[analogika]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Okay... so how does that relate to the topic of Safari being a success/failure?

Very little in this thread relates to that topic.

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

All I know is that I've never encountered anyone who couldn't understand the basic concept that some software is for Macs, and some software is for PCs. As I said before, that's the main reason most people are afraid to switch - they think they won't be able to find software that they need. But even if people didn't know what a Mac is, at least you'd think they'd be able to see the label on the freaking box the software came in that either says "Windows" or "Mac".

You obviously don't work in computer retail.

[hldan]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Very little in this thread relates to that topic.



You obviously don't work in computer retail.

Agreed, most people don't know anything more than the manufacturer's name, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, IBM. All them look like a "computer" to the customer and it's not out of place or unusual for people expect their existing Windows software to run on their new Mac.

Try explaining to a customer why their legacy Windows software will not run on their shiny new Vista machine, it's all Windows right ? So why ask the salesman, it's obvious to assume.

[Catfish_Man]

Another aspect to consider when looking at Safari's success is the community that has built up around WebKit. More and more OSX applications use it internally, and with Adobe's new announcements, it looks like it will even start being used in cross-platform apps (see here ).

[besson3c]

Well, it seems that Webkit has been successful in being a portable engine easily utilized by other apps. This is a valid measure of success that I wasn't thinking of when I created this thread.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by hldan 

Try explaining to a customer why their legacy Windows software will not run on their shiny new Vista machine, it's all Windows right ? So why ask the salesman, it's obvious to assume.

This little bit here has sent us more than one customer:

1. Customer buys Windows upgrade only to find that none of her stuff works anymore.

2. Might as well buy a Mac; her friends who just got one seem really happy with it...

[CharlesS]

That kind of customer is in for a rude surprise the next time Apple abruptly decides to kill off backward compatibility for her stuff like they recently did with the Classic environment on Intel Macs and consequently none of her stuff works after an upgrade. What will they kill off next time? Rosetta? CFM? Who knows, but one thing's for sure: Apple is hardly any better than Microsoft at backward compatibility. They used to be, but not anymore.

[analogika]

Apple killed passive support for a System that was released in October '99 - in 2006.

All machines that shipped with OS 9 were capable of running at least 10.3, and pretty much all hardware that worked with those machines under OS 9 continues to work absolutely seamlessly under OS X (exceptions being niche products like SCSI cards or so).

Abruptly. Right.

Of course, you'd be surprised at how many customers received exactly that surprise.

I realize you never meet these people in geek circles, but I *still* get customers coming in slightly shocked that their software won't work under OS X. Of course, that passes immediately once you ask them what they do with their machines and it turns out that everything comes included with their new Intel iMac, anyways - apart from Office, which is free as NeoOffice, or €100 with the machine.

These clueless people aren't bozos, they're smart people. Their interests just lie elsewhere.

These are Apple's customers. Remember "The Computer for the Rest of Us"?

Meanwhile, people with computers less than two years old are upgrading to Vista, and boy, are they surprised. Their friends and relatives are my customers a few weeks later.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

That kind of customer is in for a rude surprise the next time Apple abruptly decides to kill off backward compatibility for her stuff like they recently did with the Classic environment on Intel Macs and consequently none of her stuff works after an upgrade. What will they kill off next time? Rosetta? CFM? Who knows, but one thing's for sure: Apple is hardly any better than Microsoft at backward compatibility. They used to be, but not anymore.

Charles, I know we've been over this topic before, but the classic Mac OS ran on real Macs. It doesn't run on Intel PCs. Apple discontinued the Mac - it sells glorified Intel PCs now that have some proprietary elements necessary to run the Intel version of OS X. It wasn't an arbitrary decision at all.

But backward compatibility does have a place in this discussion. One of the major downsides to relying on Safari is that you have to upgrade to the next milestone of OS X in order to get the next major release of Safari.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Apple killed passive support for a System that was released in October '99 - in 2006.

No, they killed a compatibility layer for software written for that system, which incidentally was the default OS preinstalled on Macs up until (IIRC) 10.2 was released in 2002.

All machines that shipped with OS 9 were capable of running at least 10.3,

Not sure how that's relevant.

and pretty much all hardware that worked with those machines under OS 9 continues to work absolutely seamlessly under OS X (exceptions being niche products like SCSI cards or so).

Are you joking? There were tons of devices for which the manufacturers never bothered making an OS X version of the drivers, which wasn't really surprising because they had to be completely rewritten for OS X, which was not a trivial thing to do.

Abruptly. Right.

We support software going back to 1984 - whoops, now it only goes back to 2002. Abrupt.

Of course, you'd be surprised at how many customers received exactly that surprise.

No, I wouldn't, because I know quite a few of those customers. They see the label on the box that says "Mac" and they wonder why the hell it doesn't work on their Mac.

My aunt was one of those - she had an old board game that didn't run on her new iMac G5 because the Classic environment wasn't preinstalled. The guys at the store went ahead and installed the Classic environment, which solved the problem. Her description of the problem was something along the lines of "There was something wrong with my iMac that caused this game not to work, but I took it to the store and they fixed it."

I realize you never meet these people in geek circles, but I *still* get customers coming in slightly shocked that their software won't work under OS X. Of course, that passes immediately once you ask them what they do with their machines and it turns out that everything comes included with their new Intel iMac, anyways - apart from Office, which is free as NeoOffice, or €100 with the machine.

Well yeah, if their needs are simple.

Unfortunately, there's no replacement for Folio Views, for example, which my parents need to read files that they're required to be able to read for their job. Because of this, they refuse to buy any new hardware, and if 10.5 doesn't include the Classic environment, I won't be able to get them to upgrade to that, either.

Meanwhile, people with computers less than two years old are upgrading to Vista, and boy, are they surprised. Their friends and relatives are my customers a few weeks later.

When OS XI comes out and kills off all OS X software, they'll switch right back. Or maybe they won't have to wait that long - maybe Apple will take away Rosetta in 10.6, thus killing their copy of MS Word and forcing them to pay $300 to upgrade it. I no longer have any faith in Apple to preserve backward compatibility at all, and using backward compatibility as a selling point vs. Vista is naïve at best, dishonest at worst.

[Big Mac]

That's absurd, Charles. You wanted Apple to expend resources porting a discontinued OS to a completely foreign architecture? Or did you want Apple to slap together a slow-as-ass 68k emulation environment to run under the virtual Classic environment? Once again, Apple stopped selling real Macs capable of running the classic Mac OS. Your anger is misdirected. Instead of being angry that Apple didn't extend Classic support, be angry that Apple defected to Intel.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Or did you want Apple to slap together a slow-as-ass 68k emulation environment to run under the virtual Classic environment?

Why would this be a problem? Apple could slap together a crap PearPC derivative that runs at 10% of native speed and it will still be sufficient for most uses of Classic.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Why would this be a problem? Apple could slap together a crap PearPC derivative that runs at 10% of native speed and it will still be sufficient for most uses of Classic.

That's been the question in my mind: why not extend the Rosetta technology so that Classic is available on Intel Macs, even if it means significantly reduced speed? After all, the average speed of an OS 9 machine was nothing compared to a C2D, so a 1/10th speed reduction would still be tolerable (even Sheepshaver runs at a respectable clip on my MacBook). The only two reasons that Apple would do this?

1) Something in OS 9 would make this nearly impossible without major changes to the OS, costing resources Apple would rather not spend
2) Apple simply doesn't want to support OS 9 at all anymore, and this is the easiest way to do it.

I wonder how long Rosetta'll still be around...?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

That's absurd, Charles. You wanted Apple to expend resources porting a discontinued OS to a completely foreign architecture? Or did you want Apple to slap together a slow-as-ass 68k emulation environment to run under the virtual Classic environment?

Speed of 68k emulation isn't much of a concern - emulating a 68k machine, whether through Basilisk or OS 9's built-in emulator, has been far faster than any actual 68k machine for probably over a decade now. They could even skip the 68k emulation and just put a PPC emulator in the thing - OS 9 had its own 68k emulator which would work just fine, and although it'd be slower that way, actual 68k machines were slow enough that there probably wouldn't be that noticeable a difference anyway. Even then it might still be faster than a real 68040.

They could just take SheepShaver and make it a little more stable and I'd be happy. SheepShaver actually runs pretty well for something that's barely developed. The problem is that it's riddled with bugs that being under active development for a little while would probably take care of.

Instead, people have been clamoring for Apple to remove Classic from 10.5, even for PPC machines. And they could actually end up doing it. That pisses me off.

Once again, Apple stopped selling real Macs capable of running the classic Mac OS. Your anger is misdirected. Instead of being angry that Apple didn't extend Classic support, be angry that Apple defected to Intel.

I haven't yet seen any definition of "Mac" from any credible source that states that it has to run on a PowerPC processor in order to fit the definition. If that were the case, then I guess the original Mac wouldn't qualify, as it ran on a 68k, not a PPC. Or maybe it's the PowerPC machines that weren't "real" Macs.

Come on, this is ridiculous. The processor is back-end. A Mac is a Mac as long as the front-end Mac experience is there.

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

That's been the question in my mind: why not extend the Rosetta technology so that Classic is available on Intel Macs, even if it means significantly reduced speed? After all, the average speed of an OS 9 machine was nothing compared to a C2D, so a 1/10th speed reduction would still be tolerable (even Sheepshaver runs at a respectable clip on my MacBook). The only two reasons that Apple would do this?

1) Something in OS 9 would make this nearly impossible without major changes to the OS, costing resources Apple would rather not spend
2) Apple simply doesn't want to support OS 9 at all anymore, and this is the easiest way to do it.

3. Apple simply doesn't care about its long-time users and is focusing primarily on switchers.

I wonder how long Rosetta'll still be around...?

Not long, I'm sure. Of course, in a few years everyone on MacNN will think this is great, and will be going on about how Rosetta is such an incredible drain on Apple's resources, that they simply must remove it from the next OS build.

[himself]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Since Safari is Cocoa, porting it to Windows would probably mean writing a new GUI from scratch, which shouldn't be terribly difficult. The challenging part (which others have attempted in the past, but never quite accomplished) is getting WebKit building reliably on Windows.

There is a Windows port of WebKit. Swift has been around for a few months, and all reports are that it is blazing fast, but otherwise obviously incomplete.

I use Safari primarily, but I crack open the other browsers on occasion, especially for testing purposes. None of these browsers are flawless, but Safari just flows easier with how I work and browse. Services are priceless to me, and Firefox's extensions are good, but clunky in comparison for how I need to use them. In the end it is really about how you work and what you are used to using, but I can't understand why anyone would vote against having an additional and (by most accounts) superior rendering engine available.

WebKit has made tremendous progress in its relatively short life span, arguably much more than either IE or Mozilla in equivalent timeframes or in their entire lifetimes. I expect WebKit to surpass them both (if it hasn't already) very soon, and its growing acceptance should force serious web developers to take notice and start developing to the standards. UI features and other things like javascript handling are not too difficult beyond that.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Charles, I know we've been over this topic before, but the classic Mac OS ran on real Macs.

No it didn't!

It required PowerPCs at minimum. It would NOT run on the last REAL Macs (those with 68040 processors) at all.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Are you joking? There were tons of devices for which the manufacturers never bothered making an OS X version of the drivers, which wasn't really surprising because they had to be completely rewritten for OS X, which was not a trivial thing to do.

You're wrong.

All machines shipped since 1999, when OS 9 was released, had USB.

Note that I explicitly said "except niche products, such as SCSI cards". The vast majority of USB and Firewire peripherals available in 1999 continued to work out-of-the-box in OS X.

[blackbird_1.0]

Originally Posted by analogika 

All machines shipped since 1999, when OS 9 was released, had USB.

Note that I explicitly said "except niche products, such as SCSI cards". The vast majority of USB and Firewire peripherals available in 1999 continued to work out-of-the-box in OS X.

Correct. (1998 for USB, 1999 for OS 9)

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika 

You're wrong.

All machines shipped since 1999, when OS 9 was released, had USB.

Note that I explicitly said "except niche products, such as SCSI cards". The vast majority of USB and Firewire peripherals available in 1999 continued to work out-of-the-box in OS X.

So what if they had USB? USB doesn't magically cause devices not to need drivers. We had to chuck a bunch of USB scanners, for one, due to non-existence of OS X drivers. There was a bunch of other stuff that we had to replace too, although I can't remember specifically what right now, as it's late.

USB stuff, PCI cards, it didn't matter what it was - if the manufacturer didn't think it was worth the effort to redo the drivers, you weren't running it on OS X. There were even some printers, as I recall, that took forever to get OS X drivers. And of course the software couldn't run at all except in a compatibility environment that before long wasn't even installed by default (and now can't be installed at all).

Trying to say that OS X was more backward compatible than Vista is just an... interesting argument.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Well yeah, if their needs are simple.

Unfortunately, there's no replacement for Folio Views, for example, which my parents need to read files that they're required to be able to read for their job. Because of this, they refuse to buy any new hardware, and if 10.5 doesn't include the Classic environment, I won't be able to get them to upgrade to that, either.

So?

An acquaintance of mine still has a Mac IIfx sitting around because he has a DSP card for audio processing that requires a NuBus slot - and OS 8.

Folio Views is a wonderful example of what I meant by a "niche product". I'm pleased you found one. I'm not entirely sure if using that in SheepShaver wouldn't be a viable alternative, but I suspect so.
Of course, in the mid-term, their company should probably look into transferring their vital operations databases away from proprietary formats into open standards. Sooner or later, every company goes under and takes its closed file format with it.

In my experience, the vast majority of people who started yelling when it became clear that switching to Intel would kill Classic and ran out to buy the last G5s have long since discovered that they have absolutely no need for Classic any longer.

The number of Mac users who necessarily HAVE TO have Windows running is FAR greater, especially now that this is actually an option and these people are finally flocking to the Mac in droves...


The point about backwards-compatibility: You've got it backwards.

You can install the newest OS on a machine ALMOST EIGHT YEARS OLD (Oct. '99 slot-loading iMac), and it won't break things, and it will run decently.

Newer machines were NEVER capable of running older Systems, and just like your parents happen to rely upon software whose brain-dead developers never bothered to update it, there was plenty of "Classic" Mac software that no longer ran under OS 9 without an update (or even under System 7, for that matter - remember System 7, Charles?).

No change whatsoever in policy.

If users rely upon developers who drop their own products, they are stuck. And that's been the situation for decades.

Speaking of which: Does anybody know if System 4.2 runs in SheepShaver? MacPlaymate won't run in System 7 or higher...

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I haven't yet seen any definition of "Mac" from any credible source that states that it has to run on a PowerPC processor in order to fit the definition. If that were the case, then I guess the original Mac wouldn't qualify, as it ran on a 68k, not a PPC. Or maybe it's the PowerPC machines that weren't "real" Macs.

No, 68k Macs were Macs. PPC Macs were Macs, and both ran the classic Mac OS. Apple's Mactels are Intel PC hardware. They're glorified PCs. The classic Mac OS was never meant to run on non-Macs; it doesn't run on Mactels, which is one of many proofs that Mactels don't qualify as Macs.

Come on, this is ridiculous. The processor is back-end. A Mac is a Mac as long as the front-end Mac experience is there.

The processor is important, especially to a legacy OS dating back to 1984 that was not written to be portable to foreign architectures and one that did not have a hardware abstraction layer. Apple didn't even see it necessary to write the minimal OS 9 support for G4 MDD and newer Macs to be able to boot into OS 9 - I hope you weren't expecting Classic on Mactel after seeing that. And in any event, if you're complaining about the loss of Classic because of a loss of legacy drivers, how can you as a programmer possibly expect those legacy drivers to work under multiple layers of emulation and virtualization required to have it on Mactel? Classic on PPC let old drivers run because it was just a VM, and even then only certain drivers worked. Apple should be faulted for defecting to Intel, but because that fateful choice was made you cannot fault the company for not throwing engineering effort at getting foreign Intel PC hardware to run its discontinued legacy Mac OS. Perhaps if every other aspect of OS X were perfect across the board, valuable talent could be used for the tiny minority of the minority who have interest in Classic emulation on the Mactel platform, but other than that it just does not make sense.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

No, 68k Macs were Macs. PPC Macs were Macs, and both ran the classic Mac OS. Apple's Mactels are Intel PC hardware. They're glorified PCs. The classic Mac OS was never meant to run on non-Macs; it doesn't run on Mactels, which is one of many proofs that Mactels don't qualify as Macs.

What complete and utter bullshit!

The "Classic" Mac SYSTEM (not "OS") only ran on PowerPC because everything that hadn't been expressly written for the new architecture ran in - EMULATION.

There is factually and circumstantially NO DIFFERENCE between the switch from 680x0 to PPC and PPC to Intel.

The original Mac System - which arguably had its last iteration in System 6 - never ran on PowerPC "Macs" at all.

You're just full of it.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Apple didn't even see it necessary to write the minimal OS 9 support for G4 MDD and newer Macs to be able to boot into OS 9 - I hope you weren't expecting Classic on Mactel after seeing that.

Of course not. That would be like expecting System 7 to run on a G3 iMac.

They stopped updating OS 9 because all their resources were tied up in development that made business sense.

Just like they stopped updating System 7, System 6, and OS 8.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Folio Views is a wonderful example of what I meant by a "niche product". I'm pleased you found one. I'm not entirely sure if using that in SheepShaver wouldn't be a viable alternative, but I suspect so.

It might "work". SheepShaver is so buggy, though, and locks up so frequently that I'm not sure it would be viable for business use, when you simply don't have time to keep restarting the emulator all the time (periodically using DiskWarrior to repair the inevitable damage to the disk image). On my machine, it often takes several attempts just to get the thing to boot all the way to the Finder.

It's also a pain in the ass because you have to set up a disk image, and to transfer files into and out of the emulation environment, you have to quit the emulator, mount the disk image in the Finder, copy the files, dismount the image, and then restart the emulator. Yes, there's the extfs thing, but if you've ever used it, you'll know how buggy it is, and how it messes up filenames and causes lockups. It's not terribly useful.

Like I said, I wouldn't mind if Apple just cleaned up SheepShaver, fixed a bunch of the bugs, and made it the new Classic environment. As it is, SheepShaver is pretty god-awful, and it's not likely to improve anytime soon, since it doesn't seem to be under active development.

Oh, and Folio Views is only one example. There are a bunch of tools that I use regularly for development purposes that have no equivalents in OS X. If I ever get the time, I'm going to try to recreate some of these tools, but in the meantime it really should be possible to run the old ones.

Of course, in the mid-term, their company should probably look into transferring their vital operations databases away from proprietary formats into open standards. Sooner or later, every company goes under and takes its closed file format with it.

Out of our control. Trust me, we've talked to the guy in charge about this, and nothing's going to budge.

In my experience, the vast majority of people who started yelling when it became clear that switching to Intel would kill Classic and ran out to buy the last G5s have long since discovered that they have absolutely no need for Classic any longer.

In your experience. In my experience, exactly 0% of those people have discovered that they have absolutely no need for Classic any longer (and on my machine, it's usually running, enough so that I actually have the Classic menu extra enabled).

The number of Mac users who necessarily HAVE TO have Windows running is FAR greater, especially now that this is actually an option and these people are finally flocking to the Mac in droves...

I fail to see the relevance of this.

The point about backwards-compatibility: You've got it backwards.

You can install the newest OS on a machine ALMOST EIGHT YEARS OLD (Oct. '99 slot-loading iMac), and it won't break things, and it will run decently.

Uh, so what? That's not backwards-compatibility. The ability of a machine to run future operating systems is FORWARDS-compatibility.

Newer machines were NEVER capable of running older Systems,

Well, that certainly destroyed my argument that new Macs should be able to boot OS 9 natively. Oh wait, I never made any such argument. Big Mac may have - please do not confuse me with him.

Newer machines were not usually capable of booting older systems, but most of the time, they could run software created for those older systems.

and just like your parents happen to rely upon software whose brain-dead developers never bothered to update it, there was plenty of "Classic" Mac software that no longer ran under OS 9 without an update (or even under System 7, for that matter - remember System 7, Charles?).

There would occasionally be an app here or there that wouldn't run on OS 9. It was an exception, and usually caused by bad code in the app itself. OS 9 had the wherewithal to run software going all the way back to 1984, and indeed there are plenty of ancient apps from the 80s that can still be made to run even on Tiger on a PPC machine running Classic. When running software written for Mac OS 7-8 on OS 9, it would work probably about 98% of the time (apps that specifically have to hook deep into the low-level internals of the system, such as disk utilities, don't count). Could Apple test every individual app to make sure nothing broke? Of course not. But they did a pretty damn good job regardless. The Mac used to be touted as having the best backward compatibility in the industry.

And yes, I remember System 7. That one did break a bunch of old software. However, you have to keep in mind that during the System 6 era and before, it was a lot more common to write code in assembly language, and optimize everything as much as possible to make it run just a little bit faster or save a little disk space. And the developers made lots of assumptions - I remember apps that would break, even on System 6, if you hooked up a monitor larger than 9", apps that would break if you set the monitor to a number of colors larger than the developer knew about, apps that would break on a 68020 processor as opposed to a 68000, apps that would break if you turned on MultiFinder so it wasn't the only thing running, games that would otherwise work but would run way too fast and be unplayable if you ran it on a machine that was at all faster than the machine the developer was using, etc. As I recall, the big thing with System 7 was 32-bit addressing - and lots of apps had made assumptions about the size of pointers, or how much memory would be available. Whoops.

With all that said, I wasn't too happy when System 7 came out, and neither were a lot of other people. And of course it was under System 7's watch that Windows 95 came out, sparking an exodus of apparently unhappy Mac users. Maybe System 7 isn't the best example.

No change whatsoever in policy.

OS 9 (and by extension, all versions of OS X that included the Classic environment) had everything necessary to run software all the way back to 1984. The old APIs and all other things needed for older apps to work, were still there. The majority of stuff released since System 7 worked fine, and a bunch of stuff from before then did too. Sure, some apps are going to break here and there, but at no point did Apple say okay, let's strip out the support for older apps to run. Every app at least had a chance of working, if you tried it. And again, most of the time, it would. Even System 7, with its breakage of old apps, was more of a Vista-style incompatibility - the apps broke because the OS changed a lot, and something changed that those apps didn't expect. The OS X-Intel incompatibility is a completely different beast - the old apps won't work because Apple deliberately cut off support for them, rather than occurring incidentally. It's a more egregious thing, and something that Microsoft has never done to the best of my knowledge. And consequently, if you tell users who've been disenfranchised by their older software not working on Vista that Apple is somehow better in this regard, you are doing them a great disservice.

Speaking of which: Does anybody know if System 4.2 runs in SheepShaver? MacPlaymate won't run in System 7 or higher...

SheepShaver emulates a PPC, so I think you're not going to get anything earlier than 7.5.3 or so to run in it. What you want to run System 6 and before is Mini vMac. It's really good, and the most stable old Mac emulator by far. I think I've even managed to get System 1.1g to run in it. Of course, it only emulates black-and-white Macs, so if you need color, your best bet is to try to emulate a Mac II in Basilisk. No guarantees as to how well that will work, because I've never tried Basilisk with anything older than 7.5.3.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

No, 68k Macs were Macs. PPC Macs were Macs, and both ran the classic Mac OS. Apple's Mactels are Intel PC hardware. They're glorified PCs. The classic Mac OS was never meant to run on non-Macs; it doesn't run on Mactels, which is one of many proofs that Mactels don't qualify as Macs.

It doesn't natively boot G5s, either. Are G5s not Macs?

Where are you getting this definition of "Mac" anyway? Care to provide a link?

The processor is important, especially to a legacy OS dating back to 1984 that was not written to be portable to foreign architectures and one that did not have a hardware abstraction layer.

Those Macs back in 1984 didn't use the PowerPC! They used the 68000 series! Large parts of the classic Mac OS ran in a 68k emulator for much of its lifetime on the PowerPC! What on earth are you talking about?

Apple didn't even see it necessary to write the minimal OS 9 support for G4 MDD and newer Macs to be able to boot into OS 9 - I hope you weren't expecting Classic on Mactel after seeing that.

There is a difference between compatibility with older software and expecting to natively boot older OS versions! Of course the latter is not reasonable.

And in any event, if you're complaining about the loss of Classic because of a loss of legacy drivers,

Um, I'm not.

how can you as a programmer possibly expect those legacy drivers to work under multiple layers of emulation and virtualization required to have it on Mactel?

As far as I remember, the only reference I've made to drivers is that demonizing Vista for breaking older drivers is stupid, because OS X broke tons of older drivers and is certainly not any better in that regard. Of course older drivers (other than, apparently printer drivers, which do seem to work for some reason) are not going to work in Classic.

Originally Posted by analogika 

There is factually and circumstantially NO DIFFERENCE between the switch from 680x0 to PPC and PPC to Intel.

The switch from 680x0 to PPC was carried off much more smoothly, and didn't break a huge amount of legacy software. Of course, the switch to Intel didn't have to either, but Apple doesn't seem to give a damn about its long-time users.

Originally Posted by analogika 

They stopped updating OS 9 because all their resources were tied up in development that made business sense.

OS 9 doesn't need to be updated at all. Just like 7.5.3 doesn't need to be updated to run in Basilisk or SheepShaver on a new version of OS X. Just get the environment working, and let plain old OS 9 think it's running on a MDD or something.

Just like they stopped updating System 7, System 6, and OS 8.

Which were not required to run older software, so it's a moot point.

The irony of it is this: the Mac's excellent backwards compatibility used to be one of the things Mac users would always bring up as an advantage over Windows. When Apple suddently decided to completely screw over backwards compatibility, all of a sudden the tone changes to "Backward compatibility is evil! Backward compatibility will make the Mac just like Windows! Get rid of all support for old stuff! Hell, get rid of Carbon too because I don't like it!" Then Vista falters a bit in this department and suddenly backward compatibility is the greatest thing since sliced bread again, and is touted as something that Apple is better than Microsoft at. Uh, no, they really aren't. Of course, next time Apple screws over backward compatibility again, backward compatibility will once again be "Teh Evil!"

Look, I like Apple as much as the next guy, but it's not necessary to blindly defend everything they no, nor to blindly criticize everything that MS does. And backward compatibility is something that MS has done much better than Apple since the return of Steve Jobs. The latter does not care at all about backward compatibility, so don't bring that up as a Mac advantage or you are going to have some very disappointed users in a few years.

[Kar98]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

At my university, all the Mac lab computers have Safari and Firefox in the dock, but everyone I've seen always clicks on Firefox. Does that have anything to do with the lack of recognition that Safari is the Mac's official web browser?

No, that has something to do with the fact that Safari blows chunks compared with Firefox

No AdBlock Plus functionality.
Giant ( X ) buttons in every tab.
Ghastly dark "brushed metal" interface.
Much less UI configurability.
Slow.
Menus stripped way down, compared with Ffx.
No spell-check.

The only thing Safari has going for itself is interoperability with other apps for Mac, and there's a big software company that got itself in trouble for that.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Kar98 

No AdBlock Plus functionality.

Your computer lab lets you install extensions?

Giant ( X ) buttons in every tab.

That's called being user-friendly. And I don't see where you get that they are "giant" - on the contrary, if they were any smaller, they'd be really hard to click on.

edit: I just checked in Firefox, and it has "X" buttons on its tabs, and they're the same size as the ones in Safari. So, I have no idea what you're complaining about here.

Ghastly dark "brushed metal" interface.

Matter of taste, I guess. I've never understood why some people hate brushed metal so much.

Much less UI configurability.

Which you can't configure on a lab machine anyway.

Slow.

I find it to be quite a lot faster than Firefox.

Menus stripped way down, compared with Ffx.

I have no idea what you're referring to here, but the menus don't seem "stripped down" to me.

No spell-check.

Okay, WTF? Safari has had spell-check since the very first version, and it's the system-wide spell checker that the whole OS uses. Firefox hasn't even had a spell checker until very recently, and it's some proprietary one that isn't as good.

The only thing Safari has going for itself is interoperability with other apps for Mac, and there's a big software company that got itself in trouble for that.

No, they got in trouble by integrating the thing into the OS such that you couldn't delete it without breaking the whole OS. The right thing to do would have been to make IE's rendering engine a library, like WebKit, but then they wouldn't have been able to force computer makers to have IE on every system they shipped, thus killing off Netscape all that more thoroughly.

Just for fairness' sake, here's a list of non-retarded reasons that I do like Firefox.

1. You can drag the tabs around and re-order them. Shiira can do this too, and I like it.

2. Toolbar keywords (although in a lab setting, you won't be able to set these).

3. Type-ahead find. This is a great feature that makes navigation using the keyboard actually feasible. If I could add one feature to Safari, this would be it.

4. When Firefox blocks a pop-up window, it notifies you that it did so, and lets you override it and show the pop-up if you want. So if you're trying to use a site that needs to put up a pop-up, you can get it to work instead of just sitting there scratching your head and wondering why nothing's happening.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Newer machines were not usually capable of booting older systems, but most of the time, they could run software created for those older systems.

Except, of course, when they couldn't.

Charles, you make some excellent points.

But I've had a bunch of software break on me over the past eighteen years, and the only thing I had to give up when switching to Mac OS X was a USB CD burner whose USB bridge hardware was crap and thus not supported.

And while my anecdotal evidence is valid and based on several years of recent Mac retail and support experience, yours is equally as valid, since your parents are up a very real **** creek. (Although somebody needs to pound that employer - relying upon tools exclusively available for OS 9 make as much business sense as insisting on a core business solution that requires a 1965 IBM mainframe in the basement.)

Most people I've met who *required* OS 9 software have come to that realization sometime within the last ten years since the announcement of OS X and taken appropriate steps. It has also helped that many more softwae options are becoming available for the Mac as market share increases, and especially now that porting some things has become simpler due to the Intel architecture.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by Kar98 

No, that has something to do with the fact that Safari blows chunks compared with Firefox

No AdBlock Plus functionality.

Have you tried Safari Block?

Originally Posted by Kar98 

Giant ( X ) buttons in every tab.

I suppose this is a matter of preference. Personally I like to have a close widget for each tab. Less mousing that since I don't have to select a tab them move the mouse all the way over to one side to click the X. Besides, Safari intelligently displays the names of webpages in the tabs to eliminate redundant info and save space. For instance, when viewing several Macnn forums it will display "Mac OS X", "Applications", and "Lounge" instead of "MacNN - Mac OS X", "MacNN - Applications", and "MacNN - Lounge".

Originally Posted by Kar98 

Ghastly dark "brushed metal" interface.

Uno is your friend. Allows you to get rid of the "brushed metal" interface across the board if you'd like. Not just in Safari.

Originally Posted by Kar98 

Much less UI configurability.

Not sure what you mean here. Safari's UI can be configured like any other OS X application. You can configure the toolbar buttons how you want, show/hide the status bar, etc.

Originally Posted by Kar98 

Slow.

I beg to differ. It can bog down after it's been open for a while when browsing with a lot of tabs. Restarting the application generally takes care of this. Better still, the nightly builds of WebKit are way faster and have eliminated these issues.

Originally Posted by Kar98 

Menus stripped way down, compared with Ffx.

This is true. Safari is meant to have a relatively simple UI.

Originally Posted by Kar98 

No spell-check.

Not sure where you got this one from. OS X has system wide spell checking. Most OS X applications and all Cocoa applications .... such as Safari ... have spell checking out of the box. Just use the Edit - Spelling - Check Spelling As You Type menu.

OAW

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika 

But I've had a bunch of software break on me over the past eighteen years,

Right, but like I said before, there was a lot more software that didn't break. And with the legacy support in place, at least you'd have a chance of trying to coax those apps into running.

At no point in the classic Mac OS's history was legacy software completely cut off to the extent that it has been with the Intel Macs. The compatibility has gone from 95%-98% or so (excluding low-level stuff) to 0%. That bothers me.

This notion that Apple can't support legacy software at all without going and testing every individual obscure application in existence is a false dichotomy. Again, if something breaks, there's a difference between when 'stuff happens' and when someone deliberately cut it off.

and the only thing I had to give up when switching to Mac OS X was a USB CD burner whose USB bridge hardware was crap and thus not supported.

Well, and every pre-OS X app in existence, once you upgrade to an Intel Mac (or 10.5, if it ends up not having Classic on it).

And while my anecdotal evidence is valid and based on several years of recent Mac retail and support experience, yours is equally as valid, since your parents are up a very real **** creek. (Although somebody needs to pound that employer - relying upon tools exclusively available for OS 9 make as much business sense as insisting on a core business solution that requires a 1965 IBM mainframe in the basement.)

Yeah, but we can't do anything about it, unless I were to try something like reverse-engineering the format. Which, incidentally, I would need to use OS 9 apps to do.

Most people I've met who *required* OS 9 software have come to that realization sometime within the last ten years since the announcement of OS X and taken appropriate steps. It has also helped that many more softwae options are becoming available for the Mac as market share increases, and especially now that porting some things has become simpler due to the Intel architecture.

Most in your experience? Maybe. But there are going to be others that are left in the lurch. And I haven't even mentioned things such as old games which are trivial, yes, but still fun to have around. Backward compatibility is just a good thing in general, and something that I wish Apple would pay more attention to these days.