Nine lives for Mac OS 9

CNET News.com ^ | December 13, 2002 | Joe Wilcox

[new cruelty]

Apple Computer has pulled back from a plan that would have made Mac OS X the primary operating system on all new Macs starting in January. In September, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company said that after the New Year, new Macs would only boot up into Mac OS X. Older models had the capability of booting into Mac OS X or the older OS 9.2. New systems would still ship with OS 9.2--to support the "Classic" mode for older software--but it could only be accessed through OS X.

However, Apple said Friday that it will continue to sell schools some Macs capable of booting up into Mac OS 9, and will continue to sell a Power Mac G4 geared toward professionals such as graphic designers until June.

The change in strategy highlights a long-standing problem for Apple: moving customers over to Mac OS X. Apple released the new OS in March 2001 but quickly received criticism from users and software developers.

The first iteration shipped without support for DVD or CD-rewritable drives. At the same time, developers complained about problems with application programming interfaces (APIs)--software hooks to the operating system--that made moving applications to Mac OS X more difficult.

Only after Mac OS X 10.1 shipped, in September 2001, did Apple iron out most of the kinks. Soon after, Adobe Systems, Microsoft and many other major Mac developers started shipping OS X versions of their software.

However, Quark--which makes one of the most important software applications sold for the Mac, a desktop publishing program called QuarkXPress--stuck with a Mac OS 9.2 version of its product. That situation potentially created a problem for Quark users looking to buy a new Mac but needing to boot into the older Mac OS 9.2. And Quark is still not expected to release a Mac OS X version of QuarkXPress at next month's Macworld trade show, according to Apple.

"To not have one of the key apps that serves their primary target segment for their new operating system is a festering infection that could precipitate defections among its most loyal customers," said IDC analyst Roger Kay.

Quark released a new version of QuarkXPress for Windows XP and Mac OS 9 in January. Rival Adobe has tried to use Quark's absence to drum up sales of its InDesign 2 program, competing page-layout software that runs natively on Mac OS X.

But Kay warned that some Mac users, particularly at companies where most employees use PCs running Windows, could switch to the Windows version of QuarkXPress.

"Offering a configuration that still runs Quark is a Band-Aid for Quark users," Kay said.

Apple downplayed the change in positioning on Mac OS 9 support.

"Apple's professional customers are rapidly adopting Mac OS X, with more than 80 percent now choosing Mac OS X as their default OS," the company said in the statement. "To accommodate a minority of our pro customers still running Mac OS 9 applications such as QuarkXPress, Apple will continue to offer a 1.25GHz dual-processor Power Mac that will boot into Mac OS 9 until June."

Apple also faced potential problems in the education market. Because of buying cycles and the downturn in the economy, some education customers were moving to Mac OS X at a slower pace than the rest of the Mac market.

"The education budgets next year, like all public sector budgets, are going to be negatively affected by lower tax receipts this year based on the down economy," Kay said.

Slow release of native education software exacerbated the problem. In an attempt to jump-start education conversion, Apple in October offered teachers free copies of Mac OS X 10.2, or Jaguar, through the end of the year.

"We are pleased to report that education customers are rapidly adopting Mac OS X and are now ordering over 50 percent of their Macs with Mac OS X as the default OS," the company said in the statement. "Apple expects this percentage to climb to over 75 percent by the start of the next education buying season this April."

Apple released the Jaguar update in August, initially reporting record sales. About 5 million of the estimated 25 million Mac users worldwide will be using Mac OS X by the end of the year, according to Apple.

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[jimtorr]

It'll be a long time before I switch to OS X. The OS 9 emulation runs a bit slow on my 3-year old G3 350. Also, I just do not like Netscape 5, which runs only on OS X. It's too much like IE, which I like even less.

Yes, I do keep a copy of IE around. There are now some sites that do not work without a Microsoft cave-in.

[B-Chan]

I am a professional artist and use QuarkXPress every day, and I run it on a G4 Mac running the emulated 9.2. Why? Because I hate OSX, and if it's OSX or Windows, I'll switch to Windows. I don't care if 99.99% of all Mac users are running in OSX. It sucks. It's kludgy and ugly and stupid.

[Anchoragite]

OS X kicks arse. Indesign also kicks arse. But it's a good thing to keep OS 9 available, just to allow choice during the changeover. The top desktop publishing layout (Quark) sw is just one of the problems. There's also sound production and recording, etc. (like ProTools) that haven't switched to OS X yet.

[Anchoragite]

Enjoy your new PC.

[randita]

I've been using OS X since February and love it. it's been very stable for me. Have just upgraded to Jaguar.

I can understand the reasoning behind keeping the OS 9 option as there are still quite a few very useful peripherals that still are not compatible with OS X. My husband would switch to OS X in a heat beat, but his Dymo Labelmaker which is essential for his business correspondence does not have OS X compatible software yet.

As far as the browser goes, try Ominweb. It was designed specifically for OS X. Occasionally I run across a website that prefers IE or Netscape, but I ignore it and continue to use the Omniweb and it works fine.

I also use the OS X mail and IM program instead of Outlook Express or similar. It's very nice.

[Astronaut]

OS X is the future. I'm running Netscape 7; there never was a Netscape 5. I don't even have OS 9 on my hard drive because I dont need to run it in emulation. Its day is over. If you wont run OS X, you're stuck with the mediocrity of Windows. Actually, to call Windows mediocre is being generous; the truth is that it sucks beyond belief.

[randita]

bump for your astute input

[HAL9000]

I hardly ever use OS 9 any more - not even the Classic environment. OS X does everything I need so far, and does it better than OS 9 or Windows. Most of the software I ran on Linux is working on OS X now too.

[zarf]

I've got so much software/hardware with all the associated drivers and projects up and running that I've had no time to port over to OSX. I'm still running 9.22.

Do you have to wipe OS 9 from your drive in order to install OSX? It sounds like it's going to be a total pain in the arse.

[new cruelty]

Maybe you should switch :)

[Norman Arbuthnot]

I just took a look at the Omni Group web site. The browser looks pretty cool. I think I will give it a try. I was switching back and forth between Netscape and IE for a while before I decided to use IE as my primary browser, but I always like to have alternatives to MSFT products.

[aviator]

I've been running Mac's since 1986 and am THRILLED to have Jaguar on the G4. Every two weeks or so I have to remind myself to run various disk doctor programs because the computer doesn't crash. I have three computers on Jaguar and heavily use word processing, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and GoLive to produce books and web pages.

Don't wipe OS 9 from your hard drive...just run the OS X installer. You can choose which startup system to boot from.

The new Netscape can suppress the irritating popup web page ads....a nice feature.

[lavrenti]

I'm a Quark operator from the very beginning. The decisions the two bozos running their company (remember when they tried to buy Adobe?) have made over the years will eventually doom their product.

Any of you guys use Mac Word 5.1 to flow text into Quark? I take word processed text, do all my clean-up in 5.1 and drop it in. Seamless, unlike later versions of Mac Word.

[UB355]

I'm running Netscape 7 on 8.6, works great. I love the popup blocker in Netscape 7

[Anchoragite]

I just got Mozilla on this Jaguar box... It's the sweetest browser I've found -- same as Netscape, it has the pop-up blocks, intuitive cookie-blocking, etc. Works great.

[DonQ]

The Apple people may have learned the lesson that Commodore learned a decade ago, when it tried to make the immensely popular Commodore-64 obsolete ahead of time by introducing the Plus-4, which actually offered nothing new and couldn't run any of the old 64 software; within five months of the big fanfare introduction, computer magazines were trying to give hundreds away in contests that nobody bothered to enter.

[HAL9000]

Do you have to wipe OS 9 from your drive in order to install OSX? It sounds like it's going to be a total pain in the arse.

No, it's not necessary to reformat the drive or remove OS 9 before installing OS X. If you want to run OS 9 in the Classic environment under Mac OS X, you need version 9.2 or later.

If you have Norton Utilities, you may also want to optimize the disk drive before installing OS X.

[jimtorr]

Ooops, you're right, it's Netscape 7, not 5. As for your contention that the only choices are OS X or windows, that's nonsense. There are lots from freepers who use linux.

I'm very happy with OS 9.2. I see no reason whatsoever to switch to OS 10, when I don't like the interface. My sister, on the other hand, loves it on her G4 850(?).