Is it ture that classic enviorment will not be supported in 10.5? This will be a shame and I hope the open source community will be able to open a backdoor.
We cannot speculate on Apple's future plans here, but the Opens Source community already has such a program in the form of SheepShaver, an OS 9.0.4 emulator that can be run on a variety of Macs and PCs, including Intel Macs. \[Sheep Shaver is a pun on Shape Shifter]
I agree with you completely. I think Apple wanted to do everything they could to discourage new development in OS 9, but if we believe what Steve is saying, that battle has already been won. More and more non-Apple software is requiring 10.3 or 10.3.9 as a minimum. It is not supporting 10.2 -- the idea that someone would develop new stuff for OS 9 just seems silly.
I wish they would release Classic support for Intel Macs. I have just a few things they never fixed along the way, so I have to keep at least one machine that can still run Mac OS 9. And they messed up support for my wide-format printer in 8.5 and never fixed it, so I need to keep a Mac that predates OS 8.5.
The Mac has always been the platform where well-behaved software would continue to run in some fashion on the next generation. It feels like that is much less true today than it used to be.
Well, what I'm scared like all mac users is support for PowerPC based macintosh. I see it clearly that devlopers are now constructing OS X apps for the intel platform only. Witnessing the new game line from EA has intel only games which is truely unfair to the huge precentage of the mac users that are on the PowerPC architect. Even looking at the sneak peak for leapord, I see that Apple promotes their 64 bit tenchology on the intel side! I know I'm getting a tad crazzy over this, but spending a huge investment on this beast and seeing Apple slowly walking away from their origins of the PPC/Motorola environment.
But to get back on topic, I see the vision of somebody porting classic from 10.4 to 10.5 which should be a simple task.
Of course to those of us that remember, OS9 and OS9 contained "Classic" environments of their own, to support m68k executables in their PPC code base. This was an enormous effort, more than 3 years between System 7.5 and OS8.0 to get this right. And it was a remarkable achievement.
Now, supporting m68k code (code in the resource fork, remember) on Intel may be more than any of us can hope for.
The new EA games are simple ports from the PC versions of the games, written to use special graphics capabilities not found on PPC. A shame, yes, but financial sense by EA. Although 50% of the Mac users still use exclusively PPC (based on an average 5 year primary computer lifespan and rapidly increasing non-business Mac market share), what portion of them use something powerful enough to run the EA games ?
Best solution for all of us seems to be to keep something that runs either Classic, or OS9 natively. My MDD will stay around for years after I've bought a new Mac Pro. Similarly, my original Bondi iMac is kept for OS8, and my SE is kept for System 6 and System 7 (wish I'd kept my IIci and IIsi, and Classic II, and PBG4, and PBG3 but they have good homes now).
There are two aspects to this situation. One is Intel Macs not being able to run Classic (without something like Sheep Shaver). That is already known and understandable considering the differences between PowerPC and Intel architectures.
The second is PowerPC Macs with Leopard not being able to run Classic apps. That would be based on a decision made by Apple to support Classic or not support Classic on Leopard.
Only thing that we can do is hope for Apple to make the right choice and keep the classic option open for the PowerPC macs, that's one of the main reason why I love my mac since I have the best of both worlds. But I know there will be a backdoor to make classic work in OS 10.5!
I have read that there is no Classic support in 10.5, even for PPC Macs.
There sounds like very little that I don't have already in 10.5 worth the purchase price. For me, 10.4 was a waste of money too, why i'm still on 10.3.9. If there's no Classic, I'll save myself £100 by not buying it for my PPC Macs.
According to MacFixit today, Leopard does not support Classic. Thank you, Apple - I still have a couple of OS9 programs which do things I can't do with anything else, and which are never going to be updated.
If you must run OS 9 programs then your solution is simply, you can't upgrade to Leopard. If you don't like that solution then you can upgrade and dump the OS 9. It is your choice.
If you must run OS 9 programs then your solution is simply, you can't upgrade to Leopard. If you don't like that solution then you can upgrade and dump the OS 9. It is your choice.
I feel it's not unreasonable to suggest that it's Apple's choice rather than mine (in the sense that they've caused it). And of course you are correct about the options (that's a better word, I feel - choices are owned but options just exist) but when I next buy a new computer, probably next year, the only option will be Leopard - of course as long as my old machines work I can still use them: but nothing last forever!
As Lawrence Peter Berra is alleged to have said "It's deja vu all over again." I recall an almost identical discussion, on these boards, when OS X was launched. The OS 9 diehards screamed bloody murder. One person even said words to the effect "how can Apple do this without consulting us loyal users"!!
The slow lingering death of OS 9 began when OS X was released in early 2001, i.e. six and a half years ago, a long enough time to accept the inevitable. Let me respectfully suggest the effort spent complaining about what we cannot control might be better spent learning to use the new OS.
I plan to spend 26 October installing 10.5 on four of my Macs. The family pack, for $199, is a great price.
