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Leopard Makes It Official. Say Bye To Mac OS Classic.
The end of a Mac era is upon us. The dawning of the new Golden Age of Mac™ begins. Soon. That would be OS X Leopard.
Meanwhile, with little or no fanfare, Apple quietly put to rest the Mac we all knew and loved. Well, some of us. Mac OS Classic is dead. Long live the Mac.
Apple watchers and Mac users have known this day would come, but it still seemed like a surprise, what with no announcement, or ceremony, or celebration. Mac OS X Classic, the remnants of the Mac OS that started it all back in 1984, is dead.
At least, Mac Classic is dead on PowerPC Macs running OS X Leopard. Mac Classic actually ran in Tiger, but only on PowerPC Macs, not on Intel Macs.
The Classic Mac era is over following the longest of long transitions dating back to 2001 when Mac OS X launched, fully capable of running Mac Classic. Starting with Mac OS Classic version 8.x, the Mac’s OS looked decent, and performed better than any version in the past.
The platinum GUI look continued into Mac OS Classic version 9.x, the last to run side-by-side with Mac OS X. The early versions of Mac OS X were slower than Mac Classic, but by the time Jaguar made an entrance and Microsoft Mac Office and Adobe’s Photoshop suites were ready to run on OS X, Classic was lost to many Mac users.
I know a lot of Mac users, and there are still holdouts, faithfully booting up in one version or another of Mac OS Classic. Some corporate IT staffs keep old Macs lying around with Classic just for compatibility with various files or applications.
Personally, I have not used Mac Classic since OS X Panther, never in Tiger, and now, with OS X Leopard, no one gets to run the creaky old Classic on a new Mac or a new Mac OS.
It’s the changing of the guard, even though the new guard has been running things for years. The old guard is retiring.
Now, that whole, quiet scenario brings up an interesting question about transitions, legacy systems, and the like. For example, OS X Leopard will not run on some PowerPC G4 models, requiring a minimum CPU of 867mhz. Some Macs up to six years old are OK, but a bunch of iBooks and iMacs with slow CPUs won’t make it to OS X Leopard.
What? You’re a Mac user and you have not purchased a new Intel Mac yet? What about that old PowerPC Mac you’re running now? Odds are that the next version of Mac OS X, whatever it’s named, Mac OS X Hello Kitty, or whatever, will not run on most PowerPC Macs. Apple is herding the herd along into new hardware and software.
That means that unless you’re running a PowerMac G5 today, whatever shows up after Leopard may not run on your creaky old PowerPC Mac. Got a problem with that? Sure. Talk Back to Mac360 and share your outrage (or, your inevitable sadness and remorse) about all these changes taking place in the world of personal computing, and do so in the Comments section below.
By the way, Mac360 gives daily Mac updates on Twitter. If you Twitter, give Mac360 a tweet. One more thing. Only the best Mac software gets reviewed on Ron's NoodleMac site. Check it out.
Off Topic Note: Guess what? Former Mac360 writer Kate Mac is back online after dumping Windows and re-embracing the Mac. Again.
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As an update, the MacBook Pros currently running are suppose to be able to run “Snow Leopard” . For those users, the graphics architecture is the same as the new Pros just release. Currently Apple has stronger graphics cards that Leopard is designed to take to use all it’s features. Those cards even that advanced. For whatever reason, Apple decided to make and exception for the Nivida 9400M grapghic chip to make it work, but not for the 8600M despite the fact users have been begging for it for years.
In this sense Apple is trying to take advantage of is user ignorance. Users on MacBook Pros still have Laptops screens that match the requirements ad resolution of graphics cards, but there is still no software that takes advantage of the chip architecture to give the all the graphical visuals the graphics chip is providing. For a company that claims it’s trying to cater to professional graphical artists, Film editors, photographers-the entire multi media scene-it’s a pretty serious issue.
With the fact the new pros took a step backwards in going to a glossy screen for 15” Apple is trying to exaggerate the improvement in its laptops by essentially advertising the improvement over a laptop is never even tried to develop the proper software to make it function correctly that cater to professional that need it most.
There is an app out there called SheepShaver which is an OS 9 emulator. You can run this on Intel macs and on Leopard and apparently you can run most Classic apps on it.
I have only used Classic once, on my old mac, and so I’m off to find some Classic apps to test on SheepShaver.
—K
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