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OS 9? Excuse me?

MacTruck

MacTruck

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 27, 2005
1,241
0
One Endless Loop
Bought a mac mini for my son today and picked up a bunch of software that he was playing on the iMac G5 they had there. Kid stuff like Dragon Tales and Preschool games. Get home and put the disk in and it says it needs OS9 to work.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

All the kid software there is for OS9 only. No OS X compatibility. That is a HUGE problem. They are crazy to sell that stuff along side new macs. So I guess I am screwed. Kids can't play the software on the new mac I just bought. Oh, but all that software will work on xp. Might as well just give my kids the pc to use.
 
Are you opposed to running in Classic on the Mini or are you mad that it is a OS9 program?
 
in your discs... there should be an OS9 install.

They don't seem to install them on the systems anymore but nonetheless the disc should still be there.
 
Phat_Pat said:
in your discs... there should be an OS9 install.

They don't seem to install them on the systems anymore but nonetheless the disc should still be there.
Click to expand...

Thats good to know. I sympathize with the original poster though, I wouldn't want ot install it just for kids games that should be up to date.
 
MacTruck said:
All the kid software there is for OS9 only. No OS X compatibility. That is a HUGE problem.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it is going to be a huge problem once those Macintels start shipping :( Here's hoping beyond hope that Apple have a plan for the education market, either heavy assistance in getting that old stuff carbonized or a change of heart about the importance of getting Classic running under Rosetta.
 
Phat_Pat said:
in your discs... there should be an OS9 install.

They don't seem to install them on the systems anymore but nonetheless the disc should still be there.
Click to expand...

I did not know that newer Macs shipped without OS9 installed but I figured they would have to be able to run it since the guys kid was using a iMac G5. Thats kind of odd of Apple.
 
I'm sure there are more and more users out ther elike me that have no need for Classic... which makes me think... I wonder how much hard drive space i'd recover if i uninstalled it...

EDIT: Or can I uninstall it?
 
Well disc 2 of the osx install discs that came with the mini had classic OS9 on them. Finding this out after repeated attempts to get OS9 on the computer using my old system backup disks and an OS9 install cd. Installed classic and the games work.

Stupid though. I could have just given my kids the Powermac 8500 in the garage but I figured they wouldn't run the new games. HA ha ha. So there you go. If you have kids a $50 powermac 8500 will do fine.

On another note, someone asked me how I like the mac mini and I said it sucks and is way slow. Problem was damn spotlight. Made the computer SO SLOW for the first several boots. I forgot to disable spotlight searching. When I did the computer got 10x faster. Nice computer, crappy software support for kids games, retarded spotlight searching ruins out of box experience and almost made me take it back.

PS: Got all this stuff from the Denver Apple store. Called them and they had no idea if the software would work on osx or needed os9. These are the games running in the kids software section and are prominently displayed next the the iMacs.
 
On another note...


I have a 2 yr old son who I have been showing him the mac since birth. Last week he sat down in front of my computer (G5 Dual 2ghz), picked up the mouse and started surfing. He was clicking on links and moving through pages. Couldn't believe it. SHOCKED. I went to the noggin website and he has been surfing that site ever since. Figured I wanted my G5 back so got him the mini, a dell 20in 2005FPW monitor and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. He has been playing and surfing on that thing all day now. Kid knows his ABCs, can count to 40 and can spell his name.

My boys first mac. A mac mini 1.42ghz, superdrive, wifi, bluetooth, 512 ram.

My first computer. Commadore 64 and I was 15yrs old.

Man kids are lucky these days.
 
dude! right on...

MacTruck said:
On another note...


I have a 2 yr old son who I have been showing him the mac since birth. Last week he sat down in front of my computer ...

My boys first mac. A mac mini 1.42ghz, superdrive, wifi, bluetooth, 512 ram.

My first computer. Commadore 64 and I was 15yrs old.

Man kids are lucky these days.
Click to expand...


Hey, how old (in months) is he? My son is going to be 2 in september, and like yours is so damn advanced in terms of what I had and what he has. There are games on the net that he is playing learning his ABC's, learning to count, stuff like that.

I have a dual 1.8 and an ibook g3 which I let him play on. He can sit there all day and play elmo's keyboard-o-rama... Then again, he can also turn off my computer, turn it on, close the lid, stick his fingers on the screen rename files, so yeah, I still don't let him go all alone. Not sure if I would get him a mini and all that stuff at this time (then again, he isn't 2 yet, just 22 months).

Oh, BTW, my first computer was a C64 as well, and I still have it (along with a 128). Swear I am going to set it up one day to the TV to bring out the old-school games...
 
I have run into the same thing with our local Apple store, I bought a Clifford game for my son and when running it, it went into classic.
Anyway I learned to read the box now when I buy any kids games.
Btw. my first computer was a Commodore C64 too.
 
If it was a new Mac with no user files on it then Spotlight should have finished its indexing within 5 minutes. If you dumped several gigs of documents and other assorted material then it can take up to an hour to index 80gb of info.

Surprisingly it took Spotlight about 20 minutes to index all my code which is quite a lot. It is quite nice being able to type in a variable name and have the class and project appear.
 
Heb1228 said:
I'm sure there are more and more users out ther elike me that have no need for Classic... which makes me think... I wonder how much hard drive space i'd recover if i uninstalled it...

EDIT: Or can I uninstall it?
Click to expand...

Yes; drag "System Folder" and "Applications (Mac OS 9)" to the Trash and empty it. It may give you errors about locked files, but you can just unlock them in the Finder and it will delete them.

EDIT: the amount of space you'll save is based on how many OS 9 apps you have. If you just have the standard set, I think the number is around 300 MB.
 
MacTruck said:
All the kid software there is for OS9 only.
Click to expand...

This is a major hassle. We have a lot of OS9 educational and game software. Apple is saying they are no longer going to support OS9 software under Rosetta on MacIntels. The problem is actually much bigger than that because a lot of businesses have huge amounts (we have Gigabytes!) of data that is only accessible under older legacy software that only runs under OS9/Classic. There are no upgrades. The companies that published the software don't even exist anymore. Apple is leaving us high and dry. They are making a big mistake. If their new hardware runs Classic/OS9 then they'll sell a lot more machines. We need continued support for legacy software and data.

Write to Apple at http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/ and ask them to please keep supporting Classic under Rosetta and on the new upcoming Intel based Macs.
 
From what I can tell, Rosetta relies on OS X. Some people seem to think that Apple are killing OS 9 for the sake of it, but I'm pretty sure that supporting OS 9 on Intel would be a huge undertaking. You'd have more luck by using an emulator such as SheepShaver in order to run a "Virtual Mac" with OS 9.
 
It doesn't have to be such a big undertaking. If the emulator in Rosetta doesn't have the necessary hooks or plain old performance to support Classic, Apple could work on alternatives like lending a hand to Sheepshaver or other projects to get them running as smoothly and quickly as possible on Macintel. They're taking a big risk with some of their traditionally most important markets, exacerbated by the fact that much of the stagnant Classic software is still supported as Windows versions.
 
MacTruck said:
On another note, someone asked me how I like the mac mini and I said it sucks and is way slow. Problem was damn spotlight. Made the computer SO SLOW for the first several boots. I forgot to disable spotlight searching. When I did the computer got 10x faster. Nice computer, crappy software support for kids games, retarded spotlight searching ruins out of box experience and almost made me take it back.
Click to expand...

I have exactly the opposite experience with my mini. It's very responsive, spotlight is very quick and Spotlight is fast and amazingly useful. I switched to the computer in my sig from an iMac G5 1.8ghz w/768mb RAM and I have to say that this machine feels just as fast, just as responsive, and in many ways better than that machine.

Even in tasks of raw power, such as converting audio files, re-compressing DVDs, etc, it seems just about as fast (converting some mp3 audio books into AAC bookmarkable files goes around the same 20-30x speed depending on the bitrates involved as my iMac did, for example).

I love this machine. Next year I will be buying either an Intel mini or an Intel iBook, and my wife will get this one. Of course I may hold out for an Intel PowerMac... but a laptop has been calling my name. Maybe the Intel 12" iBook or PBook will be amazing enough to make me go portable. :)
 
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