Editorial at BusinessWeek: “The new OS X operating system is a triumph, but Jobs & Co. need to keep its predecessor on life support until Mac heads get the message Has the Mac’s classic operating system become like Ole Betsy, a beloved but aging workhorse that must now be put out to pasture? If you ask me, this Ole Betsy has stayed around way past her prime. Still, she ain’t a-going out to graze on the lower 40 acres any time soon.”
Why Apple Can’t Pull the Plug on OS 9
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ok clearly you have no idea why they still have os9, and i don’t even own an apple. the reason why apple is keeping os9 could be one of many reasons. but i believe there are two to three strong ones i’m going to point out. see even though osx is this “super advanced apple os” it still needs it’s old apple-dos os in the back ground to run some programs, which is a brilliant idea that apple came up with.
also you must of missed a point that os6-9 had a following of at lest 13-15 years. now for even a user that’s only used it for one to three months it kind of sticks on them. and then here you saying pretty much that everyone in the apple world should just drop os6-9 production and then focus on just osx, and everyone would be happy.
wrong. the whole os9 with osx is a migration for some, is getting used to the fact that they have a prompt, it’s the fact that it’s got a completly differnt gui with only a few origonal features from os9. it’s the fact that osx is not completly independent if you want to run most of your programs from os9.
so there is a really good reason why apple is still upgrading os9. but i do think that apple will put out old bessy, but it’s not going to be that easy or right away/so automatic.
but there’s also one more point i got to point out. this is like saying that microsoft is making a windows based off of unix and that they’ve only been making software for it in 3 months and that you can’t run windows under it to run you software. see my point! following me on this? good.
I’m a Mac OS 9.2.1 user. I get a lot of flack from Mac friends online and elsewhere about still using Mac OS 9.2.1. However, what people seem to not understand is that the needs of one person are not the same as the needs of another, and because OS X satisfies your or someone else’s needs doesn’t mean that it yet satisfies everybody’s.
Let’s look at what I do in a day. I read and send e-mail. I surf the web. I chat on IRC. I listen to music. I make music. That’s a pretty good summary.
So let’s suppose I upgrade to OS X.
Reading and sending e-mail. Well, okay, I can’t think of any decent e-mail clients for OS X, but there are passable ones that I could probably suffer with. Surfing the web should be fine. Chatting on IRC is somewhat questionable under OS X, since many of the Carbon IRC apps are at least marginally unstable under the new OS still, but I could probably get it done. Now we get to listening to music. Whoops! My sound card doesn’t work -AT ALL- in OS X. Okay, so I can’t listen to music. My Mac is silent. Making music? Well, to begin with, my sound card, as mentioned, doesn’t work. All of my software-based synthesizers are thus nearly dead in the water. Unfortunately, it’s a moot point, since none of them actually work in OS X. Furthermore, my music composition software doesn’t work in OS X. (When I say that the synths and the composition software don’t work in OS X, I’m not being picky about them being native — they don’t work through the Classic environment either. You have to boot into true full OS 9 and leave OS X entirely for them to work.) Oh, and look, my MIDI interface doesn’t work in OS X either, so I can’t even communicate with outboard gear that I could hook headphones up to. But wait! There’s a beta of Peak, a sound editing app that I use, for OS X. Maybe I could at least edit sounds in OS X. Sometimes I spend days at a time doing just that. I could use OS X then, couldn’t I? Nope! I edit sounds to target my digital sampler — an outboard instrument. I communicate with it via SCSI. Guess what? My SCSI card doesn’t work in OS X.
Oh, backing up takes a long time. But wait, that uses SCSI too. Oh well.
So really, I could use a poorer collection of tools than normal to chat on IRC and read e-mail but I couldn’t listen to music while doing it, which I always do. Mostly, all that OS X would do for me is let me browse the web, silently. And sure, if the web browser crashed, the OS would still sit there and continue chugging away. But then, I can’t remember the last time Netscape 6.1 crashed for me. So even that’s kind of useless.
I have OS X on my system. I boot into it once in a while and spend some time fooling around. In time, all of my hardware and software will have drivers and be ported, and I will move over happily. However, consider that I even have a Mac that can run OS X in the first place, which many people don’t.
For a lot of people, going to OS X is just plain not feasible at this time.
I’m a Mac OS 9.2.1 user. I get a lot of flack from Mac friends online and elsewhere about still using Mac OS 9.2.1. However, what people seem to not understand is that the needs of one person are not the same as the needs of another, and because OS X satisfies your or someone else’s needs doesn’t mean that it yet satisfies everybody’s.
Let’s look at what I do in a day. I read and send e-mail. I surf the web. I chat on IRC. I listen to music. I make music. That’s a pretty good summary.
So let’s suppose I upgrade to OS X.
Reading and sending e-mail. Well, okay, I can’t think of any decent e-mail clients for OS X, but there are passable ones that I could probably suffer with. Surfing the web should be fine. Chatting on IRC is somewhat questionable under OS X, since many of the Carbon IRC apps are at least marginally unstable under the new OS still, but I could probably get it done. Now we get to listening to music. Whoops! My sound card doesn’t work -AT ALL- in OS X. Okay, so I can’t listen to music. My Mac is silent. Making music? Well, to begin with, my sound card, as mentioned, doesn’t work. All of my software-based synthesizers are thus nearly dead in the water. Unfortunately, it’s a moot point, since none of them actually work in OS X. Furthermore, my music composition software doesn’t work in OS X. (When I say that the synths and the composition software don’t work in OS X, I’m not being picky about them being native — they don’t work through the Classic environment either. You have to boot into true full OS 9 and leave OS X entirely for them to work.) Oh, and look, my MIDI interface doesn’t work in OS X either, so I can’t even communicate with outboard gear that I could hook headphones up to. But wait! There’s a beta of Peak, a sound editing app that I use, for OS X. Maybe I could at least edit sounds in OS X. Sometimes I spend days at a time doing just that. I could use OS X then, couldn’t I? Nope! I edit sounds to target my digital sampler — an outboard instrument. I communicate with it via SCSI. Guess what? My SCSI card doesn’t work in OS X.
Oh, backing up takes a long time. But wait, that uses SCSI too. Oh well.
So really, I could use a poorer collection of tools than normal to chat on IRC and read e-mail but I couldn’t listen to music while doing it, which I always do. Mostly, all that OS X would do for me is let me browse the web, silently. And sure, if the web browser crashed, the OS would still sit there and continue chugging away. But then, I can’t remember the last time Netscape 6.1 crashed for me. So even that’s kind of useless.
I have OS X on my system. I boot into it once in a while and spend some time fooling around. In time, all of my hardware and software will have drivers and be ported, and I will move over happily. However, consider that I even have a Mac that can run OS X in the first place, which many people don’t.
For a lot of people, going to OS X is just plain not feasible at this time.