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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1606
You Too Can Boot into OS 9 - For a Price
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
January 29th 2003
Aye, there's the rub: you'll have to pony up for the 1.42GHz DP model.
Janiary 2003 was said to be crunch time for OS 9. No more dual booting. OS X and
Classic. That's it.
But then, late last year, Apple relented. Some Ed and Pro systems would have to
continue to boot into X. After all, Quark isn't expected to deliver XPress 6.0 until
June. And flat-broke schools aren't about to lash out on piles of OS X software
upgrades.
So Apple has kept its promise: you can buy Macs that boot into OS 9. If you can afford
them.
Take yesterday's release of the revamped Power Macs. Sure, you can buy an OS 9 Mac.
Which one would you like? The Ultimate or the Not-Quite-So-Ultimate. A snip at $3,799
or $2,699, respectively.
Now, these are both 1.42GHz models. And the prices aren't bad, say you. True enough.
But it also means Apple has sneakily sneaked a ROM block in there. As sneaky companies
do. Or it could be in the firmware somewhere.
Now, remember the B&W ROM block fiasco of 1999? That was when Apple tried to
surreptiously slip a firmware update onto the B&W G3s to try and stop you installing a
G4 ZIF upgrade. Of course, there were workarounds for this.
Now Apple has done roughly the same thing with OS 9. It could be booted natively, of
course. But Apple would prefer you use Classic.
Default booting into OS X is fine. But shouldn't the user get to choose whether s/he
wants to boot into the older OS? And it's not as if OS 9 doesn't run on these PPC 74xx
and PPC750 processors.
One simple reason: marketing. Apple wants you to buy new machines that doesn't run OS
X like a slug (essentially, anything less than a DP 533, probably). Apple also wants
to you to buy more of those OS X apps, like MS Office, which, let's face it, hasn't
exactly been flying off the shelves.
A lot of people I know are still buying CRT iMacs, which aren't the optimum platform
for X. They've also grown up with the classic Mac OS. They may go to X one day, but
for now, confronting them with the treacle-like performance of X on a CRT iMac is
probably a breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Plus, it's kind of like plunking
your grandmother in front of a Linux box. Not fun. The fact that the Mac OS doesn't
even have a useful Apple Menu without resorting to third-party utilities is no help to
X-newbies either. And you get kinda tired of 'Where's the Finder?' questions.
You can install LinuxPPC on a Mac. But you can't boot OS 9 now. Well, you can. For a
fee. But until Apple go totally X and really bury OS 9 (and not just pretend to), it
should be available as an option to anyone who wants to run it. Even for just for old
time's sake.
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