>A friend is a worker bee at Apple. Friend says "I don't even have Classic >installed on my Macs."
Hold the phone... This is part of why people are positive it is going to die... because they don't have a CLUE what it is. Unless your worker bee friend at Apple is running 10.4 on an Intel based Mac... guess what, they have Classic installed. You don't have a choice. There is no option in OS X to install or not install Classic. Classic is an OS X application that mimics a Mac, and allows OS 9 to load into a "virtual Mac". Classic is part of OS X's base install, there is no option to not have it. What you can choose to not have, and what your friend REALLY means is... OS 9 is not installed. But that is ENTIRELY different. OS 9 is OS 9 is OS 9... the exact same OS 9 you install on a Mac, you install on a Mac with OS X and then Classic lets it boot. But Classic and OS 9 are NOT one in the same thing. OS 9 is dead, that is well announced and covered by Apple. OS 9 is what it is, and will not see any more changes updates or otherwise. But Classic has been updated since Apple killed OS 9. >It's difficult to keep supporting Classic. After all, Classic has to >support both PPC and non-PPC applications, so it's doing a lot of work. >Additionally, Apple would prefer all of us still using Classic and OS 9.x >Macs to buy something new. Well, I don't know that it is difficult to keep supporting Classic. Classic is just another OS X application. It is no more or less difficult then supporting any other OS X application (possibly less difficult as it really doesn't need any more changes, it works well enough that Apple can safely leave it alone for the dying few that use it). Classic does NOT have to support both PPC and non PPC apps. OS 9 has to support both. Classic only has to support OS 9, nothing more. I think the heart of the problem with Classic is, it is NOT doing a lot of work. From what I've been able to peice together (and I admit I could be entirely wrong), Classic actually back doors a bunch of OS X and lets OS 9 have more low level control then it should. That becomes a problem when you move to Intel. If Classic was simply passing commands to a virtual G3 chip, which was in turn just passing those commands to the real G3 chip... well not you have to have those commands translated into an Intel chip. Now Classic has to do real work where before it was just kind of acting as a gate keeper. And given that to be true (which I don't know that it is), then I can easily understand Apple not bothering to port Classic to Intel, because now it isn't a simple "minor tweak and recompile" as Jobs pointed out. And why should Apple invest a bunch of time and money on something that has a rapidly shinking userbase... and something that by the time they finish investing all that time and money and actually get to release it, will have virtually no one that cares (and is buying new hardware). And like you point out... for the sake of their developer community, Apple would just assume NOT bend over backwards letting people continue to use applications that have paying upgrades out there. They want to force you to upgrade, so developers make more money, and thus make more Mac software. But I still guess, even if Classic gets killed off for 10.5, it won't be too long after that before someone else makes it work in the form of an Emulator of some sorts. I just have a feeling any such emulator is not going to support anything that needs to talk outside the emulator (such as Emailer connecting to the Internet). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
