Why Apple can't disable OS 9 booting completely

Snowball

Snowball

Switched the Other Way
Here's a common hypothetical situation:
Say I just bought a new PowerMac G4 1.4 GHz, released 1 month after this upcoming MWSF (I said hypothetical:)). Like Apple said, it can't boot OS 9 natively. I buy it with a 30 GB hard drive, but want to use an 80 GB drive I had from before. I format the HD on my old PowerMac, install it into the new PowerMac, boot the new PowerMac from the Jaguar CD, and install Jaguar onto the 80 GB HD - OK so far, right?
Here's the problem: let's say I have to use Quark 5 or some other OS 9-only program in Classic. (Many users will have to do this.) I'm stuck! I can't boot from an OS 9 CD to install Classic and I can't install 9 while booted in X because the installer needs Classic to run. The only way to get around this is install OS 9 on another Mac and copy it over to the new PowerMac (a pretty lousy "solution" if you ask me).
This leaves Apple with two choices, one ugly, one not quite so ugly: they have to either carbonize a new OS 9 installer that you download and install Classic with (ugly), or they allow CD booting of OS 9 (not so ugly). I bet they go for the CD boot option, which could prove to be very interesting. If they allowed 1/2 way OS 9 booting like that, I bet it would be much easier for OpenFirmware hackers to allow HD booting (hey, they enabled the monitor spanning in the iBook/iMac!).

P.S. MacOS Rumors seems to agree:
"Apple still plans to set January as the advent of the first Macs to be unable to boot Mac OS 9 (except from an Emergency CD)..."
 
I can't think of my Mac without OS9. I would understand the "OSX boot-only" argument if OSX was OSXI.

How can you release a OSX-boot-only computer when 80% of the printing industry uses Macs and when Quark Inc. has not released Quark 6 OSX ?

I'm stunned.
 
"How can you release a OSX-boot-only computer when 80% of the printing industry uses Macs and when Quark Inc. has not released Quark 6 OSX ?"

Apple stated a few days ago that they will continue to sell some PowerMacs (the dual 1.25GHz), as well as eMacs that will be able to boot into OS 9 until June 2003. By that time, Quark is supposed to be released for Mac OS X.

Apple will probably include Classic as a part of the Mac OS X installer that is included with new computers.

-JARinteractive
 
Originally posted by jarinteractive
"How can you release a OSX-boot-only computer when 80% of the printing industry uses Macs and when Quark Inc. has not released Quark 6 OSX ?"
Click to expand...

First, I think it should be noted that the printing industry didn't start out using QuarkXPress, so there is no real reason that it has to continue. At one point 100% of desktop publishing was done with Aldus PageMaker. Later FrameMaker and QuarkXPress entered the picture. After a few years QuarkXPress had made some strong headway in the business and Adobe felt they needed a page layout program of their own... so they went shopping. Adobe bought FrameMaker and Aldus PageMaker thinking that they had in one step captured the market (PageMaker + FrameMaker made up the majority the layout programs in use at the time). What ended up happening was quite a surprise, QuarkXPress advanced while PageMaker and FrameMaker didn't. What was worse was that one of the best aspects of QuarkXPress was an idea that Adobe had started with it's own products... plug-ins. In the years that followed PageMaker (bought at version 5) didn't change much through version 6.5 (or even 7 as I understand it). QuarkXPress took over the market slowly increasing the cost of their program as competition fell.

The fact is that though many haven't been around long enough to see it happen, things can change. The way people are talking about QuarkXPress now is not any different from what they were saying about PageMaker some ten years ago.

Second, I haven't (and can't) boot my PowerBook from Mac OS 9 off my hard drive. I didn't install the Mac OS 9 drivers when I reformatted it (from it's original UFS format use when Rhapsody was on it). Classic on that system was installed by using a disk image of a universal install of Mac OS 9.2.1 placed in a folder called Classic in my Applications folder. From there I was able to install Acrobat 4, Photoshop 6, Illustrator 8, GoLive 5, and PageMill 3 (later upgrading Acrobat to 5 and Photoshop to 7). At no point did I boot this system into Mac OS 9 or the like. It went straight from Rhapsody 5.6 to Mac OS X v10.2.

I really don't see not being able to boot a system in Mac OS 9 as a problem, it sure hasn't been for me. :)
 
Originally posted by Snowball
Here's a common hypothetical situation:
Say I just bought a new PowerMac G4 1.4 GHz, released 1 month after this upcoming MWSF (I said hypothetical:)). Like Apple said, it can't boot OS 9 natively. I buy it with a 30 GB hard drive, but want to use an 80 GB drive I had from before. I format the HD on my old PowerMac, install it into the new PowerMac, boot the new PowerMac from the Jaguar CD, and install Jaguar onto the 80 GB HD - OK so far, right?

....


P.S. MacOS Rumors seems to agree:
"Apple still plans to set January as the advent of the first Macs to be unable to boot Mac OS 9 (except from an Emergency CD)..."
Click to expand...

All Macintosh models shipping today have MacOS 9 installed. After January 1, 2003, all Macintosh models will continue to ship with MacOS 9 installed. The only difference is that those that were introduced prior to January 1 will be bootable using MacOS 9. Those introduced after January 1 will not, but Classic should work fine.

For all the publicity given Apple's most recent announcement concerning its educational partners and Quark's announcement to its customers, these announcements are clarifications rather than news. To infer otherwise, you would have to believe that Apple has returned a squad of engineers to development of MacOS 9 for new models that will be obsolete in June. That makes no sense and it is not happening.
 
Originally posted by RacerX
First, I think it should be noted that the printing industry didn't start out using QuarkXPress (…)

Second, I haven't (and can't) boot my PowerBook from Mac OS 9 off my hard drive. I didn't install the Mac OS 9 drivers when I reformatted it (from it's original UFS format use when Rhapsody was on it). Classic on that system was installed by using a disk image of a universal install of Mac OS 9.2.1 placed in a folder called Classic in my Applications folder. From there I was able to install Acrobat 4, Photoshop 6, Illustrator 8, GoLive 5, and PageMill 3 (later upgrading Acrobat to 5 and Photoshop to 7). At no point did I boot this system into Mac OS 9 or the like. It went straight from Rhapsody 5.6 to Mac OS X v10.2.

I really don't see not being able to boot a system in Mac OS 9 as a problem, it sure hasn't been for me. :)
Click to expand...

1) The quote you give is not jarinteractive's ;)
2) How old are you ? It seems I'm twice younger (at least) ! I'm 19 :D
3) Your jump from Rhap to OSX is unusual. Most people are jumping from OS9.22 to OSX.22 today. For those no more OS9-booting could represent some problems - loss of time, loss of OS9 settings, for instance.

I love Quark ! Anyway :p :p :p
 
Apple is also likely to make changes to Classic that will make it an OS X installable pkg rather than an OS installer. Also, those new Macs will come with restore-CDs that contain the Classic environment, so installing a new harddrive isn't a problem, really. Just restore the system from the restore CDs and you're fine.

Btw. Apple promised to continue to sell 1.25 GHz Dual PowerMacs that can boot OS 9, so you won't be able to get the higher end models (to be released after MWSF) booting into OS 9.

I personally hoped Apple would be clear to boot OS 9 off our harddrives earlier in the process, so we could move on. It happened for me, but that's because of my choice of software (and our company's, but I'm IT head there, so...). If we were XPress users back in 2001, I'm sure we'd have found a way to go InDesign by now. I'm also sure Adobe would have been quite helpful in the task.
 
pointed out by toast
1) The quote you give is not jarinteractive's ;)
Click to expand...

That what I get for using that quote button and not proof reading. :rolleyes:

asked by toast
2) How old are you ? It seems I'm twice younger (at least) ! I'm 19 :D
Click to expand...

Four years ago I was twice as old as you. ;) Now it seems like with each passing day I become a year older! :eek:

3) Your jump from Rhap to OSX is unusual. Most people are jumping from OS9.22 to OSX.22 today. For those no more OS9-booting could represent some problems - loss of time, loss of OS9 settings, for instance.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm weird that way. I do have a system that boots both 9.2.1 and 10.2.2, but it didn't seem to go with the thread (or the point I wanted to make).

I love Quark ! Anyway
Click to expand...

So do most of my clients. But then again, at one time no one could even think of using anything else but PageMaker. It was the dream app of it's time (I still use 5.0a today for personal things), but things are always changing. Hopefully this is going to push the price down on QuarkXPress though. When one app has as much power in the industry as QuarkXPress does, they can ask what ever they want. With competition comes price wars! We all win then. :D
 
Alot of Quark users I know are switching to InDesign (I did back when ID 1.5 came out). Besides the familar layout with other Adobe apps, ID is a much better solution currently, and it'll work in 9 or X. I open Quark files all the time in ID and work with them with very few problems, and the interface is relatively easy to learn if you have experience with other Adobe apps.
 
Hmm... I've been using InDesign since day one, and quite clearly, it has its appeals (or I would have dumped it again). Yet, InDesign can't compete with XPress' workflow solutions for many people, meaning, a switch would just be too expensive for them.

That's also a reason why Quark takes so long to come on board of OS X, apparently, because right now they're just not able to provide the same quality of workflow in OS X that they can in OS 9. XPress is heavily dependant on plugins (that'll need updates) as well as the integration of all the bits and parts. However, I would have welcomed a client only version that would allow at least a partial transfer to Mac OS X. Service bureaus and design studios and papers could then switch to OS X on most of the machines, leaving only a few on OS 9 for the integration.
 
Would I be dumb to say that I actually like OS 9 a lot and am only using OS X because it's the only thing that Apple still supports? I mean I know the advantages of OS X, I like its stability ... I like Mail.app in particular. But OS 9 is just so quick and honestly, I find its simplicity quite appealing. I guess it's probably just me.
 
I think people will choose the tool most appropriate to the task. A successful business requires that. People will continue to use older computers and OSes as long as they think it suits them.
I didn't come to the Mac until OS X had started, so I don't have any attachment to OS 9.
What I think is that there may be some hardware changes coming that will require an OS X only boot. Otherwise, one could repartition, install OS 9 by itself, and switch boot locations to allow booting into OS 9 so that the policy would mean nothing.
I think 2003 will be an interesting year for hardware.
 
I love Quark!... So do most of my clients.
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Why can't we have clients like that?! If one more of ours tries to supply a print job in Powerpoint, I'm gonna unplug and leave the planet for good. OS X or not.
 
What i don't understand is if people were so eager to drop OS 7.5-8.5 why they hug OS 9 so comfortably?

Get over it, we all have our operating system preferences but Mac OS X is the only Mac OS that will get the new software with new capabilities.
Quark is left behind because it decided not to port. Even if there is a new quark xpress
will it remain?

I don't hold the rumor crystal ball but Quark coming to OS X is not holding OS X boot only back. It's a personal resistance to upgrade to a
new operating system.

When the print industry does upgrade to Mac OS X they'll be complaining it'll hurt business
to upgrade to Mac OS XI.

Just the same argument all over again.
 
Apple definitely needs more leverage to persuade education institutions and the print industry to upgrade to OS X. When M$ announced the whole software activation scheme for XP, a lot of people complained. However, M$ still got its way. Moreover, Office 11 will only work on the newest Windows OS. That may turn off some people as well, but M$ certainly has much more leverage in terms of market share and financial resources.
 
Originally posted by toast
I can't think of my Mac without OS9. I would understand the "OSX boot-only" argument if OSX was OSXI.

How can you release a OSX-boot-only computer when 80% of the printing industry uses Macs and when Quark Inc. has not released Quark 6 OSX ?

I'm stunned.
Click to expand...

House of Blues for instance uses several g3's for their video production and remote tv broadcasting to their venues around the country. Most of these machines run 8.6 with a few just recently upgraded to 9.2. Some of the software these machines need to run simply do not exist for OSX yet. They are considering buying new G4's to replace these old workhorse G3's, but doing so requires that they also scrap a software solution that works well for them and replace it with something that doesnt exist yet. So they are going to have to buy used G4's that still boot 9 if they want to upgrade at all. The over-all mood there is that they got screwed.
 
Originally posted by Factor41
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Quicksilver G4/867 1152Mb 120Gb OS 10.2.2 Zip250 Stylus1290 ProSpeakers iSub USB2.0 Bluetooth (& T68i) etc
Custom Black & Platinum PowerBook G3/300 384Mb 20Gb OS 10.2.2 FW
Click to expand...

USB 2.0? On a "mirrored drive door" G4? (not quicksilver btw)

Please let me know how you achieve this!

- Max
 
with a PCI card perhaps. :) or he means that he's using a usb2 bluetooth adapter, although i don't know of any.
 
This means BOOT from 9 they ar'nt saying no classic. This means no dual boot. Classic is gunna be around for a while. i still use 9 but 10X is the @#$%. Upgrade it's more than worth it. period.
 
USB 2.0? On a "mirrored drive door" G4? (not quicksilver btw)

Please let me know how you achieve this!
Click to expand...
USB2.0 Connect from Adaptec - PCI card, for the occasional HD I have to get stuff off. And it is a Quicksilver, not a mirrored door one. The Bluetooth adapter is just USB1.1. Maybe I should invest in some commas!
 
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