On 2003/02/10 07:52 PM or thereabouts, Bonnie Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> intoned:
> Darcy, Doug, et.al., > Thanks again, so much. It turns out, miracle of miracles, after days of > trying to get my hard drive to work, on advice of a friend I left it on all > night with the OS 9 CD booted up, and while I was talking today to a very > nice tech guy from MacConnection about buying a new drive, suddendly my HD > desktop appeared. I haven't a clue why, but I've been able to reinitialize > my drive and reinstall OS 9 and happily my nightmare seems to be over. Ah, good voodoo. Glad you're back in business! > But I'm hoping now I > can put off buying a new Mac until more software developers catch up to OS > 10. Yes, that's definitely the way to go (IMO) > (That is my beef with Apple--do they really have to not allow OS 9 to be > viable any more in order to sell computers? They are alienating their loyal > customers at the same time they're trying to get people to switch to Macs.) Despite the inconvenience for people like us, who are still dependent on OS 9-only software, I have to agree with Apple's decision to ditch OS 9 bootability (especially since they continue to sell the old OS 9 machines as well). First, not supporting two operating systems relieves Apple of the obligation to do everything twice. As they introduce new technology into their machines -- FireWire 800, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth, the Xserve RAID, plus the latest video cards, drivers for printers, scanners, digital cameras, etc etc -- if they were to continue supporting booting OS 9, they would have to write and maintain two completely different sets of drivers, one for each OS. That's a nightmare. Having to design hardware that boots two different OS's also places a lot of unnecessary constraints on Apple's engineers. As they prepare to abandon Motorola's G4 in favor of IBM's next-generation 970 processor (which is optimized for UNIX), it would be absolutely insane for them to try to keep up hardware support for OS 9. You mention Apple's courting of switchers -- having to deal with the two OS's can be very confusing for someone coming to the Mac for the first time. Apple is heavily promoting its digital hub apps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD), and in-house apps like iSync, iCal, Safari, Keynote, Final Cut, etc. We are being told these apps are integral to the Macintosh experience (and some of them are indeed pretty nifty) but for obvious reasons, these are not available (or discontinued) in OS 9. As far as Steve Jobs is concerned, OS X *is* the Mac, and he's made a clean break with everything that came before. There are lots of other reasons... for instance, OS X brought real security to the Mac for the first time, but when that security can be instantly defeated by simply slipping in an OS 9 boot CD, you've got a problem. Finally, the vast majority of Mac users don't need OS 9. With the recent release of ProTools and other digital audio apps, Finale and Quark are among the very last applications who haven't been ported. And it's pretty clear that this is due largely to some pretty serious foot-dragging at those two companies. If Coda had taken the Carbonization project seriously and allocated it the resources it deserved, we could have had the OS X version of Finale six months ago. - Darcy ------ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Boston, MA _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
