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?
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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.
The old hardware still works.
The old OS still works.
What’s the worry?
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.
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.
I still use SheepShaver and an OS 8 boot image to run HappyWeed. When will someone port that to OS X or the iPhone?
Levitt,
ethernet and wireless existed long before Mac OS X. What makes you think they are suddenly no longer on the internet?
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.
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
it’s difficult to track.
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.