How Many OS 9 Die-Hards Are Out There?
How many Mac fans are still using OS 9? It’s a difficult statistic to track, or at least I’ve found it so. Hitslink’s November 2008 market share report shows pre-Intel Mac operating systems still represent a respectable (nearly three times the penetration of Linux) 2.35 percent of total OS usage (vs. 6.51 percent for MacIntel), but it’s not broken down between OS X and Mac OS Classic PPC systems.
Cult of Mac’s Giles Turnbull notes that way back in 2004 he posted a column entitled “OS9 – Blimey Some People Still Use It” for Mac DevCenter, but never imagined he’d be posting a similar piece four years later.
“But – blimey,” Turnbull wrote last week, “there are STILL some people out there using OS 9 and very happy with it too, thank you very much.”
Actually, I’m still using OS 9 daily for production. I can’t recall the last time I booted directly into Mac OS Classic (I still have three Macs in service that can do that), but OS X Classic Mode is another story. What keeps me using Nine is an old shareware add-on called Scrollability which automates scrolling in an intuitive, effortless, and elegant manner that has never been duplicated for OS 10 as far as I know, and which is a balm to my neuritis-plagued arms and hands when editing and doing HTML markup.
If it weren’t for that, I would have bid fond farewell to OS 9 for routine work long since, but because I do use it, I’m constantly reminded how much more lively, responsive, and solid-feeling the Mac OS Classic Finder is compared with OS X’s. I’ve been using OS X as my production platform since the release of OS 10.3 Panther in 2003, but I still find OS 9 superior in some respects. No Dock; virtually instantaneous menu response; no Trash dodging the cursor; and that delicious “right now” responsiveness.
Nevertheless, on the balance I wouldn’t go back, and I had to wean myself off Classic Mode when I upgraded to Leopard on my main workhorse Mac over a yearago. It’s been less traumatic than I had anticipated, and I love Spaces and Quick Look, but I still miss Scrollability, and that keeps my number two and three machines, both hotrodded Pismo PowerBooks running OS 10.4.11 Tiger, in pretty intensive service.
How about you? Anyone else out there still using OS 9, either by booting into it directly or with Classic Mode in pre-Leopard OS X?
PB on December 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I was an OS 9 diehard holdout for a VERY long time but I can’t stand to use it now. Still, I have G4 that still boots in 9 and I use it and classic for some really old stuff which I don’t want to update. But OS X is the bomb and I was wrong to hold our for so long.
MacRat on December 11th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
The old hardware still works.
The old OS still works.
What’s the worry?
Jay Levitt on December 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Well, of course it’s difficult to track. The poor laggards have no way to get on the Internet, they’re miles from the nearest trail, and they’re not necessarily visible from the air. If it weren’t for sales of ADB-to-USB adapters, we wouldn’t even know they existed.
I think, given the economy, we should continue our efforts to work on their basic needs – food, indoor plumbing, aquarium conversion kits – but save upgrading their OS for a later phase of the relief effort.
PB on December 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
If you’re asking me, no worry. I just find the whole day-to-day experience of OS X A TON better. Nothing wrong with 9 though.
Ben Huebscher on December 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I still use SheepShaver and an OS 8 boot image to run HappyWeed. When will someone port that to OS X or the iPhone?
MacRat on December 11th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Levitt,
ethernet and wireless existed long before Mac OS X. What makes you think they are suddenly no longer on the internet?
joecab on December 11th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
OS 9? Heck I’m trying to finally do away with all my old PowerPC OS X apps to be ready for Snow Leopard.
I only use OS 9 once a month tops, for my old apps like GIFBuilder or Quark XPress 3.11.
Ansel on December 12th, 2008 at 12:16 am
I’m an OS 9 die-hard …. love that OS – it was very quick and I totally knew my way around …..
We did not upgrade our computers until Leopard – While I like it a lot my OS 9 G4 867 with a gig of ram and all the software you could want and two drives is a sweet machine and runs just fine …..
Best,
Ansel
Die Castings on December 12th, 2008 at 1:35 am
it’s difficult to track.
connectionfailure on December 12th, 2008 at 4:31 am
One thing I use it for is to run a nice Umax SCSI scanner. I’m too lazy/cheap to buy a SCSI card and VueScan to get it to run using OS X.
I also have a huge collection of games and software from OS 9 days which will not work in Classic.
OS 9 was never as bad as people report. It needed a bit more maintenance in some respects.
Jay Levitt on December 12th, 2008 at 6:34 am
MacRat: It’s a…
You see, sometimes, when people say…
Wow, where to start?
Brad on December 12th, 2008 at 6:42 am
My father still uses it for Photoshop because he doesn’t want to “upgrade” to a new version and the iMac he uses might not be able to handle it.
Tom Calvert on December 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I have OS 9.2.2 & Tiger on separate partitions on my G4 AGP. I use OS 9 about 90% of the time. The only time I use Tiger is when some web pages don’t work properly with OS 9/browsers, to view wmv & to use some OS X apps. I use Outlook Express as my primary mail program. I have many apps, like Photoshop Elements 2.0 that work in both OS 9 & Tiger, but I prefer to use PE in OS 9. I also have many OS 9 shareware & freeware apps that I use sometimes. I have a docuent scanner & printer that works in both OSs, however, I have a slide/film scanner that only works in OS 9. Also, I have a lot of OS 9 games for my grandkids; none for Tiger.
I also have a G3 Pismo laptop with OS 9 & Tiger on the same hard drive. Use Tiger about 99% when I’m traveling.
Both of these Macs are 400MHz, so OS 9 works faster than Tiger.
Sneakers on December 12th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I have a G4 running Tiger and I know someday I’ll have to go to an iMac but I love my G4 because I still have an OS9 partition. I like my old games, especially Shadow Warrior, at least Duke Nukem was ported to OS X. I also run a Linux (fedora) partition and like to keep my linux skills usable.
The utility that I have to have for my life is Classic Menu, I just haven’t gotten into that Dock thing.
The idea of growing up is quite depressing… maybe someday.
mark3009 on December 13th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Still running a G4 500 with OS 9.2. I use it almost exclusively now with Pro Tools LE and a Digidesign Digi 001 interface. It’s been running flawlessly since 2001… and still going. I’ve had it so long now, it’s almost and emotional attachment ;). I also however run Leopard on my MacBook and iMac.
Gordon R. Vaughan on December 14th, 2008 at 1:34 am
I don’t really USE OS 9/Classic, but I’ve still got to convert a whole bunch of MORE outlines as well as several Hypercard stacks.
I’m most of the way done, though in converting my early Excel 1.x files to Excel 4 format, which is readable by current versions. I’m doing that running (barely) Excel 4 on OS 9.1. Actually, it used to run better before my kids got hold of that computer, but that’s the only way I’ve found to convert those files from the late 80s!
dan on December 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
A million moons ago, I converted a bunch of PC fonts into Mac font suitcases, then stripped the suitcases for the fonts, duped a suitcase, and made A-Z suitcases, each filled with the appropriate selection of fonts, converted and otherwise. At the time it both reduced clutter and handily got around Classic MacOS’s limit on the number of fonts (meaning suitcases or other font objects) in the Fonts directory of the System Folder.
That was fine and good for the longest time… but now I’m in a situation in which I need to pull a few fonts (Arial, for example) OUT of those Font Suitcases while keeping the rest of their contents. OS X seems to display/install contents of an FS no problem, but it’s All Or Nothing – I get the entire contents of the suitcase or none of it.
And the only way I’m aware of for getting INTO those suitcases is to boot into 9.2.2 (or earlier) and get jiggy with the drag-and-drop.
THAT aside…
My linux box (a beige G3 that’s been overclocked to 366) bootstraps off of 9, and we’re still using 8.6 and some version of System 7 on several kiosks at work.
Gordon R. Vaughan on December 16th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Dan, if you don’t have a Mac running OS 9, check Craigslist. Here in Houston there’s lots of G3 iMacs selling for $75 or less. Of course, some have been upgraded to OS X, probably good as long as they still boot in OS 9.
Actually we got 2 iMacs for $75 and $45 a year and a half ago, so really you should be able to pick one up for less than $50 nowadays.
dan on December 16th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Gordon : Actually, I have two that are capable… an old 9600 in storage and my aforementioned beige G3 – the nit there is I’d have to either walk one of Apple’s heaviest towers home from the storage farm, or drop my linux box long enough to get myself sorted font-wise.
Or, horrors, install 9 onto one of my ancient G4s. :)
In Pittsburgh, I’ve seen a variety of the 15″ g3 iMacs in the 70$-150$ range… though if I had that kind of money to drop right now I’d be upgrading the ram in my intel mini! :D
marcel luntungan on December 28th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I still use OS9 for protools. Now I’ve just bought a powermac G4 mirrored drive 1.25 Ghz single processor with OSX installed on it and I’ve formatted the harddrive to put the old OS9 on it.
I can’t get it to start up from the OS9 harddrive. The computer sees it when I start up while holding down the option button. When I choose it however, it gives a question mark.
Anyone familiar with installing OS9, the real original OS, not the Classic within OSX?
All the best!
Mars
Josh Newman on January 4th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I use Mac OS 9 for my daily computing, mostly for the speed on my old late 2001 iBook. The only things I miss about OS X is my iPod compatibility (gen 5) and the new flash player. Besides that I never get into OS X because it is painstakingly slow in most aspects.
Nukey on January 26th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
My coworkers and I use OS 9 daily at our workplace. We still enjoy using some peripherals, like imageWriter label printers and SCSI scanners, that will only work with OS 9; and neither Apple nor MS has come up with a decent replacement for the MS Works office suite.
At home I use OS 9 maybe once a month to retrieve old fonts and play around with its graphing calculator.
OS 9 is a workhorse, OS X is a trip toy. I really enjoy them both.
AaronLBorg on January 27th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I’m a diehard Linux (Ubuntu) user but have been using OS9.2.2 to record on an old G3 that I inherited.
I’m wondering if someone could let me know why startup takes so long? Perhaps there’s something I could do to remedy this?
It’s like I boot up and then stare at the little watch for a good 5 minutes before I can do anything. Most frustrating.
Thanks.
land524 on January 28th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Our Senior Account and Senior Project Manager still use OS 9.2 for database and
Hypercard Accounting Report Generating. They also have 10.4.11 and 10.5.5 computers
in addition to their OS 9 computers.
DON FOWLER on February 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I just bought an os-9 for a song, I thought!
When I turn it on all I get is a 1 inch
flashing face and logo keyboard does`nt
do anything. mouse lights up, at least that`s
something.. HELP,, HELP
kenelm seiler on February 17th, 2009 at 12:44 am
OS9 has nothing going for it anymore as far as i can tell everything i have ever needed in OS9 has been ported (or updated) to OSX.
Rod on June 4th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Access to OS9 is helpful to read and convert files made using software from that era.
Several kinds of files cannot be read with OSX software.
By the way, boot up time for a box designed for OS8 or OS9 is about 45 seconds.
Compatibility is also a concern for those who began their career with OSX, because change is likely to continue in the future.
Queue on June 24th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Well, i’m one of the weird people other computer geeks like to laugh at. I try to use OS 9 whenever possible. I boot into Tiger to manage my iPod and photo library, and do certain things like update my website (it requires a much never java to use my wysiwyg editor).
Truth be told though, everyone just loves OS X so much, whereas I think it represents amazing new technology and blah blah blah, but the GUI :(
This interface represents the death of a true Macintosh. It doesn’t feel like the “think different” company I grew up with. If it were possible in any way to make some of the current software versions work with that most beautiful interface, i’d be thrilled. This is what always gets me crap from other Mac users. I’m a loyalist of the old school (my first computer as a child for an xmas present was a Mac SE/30). I’ve always been emotionally loyal to Apple (weird??). OS X makes me sad not because it’s any kind of poor system, it’s powerful and etc, but here’s a man who still uses OS 9. Who still uses a true ‘Macintosh’.
–Q
Valter on August 10th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I agree with Queue.
IMNSHO (25 years of computing and 18 years of Mac ;-), OSX is a powerful OS with a questionable interface, on some aspect even awkward. I even find late Windows (XP, Vista) sometimes superior to OSX, interface-wise.
The really big limit of OS9 (and before) was stability, and/or lacking of a true multitasking; and in that sense OSX is a huge step forward.
Apart from that, I still use OS9 mainly for production and leisure, and I love it.
I use Panther 10.3.9, too, and I appreciate its multitasking and some feature; but on my G4 DA upgraded to 1,4GHz (!) is someway sluggish and too prone to the “spinning beachball”. :-o
OTOH, OS9 reacts instantly and is a breeze to use, and the interface is just as it should be: unobtrusive and ready to serve. Minimal eye-candy, maximum user-friendliness. In OS9 you don’t even think about the interface, because is so well studied it just flows with you most of the times.
It’s when I switch to OSX (when I have to: surfing on “loaded” websites, watching videos…) I realize there’s an interface, because it often gets in my way. :-/
For me (and I acknowledge it’s a matter of personal taste) OS9 is the “real Mac OS”, as the Macintosh was always meant to be. OSX, well… it’s a modern OS, with a more-flashy-than-functional “dress”; good for geeks and engineers (they don’t mind about the interface… they love the Terminal, don’t they? ;-).