Now that Macs are shipping with OS X as the default operating
system (and will soon only boot OS X), and most major vendors
have come out with OS X native versions of their software, how
useful is OS 9?
For a start, any pre-G3 Mac is unsupported when running
OS X, and officially they can only run up to OS 9.1. Anyone
without a G3 processor is stuck with Mac OS 9.1 unless they are
willing to play around with XPostFacto
or another OS X install utility.
Apple is still supporting OS 9 for its users, and there are
reasons to keep using it. The main reason is to use older
peripherals. For example, my old HP DeskJet 870Cse is still a good
printer, but it's a serial device - and OS X doesn't work with
them anymore. Connected to my 9600,
the printer still gets plenty of use.
Older scanners are the same way. While Mac OS X does support
various SCSI cards and scanners, most old SCSI scanners don't have
recent drivers that work natively in X. There is an application for
Mac OS X called VueScan that is compatible
with many recent SCSI scanners, however. It worked well with my
Umax Astra 1220S when nothing else did.
There are some applications that will not run in Classic mode -
older versions of Virtual PC, for example. There are also some
games that don't work well in Classic mode. Some extremely old
games don't even work well on a modern computer (the computers are
simply too fast for them).
Other applications, such as Claris Emailer and Claris Home Page,
have never and will never be updated for Mac OS X. You can
either run them in Classic or natively in 9. There is also
currently no OS X native version of Microsoft Outlook Exchange
Server, which might pose problems to those using their Mac in a
school or office where this software is required.
Upgrading software can get very expensive, depending on what
versions you currently own and what applications they are. It's
also a shame to cast off older peripherals just because they aren't
compatible with OS X. Using them on your old 7600 will give them, as well as the computer,
a longer life.
Also, if you use your Mac for recording music from a MIDI
keyboard, for example, much of that software hasn't been updated
for ages. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that some of this
software didn't even work with OS 9 - and 8.6 was the most
recent OS you could use it with. If this is still the case, I hope
Apple puts a bit of pressure on these companies to release more
modern versions.
It can also be argued that OS 9 can have some serious issues
when an extension gets corrupted or an incompatible extension is
installed, and that OS 9 can unexpectedly crash or freeze at
any moment.
Right now you can just about do anything on OS X that would
have required Classic a year ago. OS X and various Mac
developers have really come a long way over only a year's time.
Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, MS Office, Virtual PC, AOL,
and many other applications are now available for OS X. In
some cases (such MS Office and AOL), the latest versions
requires OS X.
If you have a compatible computer and aren't running OS X
yet, there are only two reasons to stick with 9, both mentioned
above. Sometimes upgrading all of your software to OS X
compatible versions just isn't financially doable, and in other
cases your peripherals or some necessary software may not work with
Mac OS X.
Still, upgrading to OS X might make your life easier, with
fewer crashes and better multitasking enabling you to do something
in one application while another application is busy.
Face it, OS 9 is obsolete - and has been for quite some
time - but that doesn't mean it's useless.
