Boot OS 9 on new PowerMacs?

[Jon the Heretic]

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]

Touchy, touchy

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]

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]

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]

Re: OS9 vs OSX

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]

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]

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]

Quartz is the problem with OS X - heres why

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]

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]

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

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]

Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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]

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]

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 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]

Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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]

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]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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...

 

[john123]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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...

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."

 

[jelloshotsrule]

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]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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]

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".

(BTW, have you read the book,Silicon Snake Oil? 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?)

 

[NicoMan]

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]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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...

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]

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]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just had to chime in

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 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.

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]

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