Forums | MacLife

I agree with others who have mentioned the dedicated OS9 gaming set-up... or for any OS9 needs.  You can snag several nice lappy dirt cheap that will do that.

For our potential switcher, you can tally me as someone else who has never had a problem with OSX.  I have the Tiger (X.4) version running on a 2 year old laptop and the Panther (X.3) running on a 6 year old iBook  and PowerBook (Pismo).

Macs might be slightly more expensive at the start, but the only thing I have had to buy for my Pismo was the airport card (they weren't standard at the time) and a new battery.  I should probably upgrade the hard drive, but it works fine and the rig has enough space for what it does.

In the long run, in my opinion Macs are a much better value both in actual cost and in ease of use.

I used to be one of those "I hate windows" people, just because I had been brought up by parents who hated windows, but now I really don't think or care which OS is better.  All I know is linux sucks.

oatmeal wrote:

DudetheCreator wrote:

All I know is linux sucks.

Holy crap, it's like you're talking directly to me this morning...



Linux is worse than I ever imagined any OS could be.

oh, at last.   finally, people are saying this stuff out loud.   the sooner linux just goes away, the better for all of us.

ElectricSheep wrote:

Linux is probably one of the most least understood things in the computing world. First off, Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel, and nothing more.

It is what you run on top of the Linux kernel that constitutes an operating system, and there are many, many, many, many different varieties out there.

Boy, did this topic veer off...(not that I care, just stating the obvious.)

I think that would upset a lot of people.. I mean a lot!!!!

Look at the craziness that the Y2K "bug" caused..

it was all a conspiracy I tell you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeeeaaaaarrrrr!!! You're never gonna get me copper, ya see?!!

{runs away}

Why? There isn't a precedent for it. Apple may want to use some of the code still and keep it proprietary for competetive reasons.

I think licensing issues would prevent Apple from open sourcing OS9 even if they wanted too.

Apple has released older versions of the Mac OS for free before...they just haven't open-sourced them.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Mac OS 9 released as unsupported freeware within the next year or two.


There are still plenty of perfectly good older Macs out there that will boot into Mac OS 9 natively; I don't see why people are whining so much about lack of support in current hardware. If OS 9 is that important to you, wouldn't it make more sense to spend $50 on an old G3 or G4 tower and have it run in dedicated Mac OS 9 mode?

Last edited by CaptKevMan (2006-02-27 4:33 pm)

Most ironic.

I'm going through old Mac Addicts I never got around to reading and this morning at breakfast I was finishing off Feb 2002  which had  the cover story it was time to switch from Classic to X.

Guess I'm a little late.

I was hoping 6 years in Apple would have made better progress with the interface, appearence and usability of X but there is still time I suppose because everything in my G4 tower is still (for the most part) working well.  I just wish the energies spent by Cupertino in developing iPods and home hobbiest software (iLife) would be directed to their traditional area of pure genius- OS interface.

I long to no longer read in help articles readers being directed to open terminal and type code after the DOS prompt. Or the solution for a lost bit of lost Apple interface brilliance to go purchase this or that piece of shareware. Sigh.

I know,  I know, this is unwelcome heresy. It's a Monday.

To be fair I've only used Jaguar (yeeesh) but am trying to get a cheap copy of Tiger from EBay to see what improvements have been made in that time. I hope I'll be overwhelmed. I do honestly wish to taste the koolaide once again. I miss it.

knobtwirler wrote:

Classic and OS 9 were nowhere near as elegant as OS X is on its own.

Hmmmm, I take quite the opposite view.

CaptKevMan wrote:

Apple has released older versions of the Mac OS for free before...they just haven't open-sourced them.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Mac OS 9 released as unsupported freeware within the next year or two.


There are still plenty of perfectly good older Macs out there that will boot into Mac OS 9 natively; I don't see why people are whining so much about lack of support in current hardware. If OS 9 is that important to you, wouldn't it make more sense to spend $50 on an old G3 or G4 tower and have it run in dedicated Mac OS 9 mode?

I hope you're right, but I still don't think it'll happen.  In response to your second point, switching between two machines isn't the most elegant solution in the world - and it would really suck for laptop users.  Imagine having to duct-tape a PowerBook G3 to the back of a new MacBook Pro and lugging the massive 14 lb beast around everywhere you go.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I guess I'll laugh .  To answer your question though, I think it might make some sense (for a desktop) but it would make even more sense for Apple to support Classic on the Mactels.  As much as 5 years seems like a long transition period, it's actually quite short, even by Apple's standards.  Remember that Mac OS 9 was still able to run 68k apps.  And Windows still covers the entire gamut.  Personally, I don't use many serious Classic apps, but a lot of people still do.  Fontographer was only just recently ported to OS X, and there's still plenty of special purpose apps that have no parallel in OS X.  Also, there's older versions of current apps like PhotoShop 5 that could still serve light to moderate editing needs quite well - even with the Rosetta performance hit.  Photoshop is also an example of the impracticality of using two separate machines or even two separate environments, as is the case with SheepShaver.

You can get newer versions of Fetch if you are a student or faculty.