Papa Stephanus has given us already more than half year period for conversion, has he not? Let's move on. No point in complaing.

You think a half year is satisfactory?

Let's look at that a bit closer...

Mac's have traditionally had their higher-than-PC prices defended by their superior lifecycle (longer useful lifespan) that made them have a lower total cost of ownership. Considering that the lifecycle of the typical PC is ~3.5 years, this means that the comparable lifecycle for a Mac is ~5 years.

Now factor this in to our question of what is an appropriate transition periods: if the product can be reasonably expected to last 5 years, is providing but 6 months to force the transition really appropriate?

The implications are that you're asking your average Mac user (halfway through lifecycle = 2.5 years) to force to upgrade in 6 months, which means that they lose (5 - (2.5+.5) = 2 years) or 40% of the utility of their investment.

A 40% loss of utility is nothing to sneeze at. If we consider the analogy of an automobile warranty that's normally good for 4 years/50K miles, it gets slashed to 2 years, 5 months/30K miles.

Now if we look at the old calendar, we see that OS X's introduction was March 2001...not quite two years ago...and there was a lot of debate as to if it really was an honest v1.0 revision or yet another beta. There's not insigificant sentiment that says that v10.2 is the first reasonably "mature and viable" revision, so we've really only had 7 months since 10.2 was announced last July 17th to say that our transition period has started.

Therefore, I consider the 6 month transition period to be unacceptable. This has nothing to do with Apple or OS X, as it is pure business investment mathmatics.

IMO, you want to avoid really screwing your customers. As such, you need to set a reasonable value for the %-loss function. If you provide a full year for transition (again: "once the new alternative has become mature and viable"), this would mean that OS 9 shouldn't be "turned off" as a bootable OS feature until 2004, and the cost-to-the-average-consumer would be only around 20-25%.

And FWIW, if you look at the hardware/OS history at lowendmac.com, it appears that many Mac platforms had at least 5 solid years' worth of OS support.

Apple has to speed up the developement of OSX, even just to survive between Windows and Linux. There's no alternative, really.

I agree that Apple has few alternatives. And they've spent the last 1.5 years going from v10.0 to 10.2 just to speed up OSX, a task that was necessary because of their hardware performance woes. If nothing else, that tells you that the OS had a lot of room for improvement (dare I say "bloatware"?) and that it really wan't yet a sufficiently mature and viable product. This is just more fuel on the fire that says that the termination of OS 9 is at this time premature.

-hh

PS: Oh, buy the way: my LP turntable still plays quite nicely on my stereo system. The only musical formats that I've abandoned are 78's and 8-tracks (you are old enough to remember 8-tracks and 78's, aren't you?) :D

NicoMan

Feb 24, 2003, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by john123
Haha, why oh why do I suspect that if the economy were grooving along nicely you'd be crediting it to Bush.

We saw Clinton's work throughout the 1990s...enterprize and empowerment zones cropped up, and economic growth, employment, and wages shot through the roof. What we see now is poor management hindering the economy, and perceptions of that management creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that hinders the market as well.

Amen (wow, for once I'm with you...)

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 24, 2003, 02:57 PM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
John ---- Nico is trying to discredit you on the basis of your passion rather than on the substance of your argument. He is not an objective voice here or his criticisms would fall on the pro-X and anti-X crowds alike. Don't get me wrong: he doesn't appear to be a nasty flaming turd like some of the pro-X crowd that act like gloating teenage boys shouting nyah nyah nyah. Nevertheless, given that he tried to discredit you and myself only a post apart without making any attmept to do so on the basis of the merits of our arguments is telling. He is not an objective voice and shouldn't be treated as one.

I should also add that he does not deserve to be 'flamed' either...he is sneaky but not rude. Be nice to him. Just be aware that he is not your friend...:eek:

1. Well it is kind of obvious that I am using OSX. If you had read any of my previous posts (in that thread or wherever), you wouldn't have needed to guess it. Ok I should have started my 2 posts by saying I am a OSX user therefore this is an attempt to discredit you... (yes, you guessed right, Sherlock, this is sarcasm)

2. john123 knows how to 'defend' himself (from what 'attack' I don't know). Notice that I was trying to warn the guy, whose post john123 responded to, not to let himself be overwhelmed by the tone of john123's post. I never attempted to dismiss john123's 'arguments' (I'll come back to that later). We (john123 and I) have had a few discussions through these forums before, and they were just that: discussions.

3. In my post to you, I was trying to tell you that I felt (with the biggest amount of objectivity possible) that your writing style was more adapted to a 'scientific review' than a macrumor forum. It is just that: an advice; take it or leave it, why should I care if you follow it, and anyway why should you listen to me... Again I never attempted to dismiss your 'arguments'.

More generally, I accept completely that you and john123 (and a lot of others) should feel better working with OS9 than OSX. What can I say? It is a matter of taste, like everything else. I do not feel threatened by your preference of OS9. I feel quite lucky because when I started to be fed up with the PC world, we already were at 10.0. When 10.1 came out I bought myself a Powerbook, and I booted to OS9 twice (once to upgrade the firmware of my PBook, once to install Myst3, where you had to go trough OS9 before being able to play in OSX... anyway...). So my Mac world since I switched has been OSX exclusively, and as such I cannot relate to your experience with OS9. I am just here to try and make my OSX experience count for people who look for ways to do things the way they do it in OS9 or something. That's all.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 24, 2003, 03:09 PM

Originally posted by -hh
Considering that the lifecycle of the typical PC is ~3.5 years, this means that the comparable lifecycle for a Mac is ~5 years.

Now factor this in to our question of what is an appropriate transition periods: if the product can be reasonably expected to last 5 years, is providing but 6 months to force the transition really appropriate?

The implications are that you're asking your average Mac user (halfway through lifecycle = 2.5 years) to force to upgrade in 6 months, which means that they lose (5 - (2.5+.5) = 2 years) or 40% of the utility of their investment.

I don't really understand why people would NEED to upgrade halfway through the life cycle of their hardware (in your example). What's preventing you from running OS9 for another 2.5 years and pick up a new Macs after that, that would run OSX.4 or .5 (hopefully) a much more mature version of OSX. Apple is just forcing OSX upon the people that NEED to get new hardware (But if those people cannot do without OS9, there are still ways to pick up pretty fast machines that boot OS9). Anyway...

NicoMan

Jon the Heretic

Feb 24, 2003, 04:02 PM

Originally posted by NicoMan
1. Well it is kind of obvious that I am using OSX. If you had read any of my previous posts (in that thread or wherever), you wouldn't have needed to guess it. Ok I should have started my 2 posts by saying I am a OSX user therefore this is an attempt to discredit you... (yes, you guessed right, Sherlock, this is sarcasm)

Uh huh, ok.

Actually, I don't recall having read a post by you before. I realize you post "regularly" but you aren't that memorable, I am afraid. Get over yourself :p I had no idea you were an Xer; given how selective your pat little 'advice' was, your biases were fairly obvious. Just as you are.

QUOTE]Originally posted by NicoMan
2. john123 knows how to 'defend' himself (from what 'attack' I don't know). Notice that I was trying to warn the guy, whose post john123 responded to, not to let himself be overwhelmed by the tone of john123's post. I
[/B][/QUOTE]

Who are you quoting with "attack"? Did anyone use that word? Using unattributed quotes is very poor style.

Your smarmy little 'warning' about John123 was nothing more than an attempt to discredit what John was writing. This trick --- discredit the author based on personal attributes --- is pretty sophomoric. Actually, I wasn't really warning John; rather I was calling a spade a spade, as a general 'warning' to the entire forum.

Originally posted by NicoMan
3. In my post to you, I was trying to tell you that I felt (with the biggest amount of objectivity possible) that your writing style was more adapted to a 'scientific review' than a macrumor forum. It is just that: an advice; take it or leave it, why should I care if you follow it, and anyway why should you listen to me... Again I never attempted to dismiss your 'arguments'.
[/B]

Actually, I took no offense at what you wrote. It was fine and appropriate --- if I were a ten year old child and you were a school marm. What I questioned was your motivation for the comment, given that most of the posts here read like someone typed them with their noses, and just as snotty in their tone. You seem oblivious to these; perhaps you agree with them? Why my little treatise should so deserve to be singled out by you is what I find interesting. You didn't write anything particularly incendiary --- or insightful for that matter.

Originally posted by NicoMan
More generally, I accept completely that you and john123 (and a lot of others) should feel better working with OS9 than OSX. What can I say? It is a matter of taste, like everything else. I do not feel threatened by your preference of OS9.
never attempted to dismiss your 'arguments'.
[/B]

I do not believe it is a 'matter of taste'. If that is all you grasped from my treatise, please re-read it. The superiority of the MacOS graphic user interface over X's has to do with the science of human factors, not 'preference'. I will be happy to provide with the Cliff notes if there are any convoluted segments that you find yourself unable to disentangle. I may be a horrible writer from your standpoint, but I am very helpful guy. :D

You also misunderstand my position. I do not prefer MacOS 9.x; I simply find the GUI of MacOS X to be a throwback in terms of usability. This is not the same as an endorsement. I actually prefer the stability of UNIX to the hoary antique of OS code underlying the MacOS. MacOS 9's interface is more refined and polished because it has been subjected to end user testing and human factors research, whereas X's GUI has only been subjected to Steve Jobs. This doesn't mean I prefer MacOS 9.x in all things. What I'd prefer is a mature user interface like the MacOS's ontop of a solid OS core like UNIX. Alas, Apple never delivered this product, but still could. Perhaps they need more prodding and less sycophantic butt licking to do the right thing in all respects --- usability and stability. I also consider X's performance to be a serious usability problem in its own right, and that is almost entirely due to Quartz. Apple could have done much better than giving us a warmed-over NeXTStep for PPC, minus Adobe royalties (I know, Carbon yada yada; whatever. The GUI still resembles the NeXT lineage far too much to epitomize the Macintosh Way.)

I am not certain why you insist on putting 'arguments' in quotes. Sophomores tend to use quotes as a form of derision; it saves them the trouble of actually needing to be clever. Is that your intention? 'Argument' is a perfectly good word. Did you think we were holding hands?

-hh

Feb 24, 2003, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by NicoMan
I don't really understand why people would NEED to upgrade halfway through the life cycle of their hardware (in your example). What's preventing you from running OS9 for another 2.5 years and pick up a new Macs after that, that would run OSX.4 or .5 (hopefully) a much more mature version of OSX.

Pragmatically, the prevention is the performance overhead that OS X needs to run...as I said previously (which you may have missed), my personal perception is that an OS 9 @ 400MHz seems equally sluggish as OS 10.2 on a 12" PB @ 867Mhz.

The implication is that an upgrade to OS 10.5 tomorrow probably isn't going to be merely a $100 software upgrade because it will most likely be a performance dog on that legacy hardware, just as if it was converted to OS 10.2 today.

We should not lose sight of the fact that every major OS release that Apple has produced over the past decade+ ran slower than its predecessor: OS 10.2 runs slower than OS 9.2, which was slower than OS 8.6, which was slower than OS 7.5.5, which was slower than OS 6.0.8 ... the reason that we didn't generally bitch as much was because there were new features, and the performance hits they caused were concealed offset by healthy performance gains on the hardware side: we're no longer running at 8MHz, but at 100x that, and up.

The biggest problem with OS X is not the OS itself, but rather that its higher overhead wasn't concealed by big improvements in the iron underneath.

Apple is just forcing OSX upon the people that NEED to get new hardware (But if those people cannot do without OS9, there are still ways to pick up pretty fast machines that boot OS9).

And it is that "forcing" on those that need new hardware (such as myself) that is meeting with the resistance...particularly when we go test-drive a contemporary Mac (12" PB) and find that it doesn't seem any faster than the old crate.

The dillemma is twofold.

First, the most powerful OS 9-bootable Mac is an "Old" 1.25MHz DP PowerMac Tower, and it will never be any faster from the OEM (Apple). Yeah, that's faster than my status quo, but I'm not going to get whiplash from it.

Second, there is a huge risk when it comes to knowingly buying trailing edge of technology, in terms of premature obsolescence that rarely offsets the lower initial purchase price. FWIW, I bought a IIcx when the IIci came out, and found this out firsthand.

What doesn't help this is how early-adopters of Apple products often get the shorter end of the stick quite quickly. Historically, we can look back at the 6100/7100/8100 NuBus (pre-PCI) PowerMacs as an example here.

From a consumer perspective (tailored for home computers), I want a product that has three basic characteristics:

1. A rubust amount of backwards-compatibility to my legacy system.

2. A clearly perceivable improvement in either system performance ("speed") or a dramatically lower price.

3. A reasonable expectation that its effective lifecycle is going to be more than 3 years (preferably 5).

Granted, every consumer is different. And while I recognize that a home PC is essentially a toy of sorts, this doesn't mean that it is immune from competition against other toys in terms of its overall value. So should I buy a new Mac, or drop the money on another high-end camera lens? Until the 970 comes along, its a bad time to buy Apple hardware *unless* the consumer can decide for himself the trade-off between OS X and 9 by being able to run whichever's best for his personal application. This doesn't encourage software developers to write for OS X, unfortunately.

FWIW, I would *like* to run OS X...its just that it will probably take a 1.8GHz G4 chip to give me enough perceived performance "whiplash" to motivate me to drop $2-3K for a new piece of iron...my money's been sitting in the bank for over a year now just waiting for Steve to deliver "The Next Big Thing" that's actually not just BS hype.

-hh

eric_n_dfw

Feb 24, 2003, 11:42 PM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Quartz is a ridiculously overengineered graphics engine. Apple created it because it was EASY for them. NeXTStep used Display Postscript, another sluggish graphics technology if there ever was one.
Did you use OPENSTEP 4.x (or Rhapsody) on Intel? I'm serious here, don't take this as a flame - I want to know. I tried it on an AST P90 with 64MB RAM back in '95 or '96 and I did not notice any problems with the GUI's performance. I also developed a bit with OPENSTEP Enterprise for Windows (which implemented the Dispay Postscript engine on top of Win32) and it was nearly as fast as the native win32 windows sharing the same desktop. The only difference was that the DPS windows tended to look more type-set like than the win32 app windows.

However, Adobe had stopped developing Display Postscript AND charged hefty royalties for this obsolete technology. What is a company whose entire graphics technology depends on a third-party framework to do?This I was not aware of, that Adobe wrote the Display Postscript code. I thought that Next wrote and owned the code, but had to pay royalties to use Postscript, much the same as printer manufacturers do when they provide Postscript capable printers. Lest anyone think you are wrong, since I read your post I've done a couple Google searches and, sure enough, Adobe does/did offer DPS as a product or at least an API. (I'd venture to bet that Next did write their oun DPS engine, but they probably either paid for the DPS API or helped Adobe develop the API.) (When I say developed to the API, I mean like how Sun has a J2EE specification, but BEA, IBM and JBoss actually had to write code to implement that spec.)

The PDF renderer, formerly known as the Bravo Postscript engine, was the way out. So Apple plugged into the same exact framework a technology with their own framework based on a very similar technology to Display Postscript, and being more up to date, it was more advanced, too. Apple did NOT have to rewrite the API completely for drawing windows, etc----they had a direct plug-in equivalent, with pretty much the same problems it exhibited back in the late 80's------slow as hell.... I had not heard of Bravo - interestingly, it seems that Adobe had that on the drawing board back in '96 and it is now part of inDesign (or at least was going to be). I wonder how much Adobe involvement there was in Apple's inmplementing it in Quartz or if Apple rolled-there own version of it. I still have to disagree that DPS was slow in the late 80's. Heck, the 1st NeXT Cube I played with in 1990, IMO, blew the doors off any existing Mac or PC in the GUI useability department (ducks tomatoes).

Notice how that rude little turd "Beetle666" confuses Quartz with the hardware acceleration technology moronically dubbed "Quartz Extreme". Yes, if you have to live with such an overengineered graphics engine, you have damn well better get an assist from the GPU, and this is what Quartz Extreme does. That you need such ridiculous memory bandwidth requirements, CPU computational power, AND 3D graphics acceleration technology just to render a window at the speed of an 8Mhz Mac Plus is a bit ridiculous. Quartz Extreme is an acknowledgement by Apple that every single machine they released at the X introduction is woefully underpowered. Eventually, we will get that "snap" back to X that we had in the MacOS, but not until after we have all upgraded sometimes multiple times. MacOS X is critical to Apple's planned obsolescence strategy. Steve sez: "Buy new and buy often". Some of you idiots will do just that.Similar arguements were waged against QuickDraw, the Windows 3.0 API's and even the original Mac "ToolKit" until hardware accelleration came around for them - this arguement goes back to the DOS/Apple II vs. GUI crowd. (Heck it still exists for Unix shell lovers vs. XWindow - many of my coworkers believe a GUI's only purpose in life is to manage multiple terminal windows.) NeXT had a DSP chip or two to help speed things up, I'm wondering if Apple doesn't have a similar idea in the works - if they do, they had better release it soon!

Oddly, text is rendered very poorly in X compared to MacOS 9.x, one practical area where this was supposed to help.I disagree. I think the fonts in OS X are much easier on the eyes and cleaner than OS 9 or Windows. I guess that's a personal preference thing though.

Quartz is not what it is cracked up to be. Quartz Extreme, on the otherhand, can only be a good thing to those who don't mind ponying up for a new Mac every year or two and who secretly desire that snap back they used to have under the MacOS, while at the same time defensively denying that they mind the dramatic slow down inherent in using X. I don't deny that Quartz is slower than the OS 9 or win32 GUI engines - especially for us non-AGP machine owners who cannot use the OpenGL enahncements. But when I see that, computationally, the OS X app's that I use are doing near the same or better performace than their OS 9 versions, and I don't have to worry about one app taking down the whole system, (which I think there are more people in denial about here than let on) I don't care that window re-sizing is slow. (Obviously, many here do care.)

For reference, the app's I use regularly are: Final Cut Pro, iDVD, iTunes, BBEdit, Toast, Mozilla(Chimera), ProjectBuilder, Safari, and Mail. (As well as doing Java work from the command line - Java is useless on OS 9 so it's not fair to compare) With dnetc ( www.distributed.net ) always crunching away in the background.

It all boils down to what you are comfortable with. I'm a software developer who uses Solaris all day at work, if I'm developing C/C++/Objective C I cannot use OS 9 because one errant memory access there would crash the machine. (BTW: To us computer "gear-heads", the lack of protected memory is stone-age. Even WinBlows 95, as crusty as it was, had that for 32bit apps)

Man - that was long winded! :rolleyes: (Maybe I've bored everyone here to death and this topic will just die. ;) )

john123

Feb 25, 2003, 01:01 AM

Topic won't die. I won't let it. :)

NicoMan

Feb 25, 2003, 03:57 AM

Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Uh huh, ok.

Actually, I don't recall having read a post by you before. I realize you post "regularly" but you aren't that memorable, I am afraid. Get over yourself :p I had no idea you were an Xer; given how selective your pat little 'advice' was, your biases were fairly obvious. Just as you are.

Right. You got me. I just realized I am not nearly as interesting as I hoped I would be... And call me SneakoMan from now on. Yawn...
I think there is chance (small) that you will remember me from now on (even if it is for the wrong reasons). So all those efforts were not in vain... (muahahahaha)
Originally posted by Jon the Heretic
Your smarmy little 'warning' about John123 was nothing more than an attempt to discredit what John was writing. This trick --- discredit the author based on personal attributes --- is pretty sophomoric. Actually, I wasn't really warning John; rather I was calling a spade a spade, as a general 'warning' to the entire forum.
Again you are making the same mistake. I am not trying to dicredit anybody. What is wrong with you? People tend to jump up and down as soon as there is a slightly agressive post directed to them (like john123's post to the other guy). It was just an attempt to let that guy know that john123's points were more important than the tone of the post. Again I know that sounds very pedantic and I'm sorry. I'm sure you can handle it. Speaking of which, you keep on using words (after being registered for 2 days and 6 posts in these forums) like sophomore, 10-year old child, little turd, snotty, as if to assert your superiority. I would have thought that at your age you would have enough experience to do away with this sort of condescending vocabulary (my mother tongue is not english, but I don't think I misunderstood you).
As for the rest of your rhetorics, I don't have the strength to reply. Call this a cowardly exit, I do not care the least. There are battles worth fighting, this is not one of them. I will read your reply with interest (if you are not bored to death already) if you give me one, but my contribution to this little argument ends here. And lighten up a bit.

Now back to the subject...

SneakoMan

NicoMan

Feb 25, 2003, 04:14 AM

Originally posted by john123
Topic won't die. I won't let it. :)
You can count on me too. But I can sense boredom getting the better of me...
We shall see.

NicoMan

eric_n_dfw

Feb 25, 2003, 06:02 AM

For my encore I will start ranting about the virtues of Amiga Workbench 1.3 and how Commodore was taken over by evil, space aliens who now run Microsoft AND Apple!

Don't tempt me people, I'm just crazy enough to do it! (We're iced in here in DFW - just like the Shining! Well - almost!)

UnixMac

Feb 25, 2003, 09:28 AM

to be having an argument over which is better OS X or OS 9 on a forum which by it's very purpose is to attract computer geeks and tech oriented people is a bit ironic for me..

I mean, it's clear to me from the fact that I've had my OS X desktop now up and running with daily usage of varying type (FCP3, Internet, M$ Office, Photoshop, etc...) and after 179 days of up time, it still has absolutely no problems. Had this been under OS 9 (or winblows for that matter) I would have since re-booted 178 times or more!

OS X is derived from the OS that runs multi-billion dollar corporation's computers, airlines, governments, banks, all use Unix to keep their machines running, not OS 9 and not Windows..

OS 9 (RIP)

Inunyan

Feb 25, 2003, 10:12 AM

To establish haut couture business in Unix and maintain high premium for proprietary front-end environment, in other word, to become an Almani of Linux computing - that has been the official policy of Apple since the debut of OSX.

Needless to say, we have to assume that Cupertino Papacy is infalible. Can any of you think of alternative strategy for Apple's survival at this point? And they have to be quick because there would be just one or two company in that narrow nich business.

Ergo, we observe merciless maltreatment for the OS9 heretics - Amen.

kthomas

Feb 25, 2003, 04:44 PM

Just got a new iMac, only boots in X even though the serial number is lower than what Apple claims in the tech note.

This procedure does not work.

-hh

Feb 25, 2003, 04:47 PM

Originally posted by UnixMac
to be having an argument over which is better OS X or OS 9 on a forum which by it's very purpose is to attract computer geeks and tech oriented people is a bit ironic for me..

Perhaps the irony is that you don't appear understand what "Appropriate Technologies Engineering" is.

For example, fewer lines of code in the OS means the system will run faster. Always. For example, just how many Megabytes of RAM does your current installation of OS X eat up? 50MB? 90MB? 128MB?

Whatever it is, it is a far cry from the ~3K that the old Apple DOS 3.x worked with...which perhaps was one of the reasons why that old Apple was faster for some tasks than IBM PC's running at 4.77 times higher clock rates.

I mean, it's clear to me from the fact that I've had my OS X desktop now up...and after 179 days of up time, it still has absolutely no problems. Had this been under OS 9 (or winblows for that matter) I would have since re-booted 178 times or more!

Stability is a performance feature, nothing more and nothing less.

Bottom line is that some individual users may be willing to trade-off some stability if the benefit is a meaningful increase in computational power.

And just who is the ultimate authority to say that an OS's high overhead costs trumps the performance features of higher net computational speed? Certainly not me, and certainly not you.

OS X is derived from the OS that runs multi-billion dollar corporation's computers, airlines, governments, banks, all use Unix to keep their machines running, not OS 9 and not Windows..

So what? I'm not running an airline's world bank account.

At best, I'm just typing in some non-world-ending banal response on a discussion group. Looks like you're doing the same... :D

-hh

eric_n_dfw

Feb 25, 2003, 05:10 PM

In my day, we didn't have these fancy com-pu-tors. We added things up by cutting notches into our flesh! After a math exam we bled like a stuck pig and we were greatfull!

Vankarius

Feb 25, 2003, 05:47 PM

I really can't explain how happy I am!!!!!!!

I wanted to buy a new mac but when I found it didn't boot into OS9 I was extremely disappointed because there are no drivers on OSX for my hardware yet FORCING me to buy an 1.25DP MDD OS9 system (that apple still offers) that's even more expensive than a new 1.25DP FW800...including the noise issue...remember those whining fans?

For musicians this is fantastic and when all software is ported to OSX I'll gradly do the exchange te OSX but for now I'm just happy because I can order a new computer!!!

I'm a happy guy!! :D

Traceegee

Feb 25, 2003, 08:44 PM

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
For my encore I will start ranting about the virtues of Amiga Workbench 1.3 and how Commodore was taken over by evil, space aliens who now run Microsoft AND Apple!
Don't tempt me people, I'm just crazy enough to do it! (We're iced in here in DFW - just like the Shining! Well - almost!)

Dude, go for it. I still boot workbench 1.3 and 2.0.

And whats more, an 8 MHZ 2Mb Amiga2k crashes far less often than OSX does (and thats with the optional tcp/ip stack running) ;)

I'm sort of joking here......sort of.

The world has hackers/crackers that can take out the entire internet in 12 minutes, but nobody can solve the problem of how to boot into OS( on a new 12" powerbook) :( What has become of us all? :o

trose

Feb 26, 2003, 12:27 AM

I at one time not long ago was a 9 zealot and didnt want to let go. After trying X for a couple days,It was bye bye 9. I cant think any good reason to stay with 9, the speed increase is so small, I dont count that as a good reason.

#1- OSX is ROCK SOLID. 9,while it could be trimmed and taken care of, it would still crash frequently, and without protected memory doesnt matter how stable the OS is. Using OSX I can finally say my computer has more stability than any Wintel PC out there.

#2- GUI. Saying that the GUI is not important is a lame excuse. If the GUI isnt important,then use DOS. If I am going to be spending 6+ hours looking at something,I want it to be appealing. Not to mention..I havent run into any OS9 features that there is not an equivalent to in X. I use many X features that I could not do in 9.

#3- Support. Face it,OS9 is dead. It was a great OS,and I would still use it over any Windows, but OSX is leaps and bounds ahead already,and its only going to get better.

john123

Feb 26, 2003, 12:33 AM

Originally posted by trose
I at one time not long ago was a 9 zealot and didnt want to let go. After trying X for a couple days,It was bye bye 9. I cant think any good reason to stay with 9, the speed increase is so small, I dont count that as a good reason.

#1- OSX is ROCK SOLID. 9,while it could be trimmed and taken care of, it would still crash frequently, and without protected memory doesnt matter how stable the OS is. Using OSX I can finally say my computer has more stability than any Wintel PC out there.

#2- GUI. Saying that the GUI is not important is a lame excuse. If the GUI isnt important,then use DOS. If I am going to be spending 6+ hours looking at something,I want it to be appealing. Not to mention..I havent run into any OS9 features that there is not an equivalent to in X. I use many X features that I could not do in 9.

#3- Support. Face it,OS9 is dead. It was a great OS,and I would still use it over any Windows, but OSX is leaps and bounds ahead already,and its only going to get better.

It's not a "so small" speed increase, and the 9 GUI looks better to me and many others.

trose

Feb 26, 2003, 12:44 AM

Ok,ill play along with your idea that OS9 is so dramaticaly faster.
You have to reboot OS9 about every 24 hours or less to maintain performance, and in a dream situation you can run it without a crash for a week. Then you gotta account for the work lost during when the crash happened before you saved.
Also,to keep that OS in tip-top performance and stability,you have to work on it once every couple weeks, make sure nothin is goin haywire.

The speed improvement is quickly lost IMHO.

I do Mac tech support as a side job,and 99% of the time, its fixing OS9. If they have a computer thats 400+ mhz I always get them a copy of X. Maybe thats bad practice,because those customers dont seem to call for support anymore :eek:

john123

Feb 26, 2003, 06:35 AM

Originally posted by trose
Ok,ill play along with your idea that OS9 is so dramaticaly faster.
You have to reboot OS9 about every 24 hours or less to maintain performance, and in a dream situation you can run it without a crash for a week. Then you gotta account for the work lost during when the crash happened before you saved.
Also,to keep that OS in tip-top performance and stability,you have to work on it once every couple weeks, make sure nothin is goin haywire.

The speed improvement is quickly lost IMHO.

I do Mac tech support as a side job,and 99% of the time, its fixing OS9. If they have a computer thats 400+ mhz I always get them a copy of X. Maybe thats bad practice,because those customers dont seem to call for support anymore :eek:

I don't have to reboot every 24 hours or less. Sorry you do.

Anyway, you need to run maintenance routines in OS X. Most OS X users seem to run fsck a lot more than I do anything related to disk-checking in 9. And even Apple recommends that you run MacJanitor if you don't leave your computer on overnight (ahhh UNIX, that wonderful underpinning you all love, never really anticipated being used on a personal computer that would be shut down or put to sleep at night).

And then there are permissions to be repaired, and I definitely can still tell a performance boost from restarting in OS X. Don't know why, but I can.

I've done tech support too, and I never found a problem in 9 that I couldn't fix (well, that was fixable and not related to third party stuff, anyway).

NicoMan

Feb 26, 2003, 07:28 AM

Originally posted by Vankarius
I really can't explain how happy I am!!!!!!!

I wanted to buy a new mac but when I found it didn't boot into OS9 I was extremely disappointed because there are no drivers on OSX for my hardware yet FORCING me to buy an 1.25DP MDD OS9 system (that apple still offers) that's even more expensive than a new 1.25DP FW800...including the noise issue...remember those whining fans?

For musicians this is fantastic and when all software is ported to OSX I'll gradly do the exchange te OSX but for now I'm just happy because I can order a new computer!!!

I'm a happy guy!! :D
I think the OS9-enabled PMacs have 2MB L3 cache per CPU as opposed to 1MB per CPU in the new dual 1.25...
That might explain the high price. The noise might not be that bad because they improved it on the 1st generation MDDs after a few months. I think the first MDDs were the worst. So you might end up with a decent sounding machine...

Let us know.

Nicoman

Vankarius

Feb 26, 2003, 01:01 PM

Originally posted by NicoMan
I think the OS9-enabled PMacs have 2MB L3 cache per CPU as opposed to 1MB per CPU in the new dual 1.25...
That might explain the high price. The noise might not be that bad because they improved it on the 1st generation MDDs after a few months. I think the first MDDs were the worst. So you might end up with a decent sounding machine...

Let us know.

Nicoman

Yes but i want a 1.42 machine so i can have the latest model and still have the option to install os9 or osx...

I actually need someone to confirm this works, someone who tried it on a 1.42 FW800

Anyone??

Orion27

Feb 26, 2003, 03:56 PM

No can do. Crippled ROM

Vankarius

Feb 26, 2003, 05:24 PM

Originally posted by Orion27
No can do. Crippled ROM

:confused: You mean it doesn't work because the rom simply won't let you or are you the only one having this problem??

Can you tell me more about your attempt?

Wry Cooter

Feb 26, 2003, 05:37 PM

You aren't likely to find where and how OS X are more productive if you do not give it a chance. The GUI seems snappier in 9, but there are somethings you can actually multithread in OS X, for which you had to wait for the process to finish in 9.

It takes a couple of weeks to lose the muscle memory dedicated to the more overt differences, and it is fairly easy to set up where the differences are even fewer.

Tog, who has made a name for himself railing against New vs Old, some of his arguments simply do not stand up. He misses the functionality of the old Apple Menu. The dock parked on the side works just as well. And you really don't need aliases on the desktop anymore, plust the dock gets out of the way when you do not need to access it, unlike an alias (Although in nine, I kept aliases in a pop up folder.

john123

Feb 26, 2003, 07:07 PM

Originally posted by Wry Cooter
You aren't likely to find where and how OS X are more productive if you do not give it a chance. The GUI seems snappier in 9, but there are somethings you can actually multithread in OS X, for which you had to wait for the process to finish in 9.

It takes a couple of weeks to lose the muscle memory dedicated to the more overt differences, and it is fairly easy to set up where the differences are even fewer.

Tog, who has made a name for himself railing against New vs Old, some of his arguments simply do not stand up. He misses the functionality of the old Apple Menu. The dock parked on the side works just as well. And you really don't need aliases on the desktop anymore, plust the dock gets out of the way when you do not need to access it, unlike an alias (Although in nine, I kept aliases in a pop up folder.

I gave OS X about a month of my time. With 10.2.x and my Ghz PowerBook, X was finally tolerable (I found it not to be so on my PB 550 and 667).

But tolerable is not the same as acceptable, and neither tolerable or acceptable mean exceptional.

You like the dock parked on the side? Great. Take me through hierarchical menus that way, please. Find an app that's 7 layers deep into folders -- see how many seconds it takes you to go from your cursor on the side of the screen to that app being open. Now try it in 9. Yeah...

I'm not sure what you're talking about with aliases, though.

mattmack

Feb 26, 2003, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by john123

I'm not sure what you're talking about with aliases, though. I believe he is saying that an alias stored in the dock can be hidden and in nine it is on the desktop taking space.
BTW i have a dual 450 G4 and find the gui much snappier than it ever was in nine.
Also when you can store a commonly used app or folder in the dock why would you have to go through seven folder levels?

eric_n_dfw

Feb 26, 2003, 08:45 PM

I find the fact that navigating pull down menus in OS X doesn't halt the entire OS to be a lot snappier than 9.

john123

Feb 27, 2003, 12:12 AM

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
I find the fact that navigating pull down menus in OS X doesn't halt the entire OS to be a lot snappier than 9.

What the hell else are you doing in those seconds that needs precious CPU cycles? And just how long does it take you to navigate through a hierarchy of menus anyway?!?

john123

Feb 27, 2003, 12:14 AM

Originally posted by mattmack

Also when you can store a commonly used app or folder in the dock why would you have to go through seven folder levels? [/QUOTE]

Well for those apps they'd be in the apple menu. My point is those UNCOMMONLY used apps and docs.

trose

Feb 27, 2003, 02:40 AM

John, we arent all making stuff up when we say OSX is more productive. Speed isn't everything,if it was than PC's running Windows 95 would be top dog,but obviously they are not. Instead of stubbornly sticking to an old way, adapt and use the new. I also used to dump all kinds of stuff in the Apple menu,and while I dont find the dock as usefull, I still make good use of it.

Heres a couple examples that greatly improve my productivity that I could not do in 9.

1. Column View. Simply wonderfull. You cant have EVERY file on your system arranged neatly in the Apple menu, you CAN have everything in column view,which makes navigation a snap.

2. Folders open in same window. I used to hate the clutter that would pile up on my OS9 desktop as I was browsing around, I love how I can open a folder in OSX and it doesnt throw a new window in my face.

greenfruit

Feb 27, 2003, 03:00 AM

i tend to have all my apps neatly in folders in Favorites (damn american spelling) and all my servers and anything else useful and then put favorites folder in the dock with a lovely heart icon on it.

that way theyre all easily at hand, IMHO its better than the apple menu.

Another alternative is yadal (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14907&db=mac) thats what i use on my ibook.

john123

Feb 27, 2003, 03:03 AM

Originally posted by trose
John, we arent all making stuff up when we say OSX is more productive. Speed isn't everything,if it was than PC's running Windows 95 would be top dog,but obviously they are not. Instead of stubbornly sticking to an old way, adapt and use the new. I also used to dump all kinds of stuff in the Apple menu,and while I dont find the dock as usefull, I still make good use of it.

Heres a couple examples that greatly improve my productivity that I could not do in 9.

1. Column View. Simply wonderfull. You cant have EVERY file on your system arranged neatly in the Apple menu, you CAN have everything in column view,which makes navigation a snap.

2. Folders open in same window. I used to hate the clutter that would pile up on my OS9 desktop as I was browsing around, I love how I can open a folder in OSX and it doesnt throw a new window in my face.

Speed is important, though -- and my 2.53Ghz P4 with Windows 2000 absolutely flies and I love it for that.

I don't like the new way. I don't like Column View, personally, and I prefer the "clutter" of folders. In fact, on my PC, I have the "folders in same window" option off on there as well.

Vankarius

Feb 28, 2003, 09:59 AM

Obviously the rocket scientist that came up with the idea to make a folder visible uses a MDD machine and NOT a NEW FW800...

Step1: Look on the back of your powermac if you can find 3 firewire ports!
If so preceed to the procedure to get OS9 to BOOT!
If not....hell forget about it. Then it's just an OLD machine!!!

I desperately need a FW800 to boot OS9!!!

friction3000

Feb 28, 2003, 01:17 PM

all this debate about which OS is better misses the point. i still need to use OS9 because of the software i'm using: some of it doesn't exist in OSX, and i can't afford to re-buy/upgrade all of the rest of it for a long time. and no, running it "inside" OSX won't work.

i'm specifically referring to Pro Tools, other audio apps, and lots of RTAS plugins.

OS9 works fine. sure, some things could be better. but IT WORKS. in the abstract, i think OSX is going to be great. for now, i have some music to work on, and my system works.

so my dilemma: i want a new laptop. i'd like to get into using OSX, actually. but i also need to be able to boot in OS9 sometimes so my old apps will work properly, until they're all rewritten *AND* i can re-afford them.

and this underlines a big problem with some of apple's new "strategies". they are too big-brother, too one-size-fits-all. Apple needs to keep things OPEN so that their computers can (ideally) be all things to all types of people. they don't have to make booting into 9 easy or common, but they shouldn't cripple it. their decision to disallow DVD+R burning reeks of the same attitude.

my advice to apple it: sure, keep things simple for the masses, but don't disallow those who have more advanced needs the flexibility to do things differently. Macs have had a (mostly unfair) rep as inflexible and not suited for experts or tinkerers. don't reinforce that!

let us "think different". please.

as it stands now, i will unfortunately be looking for a used PB rather than getting one of the new ones.

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 28, 2003, 01:28 PM

ijon is right again,os 9 does suck, yes i had those crashes too, OSX rules, i have removed all traces of os9 and never want to see it on my mac again.os9 is obsolete and who the hell would want to run this on a new machine? Do what i did and drag the whole thing to the trash!if you need 9 keep your old machine and its software. TIME FOR FLAMES!:eek:

friction3000

Feb 28, 2003, 02:13 PM

no flame. just read the post right above yours. am i wrong?

john123

Feb 28, 2003, 04:48 PM

No friction, you're not wrong.

I think the fella before you just doesn't know how to use OS 9. Like folks during McCarthyism, and like folks during the Boston witch trials, and like folks during the Spanish Inquisition...many are afraid of what they do not know or do not understand.

mattmack

Feb 28, 2003, 05:38 PM

Originally posted by john123
No friction, you're not wrong.

Boston witch trials Salem

NicoMan

Feb 28, 2003, 06:29 PM

Originally posted by john123
Like folks during McCarthyism, and like folks during the Boston witch trials, and like folks during the Spanish Inquisition...many are afraid of what they do not know or do not understand.
That's exactly my point, but the other way round. Your preference of OS9 notwithstanding, you know perfectly well that (on the Mac) evolution will have you adapt to OSX and not me adapt to OS9. I sincerely hope that Apple will do all they can to contend their loyal (pre-OSX) user base to make it an easier transition, but I also hope that the loyal Apple followers will see their interest in looking for ways to adapt as opposed to moving to the WinTel platform... you know it makes sense.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 28, 2003, 06:32 PM

Originally posted by friction3000
so my dilemma: i want a new laptop. i'd like to get into using OSX, actually. but i also need to be able to boot in OS9 sometimes so my old apps will work properly, until they're all rewritten *AND* i can re-afford them.
Get yourself a 15" Titanium and you are sorted for a couple of years...

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 28, 2003, 06:46 PM

Originally posted by friction3000
their decision to disallow DVD+R burning reeks of the same attitude.
Hmm I am not so sure about that. I think that Apple is supporting the DVD-R standard but at the same time they are realizing that there are some heavyweights supporting DVD+R (like Microsoft). So they are waiting to see what's happening in the battle of the standards: if DVD+R gets the upper hand, they can always come out with a software upgrade to make DVD+R a reality on their drives (I am talking about those Sony drives obviously). But for the moment, the party line is still DVD-R and for a good reason because that's the standard that insures compatibility with consumer DVD players and we all know that this is a consumer technology for Apple...

NicoMan

john123

Mar 1, 2003, 01:24 AM

Originally posted by mattmack
Salem

Oops -- I need to place my persecutors better geography-wise!

mattmack

Mar 1, 2003, 10:48 AM

Originally posted by john123
Oops -- I need to place my persecutors better geography-wise! LOL I couldn't resist :)

Inunyan

Mar 1, 2003, 12:07 PM

I cannot agree more to NicoMan who says
----
Your preference of OS9 notwithstanding, you know perfectly well that (on the Mac) evolution will have you adapt to OSX and not me adapt to OS9.
----

It is not the matter of "which OS is better or faster" at this particular point. You cannot reverse the trend even if OS9ers take over Apple.

But I would sugget a possible amicable solution. How about somebody among die-hard OS9 sectarians develop "Virtual OS9"? Nothing like current "classic", but something similar to VirtualPC; a Window in which you have full OS9 environment with full access to all ports and peripherals. Yes, it would be sllow because of its nature as an emulator. But think about running it on PC970 machines and beyond! I am sure there is no lack of programming skill among you, and no doubt what so ever about passion among you..

You will have the OS9 as long as OSX is there. ( And as long as there is no third party who comes in to buy up that "VirtualOS9" and let it rot..)

i_am_a_cow

Mar 1, 2003, 01:32 PM

Wry Cooter

Mar 1, 2003, 06:10 PM

Originally posted by i_am_a_cow
... But maybe its because I only have 10.15. Well, I would still need OS9 anyway for Cubase .:rolleyes: I don't understand why the switch to 10.2 has to be so expensive???

One reason for killing OS 9 booting, beyond having to keep writing hooks to new hardware to something they don't want to waste payroll hours on, is to be able to provide that same clear path for developers to move to carbon and cocoa. Some developers would rather drop the mac altogether than develop for X. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Which is a shame for those running expensive music or publishing apps dependant on plug ins that might not ever be rewritten by the original authors.

I use OS X, but haven't bought office x, (which makes MS whine), because I had just bought office 2001. I haven't bought early adopters like Photoshop and Illustrator yet... Acrobat Distiller functionality still on the classic side. Hell I may not buy any OS X megabuck apps until I have new hardware, and I may not get new hardware until they dump motorola. There are a lot of reasons for dragging feet, some are lamer than others.

I will fill better about investing in the software when more is settled on the OS X side. I don't think a lot of peripheral drivers are there yet, but they may get there faster if there was not os 9 lingering about. So good riddance to 9.

If you still need 9 that badly, you probably have a mac around that boots into it.

LightFantastik

Mar 2, 2003, 08:19 AM

Personally, I strongly prefer OS X. But like others, I use OS 9 often for one specific program that is only written for OS 9.

Anyway, no need to argue which is better, as they each have their strengths, and both sides have been well debated already.

The point of my post rather, is to offer a suggestion for those of you who want the benefit of the new hardware and faster processors, but are concerned about the inability of the latest machines to boot into OS 9...

...the solution for your concerns can be found here -> http://www.powerlogix.com/products2/pfdualg4133/index.html

These upgrades offer performance equal to, and in some cases superior to the latest machines (thanks to a larger L3 cache), are OS 9 compatible, and best of all, are cheaper than buying a new machine. I can't believe no one has suggested this option !

Bluetooth, Firewire 800 and such are great, but you don't really need them right now, and can potentially be added later via other upgrade cards. Why buy a new machine that can't boot into your OS of choice, when you can get one of these slick processor upgrades and max out your RAM for a fraction of the cost ?

Powerlogix just lowered their prices too. On the high end, get a Dual 1.2 GHz PPC 7455 w/ a 2MB L3 cache for $1099, or if you're on a budget, get an single 800 MHz PPC 7455 w/ a 2MB L3 cache for only $329 !

Sounds like a perfect upgrade solution to me, while we await the arrival of the next gen Macs based on the IBM PowerPC 970.

(No, I don't work for Powerlogix) ;)

On a last note, OS X kicks ass, and is only going to get better. 9.2 is great, but face it, it's dead as far as Apple's concerned, and there's not much you can do about it. Use OS 9 when it suits your purpose, but it's better to embrace OS X sooner, rather than later, IMO.

Wry Cooter

Mar 2, 2003, 08:53 AM

Originally posted by LightFantastik

These upgrades offer performance equal to, and in some cases superior to the latest machines (thanks to a larger L3 cache), are OS 9 compatible, and best of all, are cheaper than buying a new machine. I can't believe no one has suggested this option !

Because historically the third party CPU upgrades have been a ratsnest of compatibility problems, in OS 9 and X, on the software, hardware and OS level. My particular sawtooth motherboard for example, has a earlier chip that does not recognize dual processing in any form.

Similarly, one could ask, what are the situations where classic within OS X are just not cutting it for people, and booting is necessary?

I know that, at least for a while, if I wanted my classic apps to recognize their third party plug ins, I would have to boot OS 9. I actually use OS 9.1 as my Classic for similar reasons.

greenfruit

Mar 2, 2003, 11:01 AM

the other problem with just getting a CPU upgrade is that it doesnt address other speed issues like faster RAM, faster Buses, Faster Drives etc.

None of the ones ive seen have been owrth the cost when you weigh up that and compatibity issues.

Ive got a G4/450 tower at home, and at some point i shall be buying a new one, but as i have no real need yet (i bought an ibook 700 12.1" screen and i use that ALOT more, but i would have bought a powerbook if id have known now the use i get from it), but when the time comes i will. If for nothing else, then for AGPx4 (or whatever it is) for UT2003. but by then there will probably be G5s out ;-).

we're just about to buy an OS9 bootable dual 1.25ghz at work. We have just started putting X on some machines, but we arent happy enough yet to commit to purely X bootable macs (due mainly to quark). Ive had X on my work mac for about 2 weeks now doing quark stuff with no major issues.

trose

Mar 4, 2003, 12:33 AM

Thank Quark for holding back so many people.. Im glad to see Adobe get the jump on them and release a product that many are finding to be better anyway. Adobe rocks.

Gringo

Mar 4, 2003, 09:17 AM

all the os's that apple has made are great.. ofcourse some fit differently the finger, but at the end, we all fell in love with apple during the clasic stage... a few newer fell in love during the present X stage...

of course I love X and use it... but used 9 and loved it too... X is better for me and that's it... for someone else in a different forum, Linux blows up the skirt but, that is the magic of Mac and cmputing in general...

I do hate the not allowing to boot into 9 in the newer machines... but not cause it would affect me, but because it takes away a little of the freedom in choice I have... but if I do choose to buy a newer mac, I'll be choosing X so I really don't see much the hassle in it...

Meanwhile, I can¡t wait to see what happens in the future with X... if now I love it and feel it's great... imagine in a few more years....

G.-

UnixMac

Mar 4, 2003, 09:48 AM

OS X is in its infancy compared with a mature OS like 9, which really started back in the day.. Wait till the PPC970 at 2.5GHz is sitting in that Dual Processor Tower instead of that 1/2 speed moto, and with a 10.3 that will be even more advanced and refined than 10.2

M$ look out.... Apple is right on you tail..

Wry Cooter

Mar 4, 2003, 06:15 PM

Originally posted by UnixMac
OS X is in its infancy compared with a mature OS like 9, which really started back in the day..

Don't want to rain on your parade, but keep in mind that the reason OS X may be seeming to come to fruition fairly fast is because NextStep has been around since the motorola 68040 processor or earlier. And that slow gestation period for Copland itself in which BeOs went from cradle to grave probably didn't hurt matters either.

UnixMac

Mar 4, 2003, 07:11 PM

Originally posted by Wry Cooter
Don't want to rain on your parade, but keep in mind that the reason OS X may be seeming to come to fruition fairly fast is because NextStep has been around since the motorola 68040 processor or earlier. And that slow gestation period for Copland itself in which BeOs went from cradle to grave probably didn't hurt matters either.

no problem, technically OS X is even older than the 68040, as it's based on Mach 3 and BSD 4.4, which predate that even..

I meant that the switch to this platform is new for Apple, and has much more potential as these Unix foundations are far more powerful than OS 9 can ever be. I think with time, say a year or two more, and with the advent of newer, and much faster Mac's and 64bit apps, this will be a hard platform to beat.

Dev

Mar 13, 2003, 01:54 PM

Enough with the sidetracking...
does anybody have a solution for making a G4 shipping after Jan. dual bootable?

** By doing a find on the restore CD for invisible files you can find an image for OS9. you don't need tinkertools to find invisible files. THAT method of installing 9 does not work as stated previously.

I have heard it is the 100Mhz bus speed that is the problem. tried the drive on the 66Mhz bus same prob.

I have heard it is that the drive is set to cable select out of the box, put it to master still no luck.

Have replaced ROM file and system files from an older system. No luck.

Anyone have any answers that have SOMETHING to do with this topic?

...these new machines are not authorized by digidesign to run protools...Must...have...a...9...bootable...machine...Uhggg. must...make...machine...bootable.

jac-smac

Mar 13, 2003, 03:17 PM

I did all of the above without tinkertool
yes -you can open os general 9 images
yes-you can copy system folder to HD
but no matter what you do or how u do it
it aint gonna boot in 2003 FW800 G4..............................
people you have been successful doing this
are ones with 2002 Mdd G4 that will boot in to 9
as long as there is a 9 sywtem folder

I think this thing got started when the 2002 Duel G4 MDD's
shipped without a OS9.2.2 install disk

simply put
as of now there is NO HACK to boot new macs into 9..................
And probably will never be.

LimeiBook86

Mar 13, 2003, 05:03 PM

One of teh teachers at my school just got a brand new Mac G4, and is pissed! They have a bunch of old Cetrises and Quadras and old scanners and pronters. He says he has a UMAX scanner and he called thenm and they said it wasnt supported. Now he is very mad. He shoudl have got the Boot to OS 9 G4's on Apple's site. I think the school bought it. Oh well, I guess he will have to wait a couple more years for the school to give him new scanners and stuff... maybe he could return it for a OS 9 one...What do you guys think?

squatch

Mar 14, 2003, 04:51 AM

Originally posted by LimeiBook86
One of teh teachers at my school just got a brand new Mac G4, and is pissed! They have a bunch of old Cetrises and Quadras and old scanners and pronters. He says he has a UMAX scanner and he called thenm and they said it wasnt supported. Now he is very mad. He shoudl have got the Boot to OS 9 G4's on Apple's site. I think the school bought it. Oh well, I guess he will have to wait a couple more years for the school to give him new scanners and stuff... maybe he could return it for a OS 9 one...What do you guys think?

There is a generic program called Gimp-Print which utilizes the CUPS architecture within OS X and let's printers that otherwise don't have drivers for X to work (most of the time).

There is also another program for scanners that don't have native OS X support called VueScan which, from what I hear, works with alot of older scanners. It isn't freeware, but if it does the job I'm sure your teacher won't mind throwing down the cash. ;)

Check out VersionTracker for downloads of both.

squatch

Mar 14, 2003, 04:51 AM

squatch

Mar 14, 2003, 06:39 AM

Sorry for the double post, but the stupid system here won't let me delete my post! I clicked on it and hit delete post, but it said I didn't have adminstrator priviledges or couldn't delete someone else's. I'm logged in under my name, and this has happened to me before.

Once again, sorry!! :D

Pedro Estarque

Mar 23, 2003, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by jac-smac
simply put
as of now there is NO HACK to boot new macs into 9..................
And probably will never be.

Don't be so sure... hackers do much more complex things then booting unsupported systems. Check www.macfixit.com, it seems they did it. As for running a 3.000 $ unsupported machine... doesn't seem the best choice.

Quote:
Late-Breakers
ALERT: Booting Mac OS 9 on 2003 (Mac OS X only) Macs
After months of searching, it seems that we have finally found a solution for booting Mac OS 9 on Macs released after January 1, 2003 - which are designated as exclusively capable of booting Mac OS X by Apple.

Apple recently posted a new file to its private Apple Service Provider web page (accessible only by account-holding Apple technicians and resellers) titled "MacTest Pro for Power Mac G4 (March 2003) Version 7.8.1 supports all iMac (Flat Panel) 15 inch systems only."

The file is a CD image which can be downloaded and burned, then used as a startup disk. Testing in "Mac OS X-only" flat panel iMac system revealed that the image properly booted Mac OS 9.

Users can then copy a stripped-down Mac OS 9 system folder to their hard drive, and select it with the "Startup Disk" System Preferences pane, delivering a Mac OS 9 bootable internal disk.

It appears that a new MacOS ROM file (ver. 9.8.1) allows booting from the image.

Of course, this solution is only readily accessible by Mac service providers, but it shows that Mac OS 9 boots are not impossible on Apple's new machines. Also, please note that Mac OS 9 startup was not tested on any machines other than the 2003 flat-panel iMac.

iJon

Mar 23, 2003, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by Pedro Estarque
Don't be so sure... hackers do much more complex things then booting unsupported systems. Check www.macfixit.com, it seems they did it. As for running a 3.000 $ unsupported machine... doesn't seem the best choice.

Quote:
Late-Breakers
ALERT: Booting Mac OS 9 on 2003 (Mac OS X only) Macs
After months of searching, it seems that we have finally found a solution for booting Mac OS 9 on Macs released after January 1, 2003 - which are designated as exclusively capable of booting Mac OS X by Apple.

Apple recently posted a new file to its private Apple Service Provider web page (accessible only by account-holding Apple technicians and resellers) titled "MacTest Pro for Power Mac G4 (March 2003) Version 7.8.1 supports all iMac (Flat Panel) 15 inch systems only."

The file is a CD image which can be downloaded and burned, then used as a startup disk. Testing in "Mac OS X-only" flat panel iMac system revealed that the image properly booted Mac OS 9.

Users can then copy a stripped-down Mac OS 9 system folder to their hard drive, and select it with the "Startup Disk" System Preferences pane, delivering a Mac OS 9 bootable internal disk.

It appears that a new MacOS ROM file (ver. 9.8.1) allows booting from the image.

Of course, this solution is only readily accessible by Mac service providers, but it shows that Mac OS 9 boots are not impossible on Apple's new machines. Also, please note that Mac OS 9 startup was not tested on any machines other than the 2003 flat-panel iMac.
i read that too, thats pretty. although i wont be going out of my way to get it, os 9 is dead, gotta upgrade some time.

iJon

Pedro Estarque

Mar 23, 2003, 05:22 PM

Originally posted by iJon
i read that too, thats pretty. although i wont be going out of my way to get it, os 9 is dead, gotta upgrade some time.

iJon
Me neither, if I had a new mac I wouldn't even want to hear about 9.
I use OSX even on machines that aren't supposed to run it ( like the one I'm using now 7300 w/ 266 G3 upgrade). Stability is just too addictive.
The only mac I have that still runs 9 is because of FinePix Pro 2 shooting program, that doesn't run on X even in classic mode. :mad:
But from the tech point of view it is interesting to know it can be done.

john123

Mar 24, 2003, 08:46 AM

Originally posted by iJon
i read that too, thats pretty. although i wont be going out of my way to get it, os 9 is dead, gotta upgrade some time.

iJon

Dead to *YOU*.

Not dead to *ME* and thousands of others out there.

Gringo

Mar 24, 2003, 10:00 AM

Agree, 9 ain't dead yet.. It is an OS that has given much and does for me what X can't... speed and multitasking in my iMac 266. I don't have the money to upgrade to a newer machine so I can only use X in my 266. X is great and would prefere to use it, but can't since I really need the speed and Multitasking for my work.

X is great, but for people like me, we need 9 and nine will not die untill there are no more older mac users like me around...

G.-

trose

Mar 24, 2003, 10:22 AM

Gringo...you just said that OS9 is not dead, that it is needed for older Macs. This thread is about booting into 9 on NEW Macs. There are few good reasons to use 9 on a new machine, and they dont outweigh the reasons not to.

If you need to use a peice of software available only on 9, keep your current computer and wait until a X version is released, or look for an alternative software ::coughquarksucks::coughindesignforX:: People can call Apple plenty of names for making the new Macs X only, but its for a good reason. They know how great this system is, and they dont want the transition to take 5 years, for obvious reasons.

Some examples of where Apple forcing things into the industry have been a major benefit would be USB and Firewire. Apple was the first (and only to this date) major company to drop the old and dead input interfaces. This has sparked a huge benefit for Mac users, we now can use just about any peice of external hardware that the PC guys get, and it also has helped the whole tech industry. Digital cameras and other devices would not be mainstream without these connection standards "forced" on us by Apple. Infact, I have yet to see a PC that doesnt still have some lame PS/2 and serial ports.

Gringo

Mar 24, 2003, 01:00 PM

Hi Trose,

We yeah I get it... mean I'm an old model user, but if I have a new model, I would prefere to have the liberty to install the os I wish as the pc guys do.

On the other hand, I understand perfectly why Apple makes them bootable only into X, and I find it very logical aswell.

On my personel note, i'd just make the switch to X on the new machine, but since I don't have the money I stick to my old iMac 266 and run 9 happily... would like X though.. have to admit I love it...

X is great and will be even better every time...

G.-

Hugh

Mar 24, 2003, 05:33 PM

I am really suprised that no one here has mention that on MacFixit that there is talk of a away to boot the new machines into OS 9. It has to do with the Hardware Test CD that is on a site on Apple. You have to be an tech to get to that part of the site, but there is a guy over there claiming that he has done it on a iMac.

He didn't do extestive testing, but it seems all it needs is the ROM file off from the Test CD. You also have to do some funny things to get it to pick the OS 9 folder as well.

Most likely there is no firewire 800 support, if in deed is stable to use on a require basis.

-Hugh

iJon

Mar 24, 2003, 06:02 PM

Originally posted by john123
Dead to *YOU*.

Not dead to *ME* and thousands of others out there.
yeah yeah, hear it all the time. notice my key phrase, gotta upgrade sometime. and yes os 9 is dead, that is why no one is making anything for it anymore.

iJon

john123

Mar 24, 2003, 10:11 PM

Originally posted by iJon
yeah yeah, hear it all the time. notice my key phrase, gotta upgrade sometime. and yes os 9 is dead, that is why no one is making anything for it anymore.

iJon

Don't gotta upgrade *NOW*, however.

And you're not 100% right, either. Software patches ensure backward compatibility (check out Roxio's Toast update today, for example). And lots of NEW software will run on both OSes.

The reality of the matter is that OS X is -- from a pure performance perspective -- a piece of crap. The "some time" when I upgrade (and by "upgrade" I mean "use" as I have 10.2.4 on my PowerBook 1Ghz) will be when/if OS X makes performance strides to make it snappy like OS 9. If it doesn't, I'll just switch to PCs.

iJon

Mar 24, 2003, 10:24 PM

Originally posted by john123
Don't gotta upgrade *NOW*, however.

And you're not 100% right, either. Software patches ensure backward compatibility (check out Roxio's Toast update today, for example). And lots of NEW software will run on both OSes.

The reality of the matter is that OS X is -- from a pure performance perspective -- a piece of crap. The "some time" when I upgrade (and by "upgrade" I mean "use" as I have 10.2.4 on my PowerBook 1Ghz) will be when/if OS X makes performance strides to make it snappy like OS 9. If it doesn't, I'll just switch to PCs.
well to me os x is pretty good, i really got tired of the freeze ups, bombs, extensions, and the force quits. now i have a very ZIPPY os x with no crashes, uptimes totaling in the months, i dont have allowcate memory to every program i run. but whatever floats your boat. enjoy 9.

iJon

john123

Mar 25, 2003, 12:05 AM

Originally posted by iJon
enjoy 9.

iJon

Thanks, I shall.

Gringo

Mar 25, 2003, 07:54 AM

X will be opening all the doors for the furture in Computers... you can see how Linux, is gaining territory and how Win xp is trying to keep up...

9 is great, but X is a wonder... I feel the power in it... even though it is an old OS with a face lift... it achieved thing that 9 could never dream of...

But in these things, it all comes down to what blows up your skirt.... (in figured speach).

X does it for me, but can't afford a newer machine so 9 forfills my needs... Does't blow up the skirt, but does the job well.

Imagine that many pc users still prefere Win 98.... but I would definitly not change for a pc....

G.-

Pedro Estarque

Mar 25, 2003, 09:38 AM

Originally posted by Hugh
I am really suprised that no one here has mention that on MacFixit that there is talk of a away to boot the new machines into OS 9.

Read the entire page. It was already posted. MacFixIt's article was what brought this discussion back into life.

Hugh

Mar 25, 2003, 10:29 AM

I did, and noticed one one person mentioned it. We are still fighting with OS is better. We are not even talking about what was posted on MacFixit's web page is basicly my point.

-Hugh

Originally posted by Pedro Estarque
Read the entire page. It was already posted. MacFixIt's article was what brought this discussion back into life.

CTan

Mar 25, 2003, 01:11 PM

Saw this on a website. Someone want to give this a go?

Terminal in OS X...

sudo /usr/sbin/bless/ -folder9 '/Volumes/***paste in your path to OS 9 system folder***' -setOF

let me know if this works! :D

GeneR

Mar 25, 2003, 02:26 PM

Hopefully, software companies will speed up their development time for their former OS9 programs so we don't have these problems anymore.

Why would anyone want to stay in OS9 if they had all their software in OSX? And OSX seems so much more stable than OS9. Why would anyone want to stay with OS9. It really baffles me.

CTan

Mar 25, 2003, 02:50 PM

You asked why someone would want to stay with OS 9?

Answer...

Because your company can't afford to replace every computer that isn't a high-end G3 or G4. (i tried installing X on a G3 DT and it was not fun and still isn't working right).

Because X doesn't support every scanner that 9 does.

Because your company has employees that don't want to learn a new opperating system, and will fight tooth and nail to do anything but that.

Because it cost money. Money to update machines. Money to pay for training. Time to pay for training. Money to pay for people to work while the others are training. Money for new programs.

Because there are still a number of old shareware and freeware programs that OS X hasn't copied over yet.

hope that helped answer the question.

Wash!!

Mar 25, 2003, 03:08 PM

It's time to join the 21th century if your company does not want to upgrade and move forward them they will go the way of the dinosaur.

CTan

Mar 25, 2003, 03:43 PM

In reply to company upgrades...

We want to upgrade to OS X, say when Quark comes out with a reliable client. But we don't want to just drop everything and jump into X, we want to make sure that it is going to work with everything & everyone we have.

It takes 1 hour to update & train 1 station to OS X.
It takes 1 month to update & maintain & train 10 stations switching to OS X.
It takes 6 months to 1 year to update & maintain & train 100 stations (at 5 different sites) switching to OS X.

And it would be a whole lot easier if there was a "Network Assistant" for OS X, which it has not been written for.

Hugh

Mar 25, 2003, 09:09 PM

Fail to see, how this (Booting OS 9 on the new machines) even effects you.

You say you don't want to upgrade.. Then don't. If OS 9 works for you, great. Stay with your current machines. The only way this issue even effects you is you where planning on buying a new machine. Which in your message, you have no plans on doing.

The only way I can see how this will effect you, is if the software you are working with is no longer supported because it moved on to OS X, and then it would only if use some new file format or something differnt. That wouldn't allow it to play nice with OS 9 versions.

But if that happened, then it just might be time to get new machines.

-Hugh

Originally posted by CTan
You asked why someone would want to stay with OS 9?

Answer...

Because your company can't afford to replace every computer that isn't a high-end G3 or G4. (i tried installing X on a G3 DT and it was not fun and still isn't working right).

Because X doesn't support every scanner that 9 does.

Because your company has employees that don't want to learn a new opperating system, and will fight tooth and nail to do anything but that.

Because it cost money. Money to update machines. Money to pay for training. Time to pay for training. Money to pay for people to work while the others are training. Money for new programs.

Because there are still a number of old shareware and freeware programs that OS X hasn't copied over yet.

hope that helped answer the question.

Hugh

Mar 25, 2003, 09:19 PM

The last time I checked the topic here was 'Booting OS 9 on new machines'. What differnce does it make if OS 9 is dead or not?

They once said that Linux couldn't be done on the Mac. Guess what, it has and being done. So why can't someone who wants to use OS 9 for what ever reason he/she wants, use it.

Who cares if it's a dead OS or not... This whole discusion of OS 9 vs OS X is pointless to me. If the developers decide that they don't want to support OS 9 any more (Note: I'm not saying they are). Then you are stuck with what you got. Either you stay with software you have with OS 9, or you move on to OS X.

If you want to boot in OS 9, then either stay with the Mac you have or get an older one that can. Or if someone can confirm that the new machines in deed can boot in 9 with some help of the ROM file in OS 9. Granted that I know if you are to boot into OS 9, most likely you will not get any Firewire 800 support. So what, at least you got what you wanted. A machine that can boot into OS 9. Even if it's in a hard around about way of doing it.

Just my thoughts.

-Hugh

john123

Mar 25, 2003, 11:27 PM

Originally posted by Wash!!
It's time to join the 21th century if your company does not want to upgrade and move forward them they will go the way of the dinosaur.

Ugh, how incredibly naive. You think if a company doesn't move to OS X that it will go out of business?

Give me a friggin' break. Not only does the upgrade cost money -- both in and of itself, due to increased hardware demands, due to the need to train employees in the new OS, due to the increased support demands -- but you make the fundamental assumption that the OS has anything to do WHATSOEVER with company success.

Gringo

Mar 26, 2003, 07:22 AM

Totally agree with John123... a company does not go out of business because of the OS they use... if for that all the mac users would be going out of business since we are the minority and you would have to say that everybody that does not use Win 2000 or XP will go out of business...

People and companies that would like to keep using 9 do it ofr good reasons... Now X is the future in the OS's, but not right now... When the older generations of Macs die (like me, iMac 266) there will be no more 9 and then 9 will die.

But pls don't tell me that you wouldn't like to see how 9 would work under a new pb 1,25mhz with a 17" screen???!!!!!! that woul be awsome... imagine that under my machine its fast and snapy......

G.-

Wash!!

Mar 26, 2003, 07:36 AM

when people get all twisted about some off beat comment. youy guys are sad.

the truth is do you see any company out there runing still win 3.1 or os 6. you have to move forward rembember change is good:)

Gringo

Mar 26, 2003, 08:04 AM

you can't compare OS 6 and not even Win 3,1 to os 9....

Wash!!

Mar 26, 2003, 08:25 AM

You are missing the point...OS 9 as an OS is dead and I give another year maybe less untill is gone for good.

CTan

Mar 26, 2003, 11:21 AM

So how many people actually own the computers who can only boot into X?

me = 0

Within 1 month = 1

Just curious to see who is doing the talking, and who is doing the walking.

Wash!!

Mar 26, 2003, 11:42 AM

7600 (runs better than when it was on OS 9), G4, G3 blue and white any questions;)

friction3000

Mar 26, 2003, 12:14 PM

Originally posted by Hugh
The last time I checked the topic here was 'Booting OS 9 on new machines'. What differnce does it make if OS 9 is dead or not?

Well, I agree with you on that. My OS9, despite its "death", seems to work fine.

If you want to boot in OS 9, then either stay with the Mac you have or get an older one that can. Or if someone can confirm that the new machines in deed can boot in 9 (...)

Well, so far, all the OS9 booting "tricks" have been debunked, and most knowledgable people really doubt if they will work; apparently it's disabled in the hardware.

i'm not sure what the point of your comment is, frankly. I already know what my options are. I'm just not happy with them. is your point "take what Apple gives you and don't complain?"

This is a reasonable place to complain about Apple's decision to disallow OS9 booting. i have stated my reasons in an earlier post.

friction3000

Mar 26, 2003, 12:25 PM

Originally posted by CTan
So how many people actually own the computers who can only boot into X?

me = 0

Within 1 month = 1

Just curious to see who is doing the talking, and who is doing the walking.

If the new PBs could be booted into OS9, I would be typing this on one right now. (oh wait... if they could do that, this thread wouldn't even exist... umm, you know what i mean.)

If went and looked at the Apple website and it said "Actually, they CAN boot OS9 reliably" I would take my credit card out of my wallet and order one RIGHT NOW.

Instead, my current plan is to wait until the new 15" PBs are released, and at that point buy an OLD 15" PB at a discount.

Apple, are you listening??? I am a loyal customer, looking forward to switching to X one day. In the meantime, I have work to do. Tons of work to do. And I do it in OS9. And I want a new computer. And I can afford one. But I'm not buying it, because it doesn't work right for me. Instead, i'll be buying an old machine.

think about it.

friction3000

Mar 26, 2003, 12:41 PM

Originally posted by Wash!!
You are missing the point...OS 9 as an OS is dead and I give another year maybe less untill is gone for good.

All the people on this thread who have been complaining about how lousy OS9 is are not very helpful. I'm not just talking about Wash!! but the many others earlier.

For years, Mac users have had to defend their "minority" system, telling people that the Mac OS we are using actually works great and is better than Windows in many areas. in response, Windows users would say that you were partisan, and brainwashed by Apple.

Now that OSX is out, some Mac users are suddenly saying "oh, OS9 sucked".

You are making Mac users look bad and validating the complaints against the Mac.

and certainly making yourselves look bad.

greenfruit

Mar 26, 2003, 12:48 PM

For my part, i had no real problems with OS9 (quark aside) - we had an oS9 fileserver with a 350gig raid, serving 10 macs which had to be rebooted on average once every 2 months and crashed about 5 times over a year or so - but OSX is the way to go and im not bothered. I moved from OS6 to 7 through 8 and 9 and now onto X. Times change and technology moves on.
I used to have a C64, but I dont need one anymore.

The fileserver now BTW is an xserve with the 350ish gig raid attached and having 450ish gig internally, making about 3/4TB.

daveg5

Mar 26, 2003, 02:46 PM

Back to subject, Seems their is a way as reported at wwa.macfixit.com search booting.
As you know many apps need to know that there is a previous booting version is avail to upgrade, ala Final Cut Pro, Well Apple has a work around for the 2003 15" Imac if you are a service provider(not sure if it works with the firewire 800 powermacs and powerbooks) To get the info you have to subscribe I read it last week and it is legit makes sense but is only sold to service providers.
So if anyone has a macfixit account please fill us in again.

ALERT: Booting Mac OS 9 on 2003 (Mac OS X only) Macs
… t seems that we have finally found a solution for booting Mac OS 9 on Macs released after January 1, 2003 - which are designated as exclusively capable of booting Mac OS X by Apple. Apple recently posted a new file to its private Apple Service Pro …
Date: 03/21/03 Hits: 7,036
_

Developers working around 2003 Mac OS 9 install problems
With the advent of non-OS 9 booting Macs came the de function of some applications' installers that will only run when a system is started from Mac OS 9. These include Corel's Bryce 4.x (required to run the purchased-download 5.0 updater) and Roxio' …
Date: 02/27/03 Hits: 786