When to cut the ties to the past

Jonathan Ploudre wrote:
>> If you need classic, you can find plenty of G4 and G5 machines on
>> flebay.
>
> I've wondered why Apple doesn't just support something like Basilisk
> II or MiniVmac. It wouldn't be as good as Classic but for many uses
> (old games or using an old word process to get at old files) it would
> be good enough. And those emulations are far enough back in history to
> only be interesting to long-time Mac users.
>
When a company like Apple says they "support" something it is a long
term commitment. And if it is something that's not real solid they'll
likely get sued by one of the call action lawsuit groups.

Plus I'm not sure about software but with hardware if a federal agency
buys something "new" you have to supply them with spare parts for up to
7 years. Even if they never buy them you have to have some on the shelf
ready. That costs real money. This is one reason you see those periodic
announcements of what system are no longer supported. It lets them free
up staff and space that for all practical purposes isn't being used.

On 4/21/07 12:28, "Niall O Broin" <niallmakalumedia.com> wrote:

>> Me? I'd try and convince the current owner to release the
>> code so that others could make an OS X version.
>
> Good luck with that one. Its author died more than a DECADE ago and
> the apparent successor in interest seems to have fallen off the edge
> too, maybe due to lack of sales of ancient software?

Well evidently, it's apple's job to keep that application usable?

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 4/21/07 12:28, "Jonathan Ploudre" <jploudregmail.com> wrote:

> Personally my only classic program is Quicken 4 -- and it works great
> in Mini vmac for when I eventually get an Intel Mac.

Just use a more current version?

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 21-Apr-2007, at 11:28, Jonathan Ploudre wrote:
>> If you need classic, you can find plenty of G4 and G5 machines on
>> flebay.
>
> I've wondered why Apple doesn't just support something like Basilisk
> II or MiniVmac. It wouldn't be as good as Classic but for many uses
> (old games or using an old word process to get at old files) it would
> be good enough.

Because if Apple supported it, any failing or lacking in that
emulator would reflect badly on them. Those sorts of solutions are
out there for those users who really need them, but they is simply no
reason for Apple to invest resources in them.

They've been telling us for years that OS 9 was dead.

> Personally my only classic program is Quicken 4 -- and it works great
> in Mini vmac for when I eventually get an Intel Mac.

Quicken 2006 came with one of my machines.

On Apr 20, 2007, at 8:03 AM, Robert Hall wrote:
> So Apple is supposed to guarantee that every piece of
> software written
> since 1992 runs perfectly in OS X forever?
>
> Yes!!! At least Apple should provide software tools to readily
> transfer the ability to have the software operate on new hardware
> though emulation. Such as providing way to run OS 9.x on the Mac
> Intel computers.

Actually, Microsoft is extremely good at this (at least until Vista)
and is one of the reasons they have a hard time with upgrades. They
test thousands of configurations and thousands of software products.
Considering the shear number of possible Microsoft machines out
there, Microsoft does a pretty amazing job.

And they must because their customers require it. I've worked in
financial institutions that still have important software someone
wrote back before Windows 95 came out. A lot of times, the company is
not even 100% sure what that software does, but they know they need
it. If Microsoft wrote a new release of Windows, and that piece of
software didn't run, that company would be very, very unhappy. And,
you don't make someone who buys hundreds of millions of dollars worth
of your product unhappy.

On the other hand, Apple hadn't had such constraints for a long time.
Apple pre OS X had a very small market share compared to current OS X
systems. Plus, they have very few business users. Most of Apple's
users get new software with a new system, and their software needs
are covered with the software on their system.

For Apple, it currently makes sense to think more about providing
future needs than attempting to keep older software working. So few
users use any pre-OS X programs that it simply didn't make sense to
keep the OS 9 emulation going on the Intel machines. OS 9 emulation
was necessary when OS X first came out, and things like Microsoft
Word didn't have an OS X version. A lot of companies new about OS X,
but didn't know if enough people would buy Apple computers to make it
worth rewriting their code pretty much from scratch.

With Vista, which is proving a compatibility nightmare for many
companies, a lot of companies are taking a second look at their
commitment to the Windows platform. They're looking at Linux and
Macintosh, and they like what they see.

Of course, if a lot of businesses switch to Mac OS X, Apple may find
itself in a similar position with Microsoft when it comes to system
updates. There may come a time when Apple has to take backward
compatibility into consideration whenever they release a new system.

David Weintraub

--On April 20, 2007 5:03:02 AM -0700 Robert Hall <rahallptd.net> wrote:

>> So Apple is supposed to guarantee that every piece of software
>> written since 1992 runs perfectly in OS X forever?
>>
> Yes!!! At least Apple should provide software tools to readily transfer
> the ability to have the software operate on new hardware though
> emulation. Such as providing way to run OS 9.x on the Mac Intel computers.
>

BTW, Apple did provide emulation (via the Rosetta software) that lets you
run PPC software on Intel Macs. However only OS X based software is
supported. In order to also provide support for OS 9 classic mode Apple
would've had to port OS 9 to the Intel chip, as an operating system OS 9
was most likely tightly integrated with the PPC architecture making it run
with Rosetta would've been prohibitively expensive or the software
unacceptably slow.

<http://www.apple.com/rosetta/>

One of Microsoft's primary goals when they release a new OS is backward
compatibility. However Microsoft's consumer OSes have been tied to the same
chip instruction set for the entire time. The few times they did support
other processors, they did not support apps from previous chip families (or
failed to provide adequate support.)

Windows NT ran on a Power PC chip, but provided no emulation, all
applications running on Windows NT Power PC had to be compiled for Windows
NT Power PC (very few ever were).

Intel's first 64-bit processor, the Itanium, provided support for 32-bit
x86 chip instructions via emulation in the Itanium chip. Performance of
this emulation was horrible. Hardware emulation was dropped from the chip.
They've replaced the emulation with a software emulator (if not based on
the Rosetta software directly, it's probably very similar.) Despite the
availability of Windows XP for Itanium sales never took off outside of the
server market.

It wasn't until AMD came out with it's 64-bit extensions to the x86
instruction set with complete backward compatible support that Microsoft
could really offer fairly extensive support for old Windows applications.

On 22-Apr-2007, at 00:30, David Weintraub wrote:
> There may come a time when Apple has to take backward compatibility
> into consideration whenever they release a new system.

Apple DOES take backward compatibility into consideration when they
release a new system, and they always have. that doesn't mean that
they have to decide to fully support the 1984 System 1.0 software in
2007.

At every step where legacy code support has been eliminated there has
1) been a lot of lead time and 2) very real reasons for the elimination.

Now, the question really is how much code form 10.1 will not run
under 10.5, and of that code, how much of it is because the authors
of the code specifically did things they were told NOT to do?

In fact, most anything that was written with support for OS 8.1 or
better should be able to run under the OS X carbonlibs, and if it
doesn't it is likely the fault of the author and not of Apple.

So that takes us back to code that is over 10 years old (Mac OS 8.1
introduced us to the CarbonLib and was released in January 1998, fast
on the heels of 8.0)

OS 9 has been out of development for over 5 years now. Expecting
current support for it, much less earlier versions is simply going to
result in frustration. OS 9 is dead, and all the previous Mac OS
releases are dead as well. This is a good thing, because with the
dead albatross of "Classic" about our necks we would not be where we
are now.

On Apr 21, 2007, at 11:30 PM, David Weintraub wrote:

> With Vista, which is proving a compatibility nightmare for many
> companies, a lot of companies are taking a second look at their
> commitment to the Windows platform. They're looking at Linux and
> Macintosh, and they like what they see.

And despite all the compatibility issues, Microsoft was forced to
leave several security improvements out of (this round of) Vista.
DEP (Data Execution Prevention) remains optional, for one. No
hypervisor--leaving the door open for "Blue Pill" type invasions (See
the SecurityNow podcast, episode 54, at <http://grc.com/securitynow>
and scroll down to 54, or search for "Blue").

They went farther toward security with the 64-bit version than with
the 32-bit, since there are several years less legacy to deal with.
(And as a result, it has too many compatibility issues for many
people to deal with.) Somewhere around SP2, there will be more crying.

By the way, we (Mac community) have been muttering about Adobe. It's
not just us--Acrobat doesn't yet run under Vista.

   --John

Actually, Microsoft is extremely good at this (at least until Vista) and is one of the reasons they have a hard time with upgrades.

Feh. I have a bunch of Win 98 software that won't run on XP, regardless of the emulation mode, and those weren't far apart at all. When trying to get support on old software, the typical reponse is to get an old machine and install Win 98 on it.

On Apr 28, 2007, at 5:19 PM, Julian Gomez wrote:

> Feh. I have a bunch of Win 98 software that won't run on XP,
> regardless of the emulation mode, and those weren't far apart at
> all. When trying to get support on old software, the typical
> reponse is to get an old machine and install Win 98 on it.

That's what works for old Mac software, too. (Well, not the Win 98
part, but the equally cranky Mac equivalent.)

   --John

What about Newton Connection Utilities and Camera Access (for the QuickTake 200)? These do NOT run under the OS X carbonlibs. Likely the fault of the author... but, wasn't that Apple???

At 5:19 PM -0700 4/28/07, Julian Gomez wrote:
> Actually, Microsoft is extremely good at this (at least until Vista) and
> is one of the reasons they have a hard time with upgrades.
>
>Feh. I have a bunch of Win 98 software that won't run on XP,
>regardless of the emulation mode, and those weren't far apart at
>all. When trying to get support on old software, the typical reponse
>is to get an old machine and install Win 98 on it.

I believe this was one of the main reasons Microsoft bought Connectix
- to get VIrtualPC for PC. Which is free. You can run XP on a single
box but run multiple virtual machines (including Windows 98 or NT)
for legacy code.

<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/overview.mspx>

On 4/30/07 10:39, "Frans Moquette" <fransmoquette.nl> wrote:

> What about Newton Connection Utilities and Camera Access (for the QuickTake
> 200)? These do NOT run under the OS X carbonlibs. Likely the fault of the
> author... but, wasn't that Apple???

Um...both of those have been dead for HOW long?

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Apr 30, 2007, at 3:28 PM, John C. Welch wrote:

>> What about Newton Connection Utilities and Camera Access (for the
>> QuickTake
>> 200)? These do NOT run under the OS X carbonlibs. Likely the fault
>> of the
>> author... but, wasn't that Apple???
>
> Um...both of those have been dead for HOW long?

Some of us dinosaurs still rely on the Newton as our PDA... my son
has even figured out how to get his to connect with a wireless card,
and there are apparently utilities out there that will allow it to
talk to OS X, but I've never bothered.

Roger Henriques
rdh at rhen dot com

Utility for the Newton? hmmmm... What Newton you have, btw? I should
get the one I have for my museum going. Would like to hear more about
Utilities.

Nancy S.

On 4/30/07 15:50, "Roger Henriques" <rdhrhen.com> wrote:

>>> What about Newton Connection Utilities and Camera Access (for the
>>> QuickTake
>>> 200)? These do NOT run under the OS X carbonlibs. Likely the fault
>>> of the
>>> author... but, wasn't that Apple???
>>
>> Um...both of those have been dead for HOW long?
>
> Some of us dinosaurs still rely on the Newton as our PDA... my son
> has even figured out how to get his to connect with a wireless card,
> and there are apparently utilities out there that will allow it to
> talk to OS X, but I've never bothered.

I've a newton 2000 myself, however, there's a difference between "making it
work" and "Apple should still support it"

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 1/5/2007 8:50 AM, "Roger Henriques" <rdhrhen.com> spake thus:

> Some of us dinosaurs still rely on the Newton as our PDA... my son
> has even figured out how to get his to connect with a wireless card,
> and there are apparently utilities out there that will allow it to
> talk to OS X, but I've never bothered.

Hmm, maybe I should pull out that old 2100 after all. I was rather astounded
to discover recently that it still worked and still has all the stuff on it
that was there when I stopped using it about 2001 or so. I suspect the
battery pack has had it, but otherwise...

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

At 11:30 PM -0700 4/21/07, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
>Windows NT ran on a Power PC chip, but provided no emulation, all
>applications running on Windows NT Power PC had to be compiled for Windows
>NT Power PC (very few ever were).

NT was also available for Alpha, but suffered from the same lack of
native applications. DEC eventually offered a pretty decent
emulator, but by the time it came out there was very little interest
remaining in NT on non-Intel, and not long after MS dropped support
(NT4?) for the Alpha version.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

On May 1, 2007, at 2:13 PM, John C. Welch wrote:

>> Some of us dinosaurs still rely on the Newton as our PDA... my son
>> has even figured out how to get his to connect with a wireless card,
>> and there are apparently utilities out there that will allow it to
>> talk to OS X, but I've never bothered.
>
> I've a newton 2000 myself, however, there's a difference between
> "making it
> work" and "Apple should still support it"

Agreed, it was discontinued what - 9 years ago? I rely on the active
Newton community (still writing programs, last time I looked). I just
like the look on people's faces when I pull out the Newton... plus
being able to buy them cheap on e-bay.

Roger Henriques
rdh at rhen dot com

On May 1, 2007, at 2:13 PM, Nigel Stanger wrote:

> Hmm, maybe I should pull out that old 2100 after all. I was rather
> astounded
> to discover recently that it still worked and still has all the
> stuff on it
> that was there when I stopped using it about 2001 or so. I suspect the
> battery pack has had it, but otherwise...

I have 2 still running on original battery packs - and here is a
german website with instructions for rebuilding them with modern
cells <http://www.pda-soft.de/mp2k_battery_pack.html>, or they will
do it for you for a fee. You might try leaving it on charge for a
couple of days - that brought back one pack that I thought was dead.

There are also setups for using camera cards for memory, ethernet,
wireless, and even interfacing with a GPS and ploting trips on maps
on screen...

Roger Henriques
rdh at rhen dot com