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.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

Off Topic #23 & #18 - Want to speed up your Mac? Try Kate MacKenzie’s approach to the $7.99 speed increase. Do you have a back up system for your Mac? Kate’s PixoBebo shows you how to use Time Machine with SuperDuper! for the ultimate Mac back up. And she doesn’t even charge Mac360 readers to visit her site.

Off Topic #58 - Do politicians use personal computers? Of course. We’ve heard Barack Obama prefers a Mac, while Hillary Clinton uses a Dell, though, apparently neither of the candidates can bowl. Does Obama’s potential vice president use a Mac? Even Clinton acknowledges Apple’s brand power but says she can’t afford a Mac. Maybe she’d win if she used a Mac.

• Article by Jeffrey Mincey • Published on Thursday, October 25, 2007
• Category: News & Commentary • 14 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now

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Readers Talk Back:

TechTeach says:

We are a small school with an even smaller budget that runs 95% PowerPCs with 10.4.11 and we use classic so frequently it scares me to think we will lose so much of our software. Yes, we do run many new applications native to OSX, but we still use about 25-35 software titles that only run in classic mode. These apps may be old, but they are still better than anything out there now. Much of the old educational software did not have all the graphic flash that we see nowadays and the kids get real skill practice and subject reinforcement that is too beneficial to throw away. Eventually our current macs will bite the dust (even with my years of experience of tweaking apps to get them to run in Classic mode, and keeping them up and running). What do we do then? When one computer goes in the lab I will need to take from the classroom machines to replace it rather than buy new to replace it. The classroom computers will get the new machines, but will lose access to Classic apps. The lab will get to keep using the classic apps, but will lose out on the speed and feature upgrades that will be seen in a new machine. Seems kind of backwards, huh? It just kills me to think we can’t keep these apps up and running. There has to be someone out there that can find an easy way to create an emulator. Right now there are only convoluted ways of getting Classic to run on either an intel or 10.5.X machine. Please if anyone out there has heard of anything, please pass this info along. There are many schools in the same boat as us, and surely everyone can see the benefits of keeping this older educational software! Or better yet, someone should consider remaking these old titles in intel native code or for OSX. Any help from anyone, or any thoughts from anyone would be much appreciated- Unless of course you want to tell me to move into the 21st Century. I know that, but many things were better than they are now and these software titles are a case in point. Thanks!

— Posted on Mon Mar 10 at 12:20 pm by TechTeach

Macsweep says:

Still no OS X replacement for Folio Views.

— Posted on Sun Nov 11 at 11:27 pm by Macsweep

Andrew Purvis says:

I am with Dan on this one. Classic be damned, but Carbon makes a difference. It may seem silly, but I do use my Mac for entertainment from time to time, and all of the games I still play that shipped without MacOS X versions have free carbon executables. Sadly, all of those would be dead if Carbon were to be taken away.

Under those conditions, I would be tempted to go with the more drastic installation process, mirroring my files, wiping my drive, installing Leopard, and then reinstalling EVERYTHING.

— Posted on Fri Oct 26 at 6:56 pm by Andrew Purvis

Weili says:

“I’m more concerned about how quickly OSX will say good-bye to PPC. Do I buy Leopard for my G5 iMac or put that money towards an Intel Mac?”

The last PowerPC Mac was DISCONTINUED (not released) in 2006.

Assuming Apple keeps its trend of releasing a new OS every 1.5-2 years, OS X 10.6 would be released sometime in early to mid 2009.

By then, the MOST recent PowerPC-based Macs would be 3 years old, with most PowerPC-based Macs being older.

Although 3 years may seem like pushing it today, but technology is being replaced faster and faster so in 3 years, it will seem like a long time. But I’m sure we’ll still have a few people cry and whine just as they do right now with the “death of OS 9” which actually occurred 5 years ago, but I guess they didn’t get the memo.

— Posted on Thu Oct 25 at 4:41 pm by Weili

Robert says:

I’m more concerned about how quickly OSX will say good-bye to PPC. Do I buy Leopard for my G5 iMac or put that money towards an Intel Mac?

— Posted on Thu Oct 25 at 4:24 pm by Robert

bugsnw says:

Somewhere out there is a pissed off 5.25” floppy disk user. There’s still some awesome software out there than runs on the computers that have this drive. How dare we drop old standards!

— Posted on Thu Oct 25 at 3:15 pm by bugsnw

Weili says:

“Our company has over 100 Macs scattered here and there, and a bunch of them are old Macs running OS 9. We have specialized applications which require the so-called Mac Classic. Since we started buying Intel machines last year, there are fewer and fewer Macs here that can even run OS 9. New Mac users probably don’t care because all they know is Mac OSX anyway, but some of us put in a lot of years running the old Macs.”

I don’t know how many Macs you need to run these old OS 9 apps, but I don’t see why you MUST get rid of the old Macs when buying new ones.

I’ve seen many companies who usually keep one or two old machines around, be it Mac or PC, just to run a few older software.

Also many times you can perhaps find new apps that do the same things that your old apps do, and more often than not, the new apps can even do more!

— Posted on Thu Oct 25 at 3:11 pm by Weili

DanMan says:

I just did some more looking and all I could find was that Carbon might not support 64 bit yet, I guess I must’ve read something that was incorrect.

— Posted on Thu Oct 25 at 3:09 pm by DanMan

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