More on Phasing out OS 9, and Pinot (10.3)

[3777]

Now I feel stoopid

Originally posted by bretm


They're explicitly talking about the new hardware. "Macs" won't boot in OS9. They'll still run classic.

Jaguar runs classic. It doesn't come with a copy of OS9 however is the prediction. The article theorizes that the next "macs" (hardware) won't boot OS9. In other words, the next line of computers. Whether you're running 10.1.5 or 10.2 or whatever will have motherboards that have no way of booting OS9. There are new computers scheduled for August, and of course MWSF. So, in a matter of weeks people might be bringing home computers without OS9 or the ability to boot OS9.

It further states that 10.3 will disallow it via software. In other words, 10.3 kills booting OS9 even if you're running it on a G4.

But hey thats what I read.

I have been running all of my OS9 apps in Classic...... not realizing I could still boot OS9 dektop directly. I thought classic was the OS9 boot....... At this point I only need Classic for Photoshop anyway........ but what I don't understand from your statement...... is how Jaguar will run Classic if the hardware cannot boot OS9? Classic ...... I believe..... runs directly off of OS9. Without OS9 installed, Classic wont' work? If you have to install OS9 first.....but the hardware won't accept it........how will Classic run on future versions of OSX? If this is not the case then how can I remove OS9 from my system now? I try to send the OS9 system folder to trash, but it won't let me because it is required to run Classic?

 

[3777]

P.S.

Originally posted by 3777


I have been running all of my OS9 apps in Classic...... not realizing I could still boot OS9 dektop directly. I thought classic was the OS9 boot....... At this point I only need Classic for Photoshop anyway........ but what I don't understand from your statement...... is how Jaguar will run Classic if the hardware cannot boot OS9? Classic ...... I believe..... runs directly off of OS9. Without OS9 installed, Classic wont' work? If you have to install OS9 first.....but the hardware won't accept it........how will Classic run on future versions of OSX? If this is not the case then how can I remove OS9 from my system now? I try to send the OS9 system folder to trash, but it won't let me because it is required to run Classic?

.........And if Jaguar does run OS9 Applications in Classic .....without OS9 itself having to be installed ......... then I'll just do clean install of jaguar when it arrives in a few weeks........ if OS9 isn't needed for Classic?

 

[allpar]

It's for the Intel option...?

I still suspect that the reason for not allowing OS 9 booting is (a) to get everyone to Carbon and Cocoa, and (b) THAT'S partly so they can switch over to Intel or Power4 or Transmeta or some other chips when they need to. Apple can always figure out a way to disable OS X on non-Apple computers - remember proprietary hardware ROM chips? I understand OS X has a pretty serious hardware abstraction layer. Would be pretty darned cool of today's Carbon and Cocoa programs could run without recompiling on a 3 GHz Pentium 5 Mac...though I do prefer the PowerPC architecture, they're getting a bit slow compared to cheap PCs. I can get a 1.2 GHz PC for about the price of a used B&W G3...! (Admittedly I'd need to buy another air cnditioner for the office).

But that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Hmm... not sure I like it

Originally posted by MM2270
I'm not sure if I like the sound of new Macs not being able to boot into 9. I use OS X nearly full-time both at home and work, but at times, I still need to run repair utilities on my disks. Those apps currently only run in 9, and to use them effectively, you need to boot off the CD (in OS 9). DiskWarrior is a perfect example. Now, if these new Macs don't allow booting into 9, then I imagine I also could not boot into 9 on a CD. This would be a fundamental change in the Mobo maybe that just won't allow it. If so, that rots! So I can't run repair utilities if this happens? And don't talk to me about booting into single user mode or whatever to run the disk check. I don't believe that does as good a job as DW or Norton (even though I really don't like Norton)

This is not a new thing that Apple is suddenly doing. Try taking a Norton Utilities 5 CD and boot up a fairly new G4. You cant! You also cant install or boot from Mac OS 8.6, or OS 9.04 either. Also keep in mind that any version of Norton older than 6 will mess things up on your OS X partition. Same is true for anything but the newest version of DiskWarrior.

So having to buy a newer version of a repair utility happens every time Apple upgrades OS's or hardware. If you want something free, use fsck or Disk Utility. I'm sure there will be new versions out that will boot the new Macs when the time comes.

Also, consider this. If you buy one of these new Macs, and Classic is already installed, all is cool. But what happens if your disk goes south and you need to reinstall everything, on a new disk for example. How can you install 9?

Classic will be part of the Jaguar install, and presumably the next version also. It just wont include a bootable copy of OS 9, because the machines can't run OS 9. OS 9 is a discontinued OS, just as System 6, 7 and OS 8 are. Yes, it's a little different here, because we are dealing with a whole new OS, but Apple gave the developers a two year warning that this day would come.

You can't since the OS 9 installer is a Classic app, and if Classic isn't present, you can't run the installer. So, you'd want to boot up from the OS 9.x.x CD right? Yeah, well what if it doesn't allow booting from a CD? Than guess what, you're screwed, at least if you still need Classic at all. Sorry, but I think this is a really stupid idea, and I hope this will only happen sometime down the line and not in the very near future.

It's not about not allowing it to boot, it can't. Apple is not trying to play big brother. For everyone here who is a new Mac user, this is like trying to run a version of Windows on an unsupported motherboard chipset. Apple makes big changes when they release new hardware, it's not just the bus and CPU speed. Since OS 9 is EOL'ed, they are not going to continue to update it to run on new hardware.

Sounds to me like Apple is doing whatever it takes to FORCE adoption of OS X. Maybe they should try tactics like, oh, I dunno, LOWERING the price of Jaguar, for instance. By making it nearly prohibitively expensive for the average Mac user to buy X, they are killing potential upgraders, so now they want to do this, so if you buy a New Mac you have NO CHOICE but to use OS X? Wow Apple, this is really a bad move. Someone over there needs a lobotomy!!

How is it "prohibitively expensive"? It's $129. I'm an average Mac user, and that's less than I spend for Starbucks and lunch every month! Apple releases a new OS once a year that they expect you to pay for. I paid for 10.0, and I got 10.1 free. I will pay for 10.2 and I'm sure the next upgrade will be free. As will all the little point releases. The problem here is people who either just bought 10.1, or never bought OS X and either borrowed it or pirated it, and want 10.2 free or cheap. Is that fair to the people who paid for 10.0 when it came out? I paid $120 when 10.0 came out and have been using it for 20 months now. That's $6 a month. I think asking us to pay for a new OS every 17 months or so is quite fair. Look how much work Apple does compared to MS. We are at version 10.2, while Windows is still at 5.2.

Apple's prices are much lower than MS, even for upgrades. XP Pro upgrade is $70 more than jaguar. And the upgrade to XP home is only $20 cheaper. If you are a student, you get 10.2 for half price.

And yes, you have no choice but to use OS X. You can't buy a new Mac with System 7.6 or OS 8 on it. How is this any different? I have some old software that only runs in System 7. You also can't buy a new PC with Windows 3.1 on it, or even Windows 95. You cant even download drivers for Win 3.1! Why would you want to?

New Macs run Mac OS X as default anyway, and since Apple is not making OS 9 anymore, you wont find it on any new Macs. This is the normal effects of progress. If you own your OS 9 software, you should be able to get upgrades to OS X versions, since most current versions run in OS X. If you have a bunch of stuff you downloaded from Limewire, well that's too bad isn't it.

I have everything I need except for QuarkXPress, and CubaseSX. After that I dont care if I never see OS 9 again

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: P.S.

Originally posted by 3777


.........And if Jaguar does run OS9 Applications in Classic .....without OS9 itself having to be installed ......... then I'll just do clean install of jaguar when it arrives in a few weeks........ if OS9 isn't needed for Classic?

People are misunderstanding the story here. This is not about Jaguar at all. When the next version comes out AFTER Jaguar, which will probably be in January, it is rumored to prevent you from dual booting.

This is probably because there will be no Startup disk CP, or it wont recognize OS 9 as a valid OS. I think if you have a separate partition with 9 on it, you should be OK, but the install will replace 9 on the OS X partition with a new version of classic. But then again, how to choose the OS to boot from? I wonder if the Startup Manager in OpenFirmware will be changed?

But the REAL reason is that the new machines coming out wont be able to run OS 9. This means you cant wipe the hard drive clean and install OS 9 even if you wanted to. Possibly you can hack it to run, the way people do with OS X on old PowerMac 9500 and such, but I doubt it.

As I have said a few times here, try and boot even a two year old G4 on an old Mac OS CD. It cant boot. It's not because Apple is being mean, it's because the system software on that CD lacks the necessary drivers for that machine.

That's all there is to it. No conspiracy at all. It's just that Apple is no longer updating OS 9 to run on new hardware anymore than they are updating System 7. It's a dead issue.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Now I feel stoopid

Originally posted by 3777


but what I don't understand from your statement...... is how Jaguar will run Classic if the hardware cannot boot OS9? Classic ...... I believe..... runs directly off of OS9.

I'll try to explain.

Classic is an application running on OS X that runs OS 9. So even if the hardware can't run OS 9, the Classic application can. It's the same way you can run Windows inside of the VirtualPC application. Classic is using only certain parts of OS 9... other stuff is disabled, like most extensions, and classic cannot access hardware directly. Jaguar will contain only the parts of OS 9 it needs to run Classic.

Currently you can install OS X either on the same partition as OS 9, or on separate partitions. You can also have two copies of OS 9 installed, one to use as classic and one for dual booting.

I started out with two copies, because I have OS 9 on a separate partition. I did this because of disk corruption issues early on with OS X.

Now I use my OS 9 partition for classic.

Jaguar does not need a separate install of OS 9, apparently it has enough parts included to run classic, but not enough to boot the Mac from.

If you own a current Mac that can run OS 9, there's nothing stopping you from installing it and booting from it. Reports are that Pinot (10.2.5? 10.3?) will disable OS 9 from booting, and as I've said here, new Macs will be unable to boot from the present version of OS 9, and Apple will not be updating 9 to work on new machines.

And I'm sure the new machines will not run OS X 10.2 either.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: It's for the Intel option...?

Originally posted by allpar
I still suspect that the reason for not allowing OS 9 booting is (a) to get everyone to Carbon and Cocoa, and (b) THAT'S partly so they can switch over to Intel or Power4 or Transmeta or some other chips when they need to. Apple can always figure out a way to disable OS X on non-Apple computers - remember proprietary hardware ROM chips? I understand OS X has a pretty serious hardware abstraction layer. Would be pretty darned cool of today's Carbon and Cocoa programs could run without recompiling on a 3 GHz Pentium 5 Mac...though I do prefer the PowerPC architecture, they're getting a bit slow compared to cheap PCs. I can get a 1.2 GHz PC for about the price of a used B&W G3...! (Admittedly I'd need to buy another air cnditioner for the office).

But that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

This is an interesting theory I hadn't thought of.

Yes, the Mach kernel does hardware abstraction, and providing you make the kernel run on the hardware, the rest of OS X would follow with only minor tweaks.

Darwin, which is OS X without Aqua, does run on x86, and NeXTSTEP did too. I'm sure that's why Apple made Darwin open source ... this lets others do the PC port for them. They get free labor and don't piss off MS too badly while they still had that agreement.

Apple also had versions of Rhapsody, which became Mac OS X Server, running on Intel/AMD hardware.

Apple might still be able to run Classic on a version of OS X running on non PPC hardware, as an emulator.

I'd still rather have a 3GHz PPC over a x86 CPU though. A Power4 type CPU would be nice, but we would lose Altivec.

Either way, we can be sure that Apple wants OS 9 to go away, and soon.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Did I miss something?

Originally posted by rasha
I thought Apple said OS9 development would continue with OSX for a few years. I thought there was to be a OS9.5 final release.

What happened to the support for legacy software and hardware? I thought that OS9.5 was going to be the ultimate of the old OSes with better memory managment ect...

I was really hoping on that to keep on my older machine with OS X on my new one. I have a lot of years behind the classic mac OS and plan to use some of that software I have collected over the years while I use OSX to actually be productive.

BTW, yes you are right. I still do fire up the C-64 upon occasion.

Where did you hear this? Jobs said at the WWDC OS 9 is dead, not for consumers yet, but for developers. I think 9.2.2 is it, and surely Apple will not invest the time to make it better. I've been using a Mac since System 7, so I know how you feel.

Jaguar is said to have classic support built in, but does not comes with a full OS 9 install. I have a Mac clone running 9.1, the last version that will install on 7x00 class machines. it still works, and installing 10.3 on my G4 wont break it!

I have 12 Macs, some of them running System 3, 6, 7 and 8.5. I can play with those if I want to feel nostalgic.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Is Apple Crazy?

Originally posted by digitalbiker

My question is; Does anyone know for sure if classic will even start without OS 9 being installed somewhere on the system?

I thought that a bootable copy of OS 9 needed to be installed in either the same partition or another partition but somewhere on the disk with OS X.

If OS 9 is not installed, will classic run?

No it wont. But Jaguar is said to have it's own OS 9 files for classic, and wont need to have a full version intsalled.

It will not come with an OS 9 CD however.

Thus is the rumor anyway... we will see in a few weeks.

 

[merges]

classic requires a real OS 9.2.2 system to be installed, even in jaguar.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Originally posted by tjwett
I hope this does not happen. I too work with pro-audio and I'm not expecting all my apps, synths and plug-ins to be ready till 2004. Plus, I hate OS X. After using it for almost a year now I've come to see that it is a slow, crashing, kernal panic-infested nighhtmare with a pretty face. Hopefully 10.2 will be better but I see X just getting in the user's way more and more.

I've been running OS X since the day it came out as my main OS, and I have had about 7 crashes in that time. Most of those were kernel panics, and all during 10.0.3.

It's not slow on my G4/466, and I can't through a week running 9.1 at work without having to reboot. Most of the time I reboot at lunch time just to play it safe!

If it wasn't for the fact that I shut down my Mac at night, I wouldn't have to.

I suggest you look at your install. Something not right with it. Also it seems a lot of people want to start messing with things they shouldn't and destabilize their systems. Some people are too anal retentive. Leave the stuff Apple installed where it is! Learn to use OS X the way it was intended and stop trying to make it OS 9.

I also work in pro audio, and that's the only time I boot into 9.2.2. After using Peak and Spark in OS X, I cant wait for CubaseSX. While it's true that I have to wait for some of my plugins to be updated, everything else works... my M-Audio card, etc. I hate booting into 9.

There's a good article on osxAudio.com, with the two guys from Destroy FX. In the article they asked:

*****
Q: There is much talk about how complex it is to port an OS 9 plugin over to OS X, what was your experience been?

Marc: It takes me about 1 minute. If the code doesn't any involve any special platform-specific system routines, then there's nothing complicated at all. You just link against carbon libraries instead of InterfaceLib & the other old libraries. Actually, some old libraries are still okay to use. Then you just have to change the prefix file, include a carb resource, link against vstguicarbon.lib rather than vstgui.lib if you're using that library, & you're all done. But if you are using system-specific routines, then it can be more complicated, it depends. A lot of it is the same in carbon, though. And if you're using your own graphics code or other libraries, it depends. Basically if the plugin is very complex & platform-dependant, then porting it may or may not be complex, but in most cases it's very simple. This is all regarding VST, I don't know about other formats (but I think that VST is the only one that currently exists under both OS 9 & OS X).
*****

So you can see it's easy to convert plugins to OS X.

Jaguar will have great support for audio and MIDI... think of having OMS built in to the system.

I also don't see where you think OS X gets in the way. As I said, some people try and make it work like OS 9 instead of learning how to use the new OS.

I think it's a joy to operate. I get much more done on OS X. The GUI is cleaner, and you can do more things simultaneously.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Originally posted by merges
classic requires a real OS 9.2.2 system to be installed, even in jaguar.

Well, the new Macs coming out wont have OS 9 CDs, and neither will Jaguar.

So it would seem you are incorrect.

Several articles I read stated that Jaguar will include classic, but will not have a real OS 9 install. This is not to say it wont install a nearly full version of 9.2.2, but it wont include the CD as 10.0 and 10.1 did.

From MacInTouch:

"Earlier versions of MacOS X included a bootable copy of MacOS 9 with a stand-alone installer. This meant that the user could create a dual-boot system. Jaguar includes enough of MacOS 9 to run inside the Blue Box, but not enough to boot stand-alone. "

and:

"A friend of mine told me the following, and Apple's web site seems to confirm it. OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar will NOT come with OS 9.2 installation disks at all. The $129 price tag gets you the following, as stated on Apple's web site:

Contents (of OS X 10.2)
Mac OS X CDs
Developer Tools CD
user documentation

It says it supports classic technology, but it appears that OS 9 DOES NOT come with OS X 10.2. If you want, but don't have OS 9.2, it will cost you an addition $90 or so. Please note that this will mostly effect people buying new computers (since those with 10.2 installed, will NOT have OS 9 installed). Please note, that I could be wrong, but given Apple's recent stances, it appears doubtful."


Therefore were would you get 9.2.2 to install on your new 17" iMac??

All the Macs at Apple's Pavilion at MacWorld Expo were already running Jaguar.

 

[dimeadozen]

Stab k12 in the back again

I'm not saying is an end of the world for k12 thing, but look at it this way. (I have to, I'm a k12 network admin) Right now, X is out, and it's a very positive powerful OS, but it lacks the ability to take care of the needs of k12 environments. All we have from Apple is Mac Manger, as of yet, there is no client for X. Apple says try NetInfo. Yeah right. Apple is doing an amazing job of learning how to attract regular customers, but without education sales they'll take a major hit, and it never fails, Apple's server and apps group changes directions and standards faster than we can adopt them. Then they force us to the new product. There's nothing wrong with 9. If they want to move all machines to X then they need to address the issues such as network environments and client systems for k12 customers. That's all I want to vent.

 

[3777]

Re: Re: great

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon


I'll try to explain.

Classic is an application running on OS X that runs OS 9. So even if the hardware can't run OS 9, the Classic application can. It's the same way you can run Windows inside of the VirtualPC application. Classic is using only certain parts of OS 9... other stuff is disabled, like most extensions, and classic cannot access hardware directly. Jaguar will contain only the parts of OS 9 it needs to run Classic.

Currently you can install OS X either on the same partition as OS 9, or on separate partitions. You can also have two copies of OS 9 installed, one to use as classic and one for dual booting.

I started out with two copies, because I have OS 9 on a separate partition. I did this because of disk corruption issues early on with OS X.

Now I use my OS 9 partition for classic.

Jaguar does not need a separate install of OS 9, apparently it has enough parts included to run classic, but not enough to boot the Mac from.

If you own a current Mac that can run OS 9, there's nothing stopping you from installing it and booting from it. Reports are that Pinot (10.2.5? 10.3?) will disable OS 9 from booting, and as I've said here, new Macs will be unable to boot from the present version of OS 9, and Apple will not be updating 9 to work on new machines.

And I'm sure the new machines will not run OS X 10.2 either.

That is what I wanted to know. If OSX Jaguar can run classic layer without a separate OS9 partition installed, then I'll just delete my OS9 partition and do a clean install of 10.2 ......the only application I run is Photoshop and it works fine in OSX classic.

 

[Ensign Paris]

The fact that we already know what the next version of X will be called (well in code atleast) kind of scares me.

Ensign

 

[crs]

What do they expect? Fact is you have to have a fast machine to run OS X and you also need all your software ready for it.
This change takes it's time. Who cares what Microsoft or Corel say, we change when WE are ready, not them.

Expecially for institutions or schools it's a big step to get the whole administration thing running. I work at a university where we need Quark (not ready until late spring 2003) and an administration solution (where I get a beta the next weeks).
Even Apple is not ready yet to support OS X Clients with their MacManager (as far as I know).

The university will change in various steps until summer 2003. Within that, for many labs new machines have to be bought to be able to work good under OS X.

So again: it takes the time it needs to change, no matter what we are wanted to do by some companies.

crs

 

[G4scott]

Apple should come out with a new ad campaign about the price of Jaguar, .Mac, and the phasing out of OS 9... They could call it "Sh*t Happens"

 

[merges]

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon


Well, the new Macs coming out wont have OS 9 CDs, and neither will Jaguar.

So it would seem you are incorrect.

Several articles I read stated that Jaguar will include classic, but will not have a real OS 9 install. This is not to say it wont install a nearly full version of 9.2.2, but it wont include the CD as 10.0 and 10.1 did.

I am running Jaguar right now, and like all versions of Mac OS X, its Classic mechanism (Classic is *not* an OS) requires a valid Mac OS 9 system folder.

 

[G4scott]

Lets face it, OS 9 is dead. Even though you still may be able to run it using Classic, Apple doesn't want you to buy any more copies of OS 9...

 

[SilvorX]

i wouldnt want to see os9 phased out yet, unless osx had more support for running older apps (not like how hexpee has "compatibility mode" which doesnt work) so that ppl wouldnt need to use os9 to run classic appz

 

[Wry Cooter]

The Horses mouth!

From Monday August 5 Macintouch

__________________________________

[13:55 ET]_ William Frank forwarded a note from Steve Jobs about the purported demise of Mac OS 9 support in Apple's next hardware releases:

I wrote Steve Jobs my concern about the story on Eweek about not being able to boot into OS 9 with New Macs. I got a response back:

This rumor is simply not true. Steve

___________________________________

 

[jefhatfield]

i will be getting a new mac to replace my original ibook which has os9 but not powerful enough to run os x well with only a 160 MB RAM max

so would it make sense for apple to ditch os 9 next year in their ibooks which max out at 640 MB of RAM?

doesn't os x soak up RAM and to use photoshop and os x - 10.2?

well, one should have at least a gig of RAM to open up several programs and run everything well with good speed, correct?

what would the ibook/classic imac/ older g3 tower users do if apple goes exclusively to os x?

 

[peterjhill]

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon


Well, the new Macs coming out wont have OS 9 CDs, and neither will Jaguar.

So it would seem you are incorrect.

Several articles I read stated that Jaguar will include classic, but will not have a real OS 9 install. This is not to say it wont install a nearly full version of 9.2.2, but it wont include the CD as 10.0 and 10.1 did.

Well, the GM of Jaguar will not run classic without having preinstalled OS 9 first. I did an ultraclean install of 6C115, and did not install OS9 first, and the Classic CP says that

There is no volume with a system folder that supports starting Classic. Please install Mac OS 9.1 or later to run Classic

So, we have a quandry. If the new machines will not boot OS 9, how would one install OS 9, in order for 10.2 to run Classic? As for not shipping 0S 9 in the 10.2 box, fine! All current computers that run 10, should have a current valid license for 9.1 or later. Why ship another disk when they don't have to. If they sell a million copies of 10.2, and save 25 cents by not putting in OS 9 disks, they just saved 250,000 dollars. Not too bad.

I would think that Apple is getting tired of using software developers to update OS 9 code to run on all the new hardware. A significant upgrade in hardware might cross the boundry on the "Is it really worth our money to do this" equation.

Goodbye OS 9! Goodbye forever.

 

[peterjhill]

Originally posted by jefhatfield
doesn't os x soak up RAM and to use photoshop and os x - 10.2?

well, one should have at least a gig of RAM to open up several programs and run everything well with good speed, correct?

Well, OS X has a much better memory manager than classic. You do not have to assign memory requirements to applications. They ask for memory, and the kernel takes care of doling it out. If it runs out of real memory, it starts to swap out pages of memory to disk. The OS might use more memory than classic, but when I was running the Public Beta on an original Tangerine iBook, it ran pretty well. I have 512 MB and it runs great. If you are running Photoshop on an iBook, you probably are not using Photoshop to make alot of money, or else you would get something with a G4 and a bigger screen, and thus can probably get by with 640 MB of ram in the iBook.

what would the ibook/classic imac/ older g3 tower users do if apple goes exclusively to os x?

Well, they would probably do what all the people who are still using Mac Classics do, they run the most recent version of the OS that is supported by the hardware. If that is not satisfactory, ie. you need to use a more recent version of the OS, then you would need to purchase new hardware.

 

[BillGates]

The new G4s coming out this month WILL boot OS9. Maybe they won't come with it loaded or even in the box but they WILL boot and run OS9 natively if you choose to do so. This is really good news for the prepress/design industry since some of our application developers are really dragging their feet.