Is it possible to make osx work/look like os9?

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robotbilly

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I have had my eMac for about a year and a half. I am accustomed to Tiger, and use it everyday. I learned about Macs in graphics classes and those machines ran on OS9. I miss certain little things about 9 that Tiger just doesn't do.
For instance, the way you could pull down a list of all the open applications - for me it was much better than the dock. I also liked the quick access to the desktop on 9. I'm not so into the finder window thing, and find that I have to go through multiple steps to get to a clean view of the Tiger desktop or fuss with expose'.
I was wondering if you can just operate an eMac in the "classic" mode. Of course I would like to keep using things like itunes and other various new software that only works on 10.blah blah blah. Can't I just run Tiger as a background support for newer applications, and have 9 be my preferred interface?
 
You can make OS X behave in a similar way to OS 9 for certain things using the tools explained here. (note: judging by the screen shots, they are referring to a very old version of OS X, certainly not Tiger, so I'm not sure how mnay of these tools will be compatible with 10.4).

Seems to me, though, you are stubbornly refusing to move on (EDIT: sorry that came out mean-spirited. I didn't mean it that way! :) ). I think it you stop trying to use OS X like OS 9 and get the hang of Exposé and the DOck, as well as learn keyboard shortcuts for fast app switching like COmmand+Tab, then you will find OS X is just as intuitive as OS 9, if not more so.
 
"stubbornly refusing to move on" - I do know about the apple-tab trick, and you have a point, to an extent. Another thing I discovered on the link in your reply that I missed was the window shade.
I seriously miss the fonts and the general appearance that the classic OS's used. This new OSX stuff is like driving a brand new car - alright until you get into something like a '71 Lincoln Continental Mark III and are reminded how cool cars used to be.
peace and $$$
 
I understand your point. Of course, OSX is a totally different OS. What it really comes down to is habits, and changing those habits. For example, I use to love the window shade feature, and missed it at first. Now, I am accustom to how OSX handles window minimizing. It takes time.
Of course, as Thank_the_cheese pointed out, there are little hax you could try.
 
I love OS 9, and I felt the same as you when I first switched to X. With some things, it's worth making it more like OS 9. For others, it's worth changing your habits. Exposé is one thing that's worth learning. When I go back to OS 9 now, the one thing I really miss is Exposé.

I still hate OS X's window minimizing. I think it's utterly worthless as a replacement for WindowShade...so I don't use it as that. For a long time I sorely missed WindowShade, but I find that Exposé fills the void pretty well, even though it's not a direct replacement. The new Dock-based minimization is something else entirely, as far as I'm concerned, and it's occasionally useful in its own right.
 
Give virtue (freeware) a spin drive, makes many desktops for fast switching between apps and the finder desktop, might make you enjoy OSX more ;)
 
'Is it possible to make osx work/look like os9?' and the related post - are expressed quite nice and accurately. The same thoughts have been on the minds of millions, each and every day since 2001 - with the release of MacOS X 10.0.0.

To return the 'Application Switcher Menu' consider 'ASM' (Shareware).

Another way to have access to all the running Applications (or 'Processes' as we now say ...) is to use 'FinderPop'.
Make sure to place a check mark in the 'Options' tab's "Add 'Processes' submenu". Now when you activate a contextual menu (via a right button click, or '<control> single button click) there will be a 'Processes' menu item. Selecting the 'Processes' menu item will produce a sub menu of all running Applications (oops, 'Processes).

Millions sympathize with your MacOS X pain.
 
I actually liked the fact that the close button was WAAY on the other side from the rest of the buttons. Even NeXTSTEP had the buttons separated from one another. This made it less easy to accidentally close a window, something that can be an issue in both OS X and Windows (just in different sections of the window bar :D). Personally I wish Apple would stick to its UI rules instead of trying to accomodate what people have become used to (wiht Windows specifically).
 
I agree. You just have to find new habits. But one thing that I'm sure you'll get used to very easily is Expose, which, if you use it right, completely eliminates the need fro "multiple desktops" or windowshade.

What do I mean by "use it right?" Well, probably the smartest thing you can do is get a multi-button mouse, and then assign one of those buttons to show you "all windows" using expose. It makes your workflow flow much better... (workflow flow.... can I say that?)

But, that's just me. Expose, for me, was reason alone to upgrade to 10.3. :)
 
Still. Apple should simply bring back WindowShade as an option. They once tried with "minimize in place" (betas of Jaguar, Mac OS X 10.2), which would have been a "not too bad" alternative, but got rid of that before release. Pity. Minimising to the Dock is really no alternative, sadly.
 
turn the bottom right hand hot corner on to "Exposé F11, Show Desktop" (Exposé?Dashboard settings, system preferences). not you can just throw the mouse to the bottom right of the screen and Behold! you're clean uncluttered desktop.

window shade has no use with exposé doing the job now (except they need a 'Scatter current applicaqtion windows' option), and the Minimise thing is usefull for putting a window away for while to come back to (say a web page you need to comeback to, but need to close etc. it's a nice reminder to do something if it's in the dock waiting for you)...

basically, now, when i go back to os9, i think it looks ugly. it's just too primitive now (i mean moving windows around without actually seeing the content? pfft so last century... i mean, how are you meant to resize something if you can't see when it's the right size for the contents?).
 
Exposé does _not_ replace WindowShade. Exposé does it "its" way, i.e. it takes your windows and scales them to its liking placing them "somewhere" on the screen. It's disruptive behaviour from an UID standpoint. WindowShade (and minimize-in-place for that matter) however play right: The windows neither vanish nor disrupt, they just do what you tell them to do. I don't like it when my OS goes all "Surprise! Looky where I hid your precious document... WHERE's your document, eh?" babytalking down to me. :p ... Exposé is fine if you want to play effects. But for actual work, I'd like those powerful tools back. They don't need to kill Exposé for it, either.
 
lol

i knew someonew wouldn't like my windowshade comment ;). i always thought it was so counterintuitive. it didn't do anything except add clutter, which is something mac has always suffered from. you press the shade button, the window dissappears with no animation or anything to tell you what just happened, and then you do what ever else you wanted to do, which of course, would invariably bring another window in front of it. now what do you do? now you have to search through potentially 30 layers of windows to find the tiny, just as grey as every other title bar, title bar again. at least with exposé you can see what just happened, even if it is a bit random where it places stuff. it's never more than a second long pause before you find the window you're after. and in terms of problem/solution, exposé is basically the replacement for windowshade. i certainly don't miss windowshading.

[/derail]
 
nixgeek said:
Even NeXTSTEP had the buttons separated from one another. This made it less easy to accidentally close a window, something that can be an issue in both OS X and Windows (just in different sections of the window bar :D). Personally I wish Apple would stick to its UI rules instead of trying to accomodate what people have become used to (wiht Windows specifically).
Click to expand...
During the development of NEXTSTEP 4 in 1994/95 NeXT redesigned the user interface... including putting both widgets on the same side (the right side). This interface was widely publicized during that time.

Microsoft used the same clustering of widgets (and the same widget icons) that NEXTSTEP 4 was using in Windows 95 (which was released in late summer 1995).

In the end NeXT abandon the new look because they were trying to move their operating system users over to Solaris... and the user interface of Solaris OpenStep was identical to that of NEXTSTEP 3.3. If OPENSTEP 4.0 had looked like NEXTSTEP 4.0 Beta, then moving to Solaris OpenStep would have seemed like a step backwards for most users.

Still, just as much as Mac users were aghast at seeing how much Windows 95 looked like System 7, NeXT users were in the same position seeing elements of NEXTSTEP used in Windows 95. In the end, everything that made Windows 3.x unique from other GUI based systems was replaced with better ideas from other companies.

Windows 95 looked more like either System 7 or NEXTSTEP than Windows 3.11... and it wasn't by accident.
 
I like Windowshade....I thought it was pretty neat (I still use this feature in FOSS desktop environments).

The one feature that I really liked from OS 9 was being able to place a window and have it act as a drawer at the bottom of the screen. Whenever I needed to have a folder open on the fly that got lots of use, I would place it at the bottom of the screen so that it would be hidden but easily available at the click of a button.
 
All those features were useful under OS 9. After we all made the big switch over to OSX, I certainly missed many of them. Even lately, I have tried certain add-ons, including a OSX version of control strip.
Shortly after using OSX, I found it a quiet OS. I missed the sounds like under OS7-9. I added haxie to add sounds, using OS9 Platinum theme and sounds. It messed my system up, and had to do a reinstall.
I guess, as many of us are, being a long time Mac users, we have grown accustom to features prior OS's used. In the end, and with new developed habits, I can really say I don't miss those features now. Overall I am happy with the look & feel of OSX. Even better is many freeware & shareware add-ons, feel free to explore those.
 
I'm happy to see that I'm not alone in my LOVE--HATE affair with OS-X. I have a G3, G4, & G5 networked through a KVM, and possibly the only smart thing I've ever done in the computer world is to leave my G4 running 9.2.2 untouched. I bought every upgrade of OSX and put them on my G3 so I could learn them at my leisure and not disrupt my work in Photoshop. That cost a lot of money and didn't do the trick. When I brought my G5 home and plugged it in and discovered that it would'nt boot into 9.2.2 I almost returned it, but being smart enough to know that 9.2.2 was a dead issue I kept it. Thankfully Expose, Sidecar, and Tinker Tool came along to save my sanity.
The LOVE part is slowly overcoming the HATE part although I still hate the dock, it get's in the way when I work full screen, and printing in OSX really sucks. I drag all my printing to the G4. I don't know what " CLASSIC " is, but it won't run my color profiling app.

Sam
 
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