By Ina Fried, 7 June 2005 09:10
NEWS Apple's move to Intel chips appears to spell the eventual end of support for older, pre-Mac OS X programs.
Current versions of Mac OS X support the running of Mac OS 9 programs in a "Classic" environment. However, documentation for Apple's Rosetta technology says the transcoding software will not support programs written for Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9.
Rosetta was announced by CEO Steve Jobs on Monday as the translation software technology that will help ease Apple's planned transition to Intel-based chips. Rosetta will allow most Mac OS X programs to run on Intel-based Macs even if the software has not been compiled to run natively on Intel chips.
In an interview, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller did not definitively address future Classic mode support but said: "It's certainly not very high on the priority list."
Schiller said Apple research shows few new Mac buyers are using Classic.
"In recent versions of Mac OS X, we actually stopped installing Classic by default because very few - if any - people use it anymore," Schiller said. "We've done research to determine who buying new products from us is using Classic. You really can't find hardly anyone who does anymore."
An Apple representative declined to comment further on future support of Classic.
Classic came into being with the arrival of Mac OS X in 2001 as a way to run programs that had not been 'Carbonised', or modified to run natively in the new operating system.
Though the transition could pave the way for the end of OS 9 support, Apple has long predicted its death, with Jobs first delivering that message to developers in May 2002.
For some time, Apple continued to sell a limited number of models with OS 9, primarily for schools and some business customers. More recently, though, OS 9 compatibility has come only through Classic.
People who are running Classic programs aren't out of time yet. Apple plans to continue selling PowerPC machines for the next two years, so presumably customers have at least that long to buy machines capable of running Classic applications.
CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.
Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Marc Coest
Classic was only there to run non-carbon Mac OS 9 applications.
Most recent OS 9 applications have been carbonized, and those currently also run on PPC OS X without the "Classic" environment and will run the same way on OS X for intel.
2. anonymous
This sort of "news" is like saying WinXP won't run Windows 3.1 natively, and that WinXP won't run Pong out of your diskette.
Yeah. ~Big Deal~
3. William Gaffga
There is a significantly large group of people who are buying new hardware and using Classic - people who create books and use Adobe FrameMaker. There is no substitute for this application on the Mac and it only runs in Classic. In fact, at least a part of Apple Documentation is written using FrameMaker so the comment that there may not be anyone using Classic on new machines is patently false.
4. Larry Spencer
The free market says Phil Schiller is talking through his hat:
Current market price of Tiger: $110
Current market price of Panther: $49
Current market price of Jaguar: $18
Current market price of OS 9: $95
...and holding for five years now. "Nobody's using OS 9 anymore?" There sure seems to be a demand for it, and it isn't being driven by scarcity.
5. Jorth Storm
I really feel sorry for the people out there that are stuck in the past as far as their computer goes. They wouldn't be caught buying a black and white television, they wowouldn't drive a 12 year old car, they don't know what a LP record looks like, but they insist on using an operating system and software that's just plain obsolete and unsupportable. These same people are the ones that complain about OSX and having to learn something new like setting a few properties or permissions. Go get a box of floppies and back up your system. You don't deserve the advantages of new software or hardware.
6. anonymous
I hope Apple understands that I am like a lot of Apple users. I like OS X, but I have developed over 1200 routines that run in FoxbaseMac (circa 1987) using commands that were never ported to the FoxPro systems on Windows or Mac. I continue to buy Macs for my firm because my software still runs under Classic. If it goes and I have to ultimately move I won't be moving to the Mac.