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Malus

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Hi, sorry for all the questions...but,

I just installed classic OS 9, and was wondering if its possible to change to os9 instead of osx format. Is there a way to see the desktop like it would be in os 9?? Thanks 🙂
 
Malus said:
Hi, sorry for all the questions...but,

I just installed classic OS 9, and was wondering if its possible to change to os9 instead of osx format. Is there a way to see the desktop like it would be in os 9?? Thanks 🙂

OK. The first thing you need to know is that there's a difference between Classic and OS 9. OS 9 was the operating system that came before OS X. Early OS X machines could dual-boot in either OS X or OS 9. Classic, however, is merely a windowing environment that can run OS 9 applications. If you have a recent Mac (I'm assuming you do), you cannot boot in OS 9, but you can use Classic to run OS 9 applications. That's the long answer. The short answer is, sorry, nope. 🙂
 
stridey said:
.... Classic, however, is merely a windowing environment that can run OS 9 applications. ...
Ah, no quite. To say that Classic is merely a windowing environment is to imply that it is somewhat like the X Windowing System or an alternative to Aqua. It is not. Classic is MacOS 9 running on top of MacOS X with some limitations. If your computer is MacOS 9-bootable, then Classic is the same software that MacOS 9 uses when it boots--with some differences. To most users, the major difference is that Classic uses the MacOS X Finder. To others, Classic has only limited access to hardware compared to MacOS 9. To still others, there are some software incompatibilities.
 
stridey said:
If you have a recent Mac (I'm assuming you do), you cannot boot in OS 9, but you can use Classic to run OS 9 applications.

And if you have an older Mac, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk, and select the OS 9 folder.
 
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