Posted
by
timothyon Thursday July 09, @05:31PM
from the old-ways-are-best dept.
oberondarksoul writes "Every now and then, you hear about a new port of Mozilla to one of the lesser-used platforms. Recently, a new version of Mozilla has been released for Mac OS 9 — an operating system no longer sold or supported, and with no new hardware available to buy. Dubbed Classilla, it aims to provide 'a modern web browser running again on classic Macs,' and the currently-released build seems to work well on my old PowerBook 1400 — despite being a little memory-hungry."
Seriously though, does anyone even use it? If I still had a Mac that old, I'd rather run 8.6 to be honest. 9 added nothing much more than bugs while running slower...
If you have the mirrored doors edition of 9, it added LBA48 support. Now that the smallest drives on the market are about 160 gigs, being able to use the portion of your ATA drive above the first 128 binary gigs is a pretty significant benefit. That OS version only shipped with one Mac model, though (the mirrored doors G4).
Well, we're down to only having 3 computers that solely run OS9, and more that still run apps in classic though.
We use Quark Xpress 4.5 and a particular set of XTensions. Quark's upgrade path, to put it bluntly, sucks. Quark5 and 6 were IMHO utterly useless and Quark 7 is basically "as good as" Quark 4.5 in my book. We do use quark7 but the problem is that Quark7+the extensions we need run far SLOWER on the quadcore macs than on 800mhz g4s/g5s etc. Sad. Has nothing to do with the merits of OS9 versus OSX, it's just because the newer versions of the apps we need and use on a daily basis, well, suck.
The writing is on the wall though, we're one or two hardware failures away from being Os9/classic free.
Yeah, wasn't there a nice port of SheepShaver or something specially for Intel Macs?
Not sure how fast it is, though - but maybe Quark running in Rosetta might be the problem. I seem to remember Office for Mac being a real dog until the last major release.
And there are still plenty of PowerPC Macs around - old PowerBooks and Mac Minis still populate eBay regularly.
Yes, there is sheepshaver and I did give it a try awhile ago, though perhaps I should try again. Worth looking into. Thanks for the tip.
Quark7 is a universal binary, as are the XTensions. They're written in LISP actually--kinda neat. From talking to the developer, the issue lies with architectural changes within quark that makes the XT run slower (can't vouch for this). The XTension takes marked up text and creates processed pages complete with columns, images, and footnotes, etc, optimizing line spacing, c
Not for the software my mom wants to use with her music students, there isn't. Sure, you can cobble something together that is technically capable of running the application, but unless the timing of both the sound and video is perfect, it's completely useless.
the fact is, for single dedicated apps OS 9 was a robust operating system. heck 8.1 even 7.5.5 were dang good! I still have one 68K box I run 7.5 on
but mainly that is to provide a network path for an older Apple IIgs I use for certain dedicated tasks (Yes Apple IIs still live)
OpenSuse? Why not YDL? Yeah, I know the YDL community is pretty much mostly those running it on PS3's these days, but that's pretty much the case with all the PPC Linux distros
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 09, @06:02PM (#28643901)
Wow. This is the first OS9 story [slashdot.org] on Slashdot since this one [slashdot.org] from February 2002. Incidentally, that one is the *only* other one.
If most Classic users are like me, they couldn't stand the shitty OS X UI. Once it became apparent that Apple has absolutely no interest in retaking their previous position of UI leadership, I moved to Windows. If I have to use a crummy UI, I might as well use the one with the most software. And, unlike Apple, Microsoft is actually interested in evolving the UI.
Have you ever used a Mac OS X machine as your main machine for an extended period of time?
Yeah, I dual-booted between 10.2 and Classic, and then ran 10.3 and 10.4 with no Classic (or Classic emulator) at all. I've had more experience with OS X than I'd like to. I love the insinuation that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, though, that's nice.
How do you feel Mac OS X's let you down, ui-wise?
The main thing that bothers me, and that only Apple can get away with: version 10 of a product shouldn't ha
If you analyzer your logs with a tool such as Analog [analog.cx], you'll find that a significant number of your web sites' visitors are still running Explorer or Netscape versions 3 or 4. At least that's what I find for my sites - and it's been that way for a long time.
There are lots of reasons for this. Some people cannot afford the new hardware required for Mac OS X. Some of those who could buy the hardware have a big investment in software that uses Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) dongles that wouldn't work on OS X even if the newer Macs were equipped with ADB - they haven't been for years.
Some software has been discontinued, with the vendors out of business, and so will never be ported to OS X-native. If the software is useful enough to the end user, then they'll keep running Mac OS 9.
Finally, some people simply don't know how to upgrade. Until very recently a relative of mine was running Internet Explorer 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.2 - no doubt riddled with well-known security holes, but she simply didn't know better. I bought her Mac OS X Tiger for Christmas (Leopard won't run on her G3), then visited soon after and installed it for her, then downloaded and installed all the updates.
All of these are reasons that I plan for Ogg Frog [oggfrog.com] to support the Classic Mac OS.
(And there are many Macs out there that are too old to run Mac OS 9; they'll be running 8.6 or some such.)
Out of 2.9 million hits from IE browsers on our most active site since the beginning of the month, roughly 5200 are from versions of IE older than 6. That's about 0.1% of our IE users, and 0.05% of our total users.
Also, I've caught obvious UA spoofing in our logs -- one script reported a different, random UA with every request -- many of which were browsers you'll never actually see in the wild -- like "Lotus Notes web client"
What's more, even the biggest sites don't offer an A-grade experience for older browsers. Hell; I remember not being able to access microsoft.com using IE 3 in 1998! If microsoft dropped IE 3 support a decade ago, surely most of the web can as well. Even Yahoo offers a limited experience [yahoo.com] to users using old browsers, and facebook throws "get a better browser" messages up if you visit with IE6.
In the end, it's just not economically feasible, in many cases, for developers to spend time supporting 0.05% of browsers, especially when those browsers are so old that they support only a fraction of modern standards. I salute your efforts to make your properties accessible to _absolutely_ everyone, and I'd love to do the same, but we just can't justify the development cost, for the sites we run. We'd be spending thousands of dollars to support a number of users we can count on one hand, to the detriment of our tens of thousands of users on modern platforms. Frankly, if any of our frequent contributors are on older platforms, it's almost more cost effective for us to buy those few stragglers modern netbooks.
This is true of all software. Sure, we could write everything to run on DOS and Mac OS 7, but it'd be expensive to develop and test on so many platforms; there'd be minimal, if any gain in adoption; and we wouldn't be able to take advantage of more recent technology. In the end, taking the "support absolutely everything" philosophy just isn't a sound business decision.
and not supported by the Mozilla Foundation, but it is a Mozilla 1.3.1 based web browser.
Too bad it does not support the 68K MacOS 7.5.X environment, there are a lot of people running Mac 68K emulators and that is the version of Mac System that Apple allows to be downloaded legally for free.Usually the Basilisk II [online.fr] Mac 68K emulator, which seems to be popular.
At least they try for PowerMac Mac OS 8.6 compatibility, which is good for those PowerMac users who cannot upgrade to Mac OS9.
8.6 compatibility is very good... so far. I'm testing the browser on my Cube, a Bondi iMac (running 8.6) and a Performa 6400 (ditto). It's definitely faster than Mozilla, Netscape, and WamCom, and fairly stable. Only certain sites make it crash, such as Alltop [alltop.com] (if you hover over a link), and it has some rendering and scrolling bugs (such as on Blogspot [blogspot.com]). But on the whole, it's much more stable than the older browsers. And Slashdot [slashdot.org] no longer crashes either:)
One reason might be that the people who can still run Mac OS 9 like the look and feel better than Mac OS X. I certainly do - the new "shiny" / hyper-animated look and feel is one of the primary reasons why I have little current interest in getting a Mac. I feel the same way about Vista, but at least there I can turn it off.
User interfaces should not be "exciting" - they should be functional, and minimize eye strain and unnecessary distractions, especially for the people that have to use them eight or more hours a day.
Of course few things are quite as bad as trying to read an online article when an animated ad is flashing away in the next column...
Boring does not equal functional. I'd say that the improvements made in OS X were all worthwhile. Easier to use and easier on the eye. It's like having air conditioning in your car. It's not absolutely necessary but at the end of the day you feel so much less tired.
Since this thread might have some people still using PowerMac 8500 and related machines, I've recently hacked the 7300/7500/7600/8500/8600 Graphics Driver [nyu.edu] to support resolutions in the 1600x1200 range on a stock PowerMac 8500 (probably works on the other models as well). I now have a 20" 1680x1050 LCD connected and working perfectly, locking on to the analog signal with perfect pixels. I figured out where the timing parameters are stored in the driver, allowing other new resolutions as well (like 1440x900), and fine-tuning of the pixel rate. Even with a CRT, this allows higher resolutions. Contact me [mailto] if you'd like try the driver or have a different resolution.
(Well actually, I've always loved the Amiga - but the point is I'm not expecting to see a story on Slashdot about it these days, and if there was, you can bet there'd be all the "whocares/letitdie/deadhorse" comments. Why should an old OS like MacOS be any different, especially when Apple themselves moved on years ago?)
I see that the mods-who-can't-stand-any-criticism of Apple have already got to you (although I'm not sure why even they would defend MacOS - come
There is a team working on Amizilla [sourceforge.net] which is the AmigaOS version of Mozilla web browser. But it was last updated in 2006.
The other project is AMozillaX [amiga-news.de] which was announced but no code or web browser was released and it seems to have vanished off the Internet.
If indeed he was mod'ded down then perhaps it was because he didn't contribute anything rather than it was that he criticized something Apple. Any idiot can respond to anything with "who cares?" or "WTF?" or similar, but that's just a lazy dismissal. It's even more lazy and less helpful than a good troll or flamebait. How are you supposed to even respond to that -- "I do!" - ? It's a totally useless comment.
A more insightful response might have been along the lines of, "I had no idea there was still a market for new browsers/applications for what I assumed was a dead or near dead operating system. Could someone enlighten me on the value proposition of MacOS 9 in today's world?"
Now I'd give such a response 2 mod ups for interesting or something.
Somebody will. Most of the projects I work on at home come under the category of "because I want to". I am currently building a digital clock which has been in the planning process for twenty years.
The software I work on in my day job is much older than MacOS 9. A lot of my work involves shoehorning modern stuff into it so this type of project is of interest to me.
I picked up a free G3 iMac awhile back, just because I've never had an Apple computer, nor does anyone that I know near here.
All I wanted to do with it was turn it into a handy Internet browsing machine. But I couldn't find a decent browser for it. I thought about upgrading to OS X, especially since I found some more RAM for it, but the process (involving a strange shamanistic incantation of multiple serialized firmware and OS updates) was scary.
Right. So, I put Ubuntu on it. Works fine, of course, but it's really not very much of an Apple anymore. A newer Firefox would've helped that.
Have you heard of iCab [www.icab.de]? It's the only Acid2-compliant browser that runs on Mac OS 9, and is much more standards compliant than Gecko 1.3 (the version used in Classilla).
Although iCab is no longer maintained for Mac OS 9, its last release for Mac OS 9 was in 2008, far more recently than Gecko 1.3 (2002), and the Mac OS 9 version is still a full-featured modern browser with tabbed browsing, built-in AdBlock, excellent standards compliance (iCab was the first browser with an Acid2-compliant public build) - the only thing it's really missing is CSS3 opacity, and all that good stuff.
i've upgraded many many old G3 iMacs to run OSX - and they run OSX just fine (so long as you update the firmware first). you need at least 128-256Mb RAM - but you should be able to get at least OSX 10.3 on ANY old G3 iMac.
once you got OSX installed on your old imac, its a piece of cake to install Firefox -- now the caveat is -- if you only have only OSX 10.3, then you can only run up to Firefox v2 -- to get Firefox v3 or later, you will have to have Tiger (OSX 10.4) installed.
I've got three MacOS 8.6 that are the main production line for our company. Nice to know I still can use a web browser on those machines for solutions made to be used by all other computers (WinME, WinXP, MacOS X, etc..) since IE 5 crapped out a long time ago and nothing else would run half as well as it on the old Macs.
You're definitely right there, sugarbomb. I used to work at a school district a while back, and although the computer labs were mostly OS X, the older computers from the labs were often pushed out to classrooms for teachers to use.
I can't tell you how awful it was to be reduced to using IE (I don't even remember what the last version of OS 9 was) to download drivers or updates if Netscape has been deleted from the system. Though using Netscape 4 to get things of some of today's image/css/flash heavy websites wasn't a cakewalk either.
In many cases, the computer is only used to check webmail and browse the Internet, and a modern-browser would go a long way to extending the life of these machines.
Not everybody can afford to throw away old computers and buy new hardware. If you're a teacher at an elementary school in Mexico, and all you have in your classroom is an old mac, then this could be very important to you. It turns that mac from something that can't surf the web (or can't do so securely) to something that can.
No kidding. Then you could get some modern software on these machines as opposed to waiting around for someone to compile something on top of an old version of Gecko.
Or just put one of the Linux or BSD distributions on there. They're certainly more usable and more stable than Mac OS 9 ever was.
I will not feed the troll, I will not feed the troll, I . . .
Are you out of your mind? The point other commenters are making is that a non-trivial number of folks, with an emphasis on schools and other educational institutions, have old hardware that runs Mac OS 9. It might be that, in some abstract, general sense, Linux or BSD is more usable and stable than OS 9 (although I d
Name me one school that still uses old Macs, especially ones in Mexico where the price disparity between a Mac and non-Mac computer is amplified.
A couple weeks ago I saw a couple power macs running OS 9 (or maybe even 8) on a local news fluff piece. I think they were being used for the school a/v program.
I have to side with the GP here. I love linux just as much as any other slashdotter, but the knee-jerk reaction to ANY problem around here is "JUST INSTALL LINUX."
There are a gazillion reasons that it's not as simple as that in all of these cases, first and foremost is COST. Who is going to pay for these installs, who is going to do the research to find someone able and willing to do these installs, who is going to pay for that? What about legacy software you CAN'T run on Linux, what about dongles, what about the network, etc etc etc. What about the cost of training the unionized teachers to use something completely new and unfamiliar as opposed to the same old "window thingy" they used to access their email?Does anyone around here even realize how much of a bureaucratic process it is to something "simple" as installing a new operating system in publicly-funded schools??
Undoubtedly, I'll get modded down as troll of flamebait for pointing out that a solution to a technical problem is not "just install linux" because there are other non-technical factors to consider in each scenario.
By the way, I think it's very cool that there is still active development going on for a legacy system, and that it has an active community, and I am in no way, shape or form trying to take away from that with this post.
Does a fairly affluent school that is two blocks north of a prominent Canadian university count? Some teachers love making computers available to the children that they teach. Unfortunately, when board policies only allocate two per classroom and place the rest in computer labs, teachers often have to scrounge for what's cheap or free.
While on the note of obsolete technology in the classroom, I recently donated a Pentium 90 to another school in an affluent neighbourhood. In their case, the teacher actually wanted that extraordinarily old computer because many of the good educational games were designed to run on 486's or early Pentiums.
Mac OS 9 did not have memory protection or preemptive multitasking. It crashed a lot.
Just a note here: cooperative multitaking may cause a system to become unresponsive, but it won't cause a system to crash. In both the case of cooperative multitasking and the lack of memory protection, the stability issues were caused by applications rather than the operating system (in virtually every case). As such, it was quite possible to choose applications that did not affect the responsiveness or stability of the system as a whole. Granted, that was virtually impossible to do for web browsers in the case of the classic Mac OS.
Just a note here: cooperative multitaking may cause a system to become unresponsive, but it won't cause a system to crash. In both the case of cooperative multitasking and the lack of memory protection, the stability issues were caused by applications rather than the operating system (in virtually every case). As such, it was quite possible to choose applications that did not affect the responsiveness or stability of the system as a whole. Granted, that was virtually impossible to do for web browsers in the
Or just put one of the Linux or BSD distributions on there. They're certainly more usable and more stable than Mac OS 9 ever was.
I would definitely agree that MacOS 9 was a bad OS. It was by far the worst computer operating system I ever used -- much worse than earlier versions like MacOS 6 or 7, much worse than MacOS X, and much worse than Linux or FreeBSD.
The problem is that installing, say, Linux on an old mac is not something that a lot of people (e.g., my made-up Mexican elementary school teacher)
If you're a teacher in Mexico using an old Mac, this is of no interest to you. You don't have Internet access anyway. Nice try though.
Nice try indeed. Harking back approximately two decades, Mexico became the first country in the American continent to begin installing fiber-optic telephone wiring for widespread use, even before the United States. FYI, this happened in Baja California. Nowadays, the majority of Mexicans hooked up to the Internet do so through the telephone monopoly Telmex, Telnor in the Northwestern states (both owned by one of the ten richest men in the world, Carlos Slim). A minority hook up through TV cable services, fewer still via satellite (Starband), usually in remote rural areas where Telmex or Telnor have not arrived yet.
Nationwide, junior high schools in rural areas have adopted a teaching system via satellite known as telesecundaria, which can easily be adapted for Internet access and may have already done so.
Now, if you go to any urban area in Mexico and peruse the secondhand stores with electronics, chances are that you'll bump into an early generation iMac in working condition, and be able to purchase it dirt cheap, as the casual Mexican computer user has only used Windows in his/her entire life, so these things may sit on the shelves for awhile. As anecdotal evidence, a friend with a graphic design business once found and bought three iMac Graphite models in one swoop, a five hundred dollar deal, at one of these stores.
Therefore, if you're a savvy teacher in Mexico, or just plain a Mac user with a penny to pinch and a little luck, Classilla could potentially be a godsend.
My daughter is getting old enough now to use a computer, and I've dug out an old iMac G3 DV that was given to us by a friend, and loaded several older pre-school games my mom had lying around from when my brothers were little. Now, not only can it be a great little preschool computer for her, but it can also be used online in a pinch. Or perhaps letting her have access to several of the show based sites that have content for the kids (Sid the Science Kid, Sesame Street, and several other PBS, Disney and Nick JR. shows)
I could now let her go to those, without having to worry about what she could get into on my computer. (she decided to rename a good chunk of my songs last time she sat on my computer)
Bottom line: Is it state of the art, the next big thing? of course not. but it did just make some older equipment just that much more useful.
Those sites use Flash extensively and it runs like a dog on my daughter's hand-me-down iBook G4. I don't think you'll be happy with the results on a G3. Flash isn't written well or at least with the same optimizations as the Windows version.
Pretty sure you can install Mac OS X in that thing. Not saying you have to, or if those games are compatible with it, but if you wanted to...
In my experience, "old" versions of Mac OS X (like from five years ago) are very nearly as much of a pain in the ass to deal with, in terms of getting reasonably modern software on the thing, as Mac OS 8 was when I tried it several years back. OS 10.3, for instance, is now old enough that most new software doesn't support it. OS 10.4 is very nearly at that point as well.
My district till has well over 400 OS 9 iMacs. There are some education software packages with no PC equivalent, no OS X equivalent, and NO replacement. Most of my job in maintaining the districts macs is 60% legacy support, 40% new system support and server management.
Does anyone even use classic anymore? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Does anyone even use classic anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
If you have the mirrored doors edition of 9, it added LBA48 support. Now that the smallest drives on the market are about 160 gigs, being able to use the portion of your ATA drive above the first 128 binary gigs is a pretty significant benefit. That OS version only shipped with one Mac model, though (the mirrored doors G4).
Parent
Re:Does anyone even use classic anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
We do at my office (publishing)
Well, we're down to only having 3 computers that solely run OS9, and more that still run apps in classic though.
We use Quark Xpress 4.5 and a particular set of XTensions. Quark's upgrade path, to put it bluntly, sucks. Quark5 and 6 were IMHO utterly useless and Quark 7 is basically "as good as" Quark 4.5 in my book. We do use quark7 but the problem is that Quark7+the extensions we need run far SLOWER on the quadcore macs than on 800mhz g4s/g5s etc. Sad. Has nothing to do with the merits of OS9 versus OSX, it's just because the newer versions of the apps we need and use on a daily basis, well, suck.
The writing is on the wall though, we're one or two hardware failures away from being Os9/classic free.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's always hardware emulation to run OS9
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, wasn't there a nice port of SheepShaver or something specially for Intel Macs?
Not sure how fast it is, though - but maybe Quark running in Rosetta might be the problem. I seem to remember Office for Mac being a real dog until the last major release.
And there are still plenty of PowerPC Macs around - old PowerBooks and Mac Minis still populate eBay regularly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, there is sheepshaver and I did give it a try awhile ago, though perhaps I should try again. Worth looking into. Thanks for the tip.
Quark7 is a universal binary, as are the XTensions. They're written in LISP actually--kinda neat. From talking to the developer, the issue lies with architectural changes within quark that makes the XT run slower (can't vouch for this). The XTension takes marked up text and creates processed pages complete with columns, images, and footnotes, etc, optimizing line spacing, c
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for the software my mom wants to use with her music students, there isn't. Sure, you can cobble something together that is technically capable of running the application, but unless the timing of both the sound and video is perfect, it's completely useless.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure that "robust" is a word I'd use for an OS lacking memory protection.
As for only running a single app, the rest of the computing world moved away from that model in the 80s.
Re: (Score:2)
OpenSuse? Why not YDL? Yeah, I know the YDL community is pretty much mostly those running it on PS3's these days, but that's pretty much the case with all the PPC Linux distros
weird (Score:2)
I think a port of the gecko rendering engine would be great, but I'm dubious about the performance of a XUL-based browser on such an old platform.
Maybe someone could port gecko to my System 6-based Apple IIGS?
IIIGS (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe someone could port gecko to my System 6-based Apple IIGS?
No, but Apple ported Safari to the IIIGS.
Parent
Old Mozilla not Firefox (Score:3)
It is old code. From the FAQ:
the decision was made to split Gecko off at 1.3.1
First OS9 story in 7 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow. This is the first OS9 story [slashdot.org] on Slashdot since this one [slashdot.org] from February 2002. Incidentally, that one is the *only* other one.
Well, either that, or the Firehose is broken.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If most Classic users are like me, they couldn't stand the shitty OS X UI. Once it became apparent that Apple has absolutely no interest in retaking their previous position of UI leadership, I moved to Windows. If I have to use a crummy UI, I might as well use the one with the most software. And, unlike Apple, Microsoft is actually interested in evolving the UI.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever used a Mac OS X machine as your main machine for an extended period of time?
Yeah, I dual-booted between 10.2 and Classic, and then ran 10.3 and 10.4 with no Classic (or Classic emulator) at all. I've had more experience with OS X than I'd like to. I love the insinuation that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, though, that's nice.
How do you feel Mac OS X's let you down, ui-wise?
The main thing that bothers me, and that only Apple can get away with: version 10 of a product shouldn't ha
The Answer Lies In Your Web Server Log Files (Score:5, Interesting)
There are lots of reasons for this. Some people cannot afford the new hardware required for Mac OS X. Some of those who could buy the hardware have a big investment in software that uses Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) dongles that wouldn't work on OS X even if the newer Macs were equipped with ADB - they haven't been for years.
Some software has been discontinued, with the vendors out of business, and so will never be ported to OS X-native. If the software is useful enough to the end user, then they'll keep running Mac OS 9.
Finally, some people simply don't know how to upgrade. Until very recently a relative of mine was running Internet Explorer 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.2 - no doubt riddled with well-known security holes, but she simply didn't know better. I bought her Mac OS X Tiger for Christmas (Leopard won't run on her G3), then visited soon after and installed it for her, then downloaded and installed all the updates.
All of these are reasons that I plan for Ogg Frog [oggfrog.com] to support the Classic Mac OS.
(And there are many Macs out there that are too old to run Mac OS 9; they'll be running 8.6 or some such.)
Re:The Answer Lies In Your Web Server Log Files (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of 2.9 million hits from IE browsers on our most active site since the beginning of the month, roughly 5200 are from versions of IE older than 6. That's about 0.1% of our IE users, and 0.05% of our total users.
Also, I've caught obvious UA spoofing in our logs -- one script reported a different, random UA with every request -- many of which were browsers you'll never actually see in the wild -- like "Lotus Notes web client"
What's more, even the biggest sites don't offer an A-grade experience for older browsers. Hell; I remember not being able to access microsoft.com using IE 3 in 1998! If microsoft dropped IE 3 support a decade ago, surely most of the web can as well. Even Yahoo offers a limited experience [yahoo.com] to users using old browsers, and facebook throws "get a better browser" messages up if you visit with IE6.
In the end, it's just not economically feasible, in many cases, for developers to spend time supporting 0.05% of browsers, especially when those browsers are so old that they support only a fraction of modern standards. I salute your efforts to make your properties accessible to _absolutely_ everyone, and I'd love to do the same, but we just can't justify the development cost, for the sites we run. We'd be spending thousands of dollars to support a number of users we can count on one hand, to the detriment of our tens of thousands of users on modern platforms. Frankly, if any of our frequent contributors are on older platforms, it's almost more cost effective for us to buy those few stragglers modern netbooks.
This is true of all software. Sure, we could write everything to run on DOS and Mac OS 7, but it'd be expensive to develop and test on so many platforms; there'd be minimal, if any gain in adoption; and we wouldn't be able to take advantage of more recent technology. In the end, taking the "support absolutely everything" philosophy just isn't a sound business decision.
Parent
It is not as up to date as Firefox 3.5 (Score:5, Informative)
and not supported by the Mozilla Foundation, but it is a Mozilla 1.3.1 based web browser.
Too bad it does not support the 68K MacOS 7.5.X environment, there are a lot of people running Mac 68K emulators and that is the version of Mac System that Apple allows to be downloaded legally for free.Usually the Basilisk II [online.fr] Mac 68K emulator, which seems to be popular.
At least they try for PowerMac Mac OS 8.6 compatibility, which is good for those PowerMac users who cannot upgrade to Mac OS9.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I jumped on as a tester fairly early in the pro
Look and Feel (Score:4, Insightful)
One reason might be that the people who can still run Mac OS 9 like the look and feel better than Mac OS X. I certainly do - the new "shiny" / hyper-animated look and feel is one of the primary reasons why I have little current interest in getting a Mac. I feel the same way about Vista, but at least there I can turn it off.
User interfaces should not be "exciting" - they should be functional, and minimize eye strain and unnecessary distractions, especially for the people that have to use them eight or more hours a day.
Of course few things are quite as bad as trying to read an online article when an animated ad is flashing away in the next column...
Re:Look and Feel (Score:4, Insightful)
Boring does not equal functional. I'd say that the improvements made in OS X were all worthwhile. Easier to use and easier on the eye. It's like having air conditioning in your car. It's not absolutely necessary but at the end of the day you feel so much less tired.
Parent
What's old is new again - or maybe not (Score:4, Funny)
the currently-released build seems to work well on my old PowerBook 1400 -- despite being a little memory-hungry.
Some things never change.
Great - when is the Atari 1040ste port? (Score:4, Funny)
RS
OT:1680x1050 etc. from PowerMac 8500 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Maybe next there'll be an Amiga port.
(Well actually, I've always loved the Amiga - but the point is I'm not expecting to see a story on Slashdot about it these days, and if there was, you can bet there'd be all the "whocares/letitdie/deadhorse" comments. Why should an old OS like MacOS be any different, especially when Apple themselves moved on years ago?)
I see that the mods-who-can't-stand-any-criticism of Apple have already got to you (although I'm not sure why even they would defend MacOS - come
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a team working on Amizilla [sourceforge.net] which is the AmigaOS version of Mozilla web browser. But it was last updated in 2006.
The other project is AMozillaX [amiga-news.de] which was announced but no code or web browser was released and it seems to have vanished off the Internet.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
If indeed he was mod'ded down then perhaps it was because he didn't contribute anything rather than it was that he criticized something Apple. Any idiot can respond to anything with "who cares?" or "WTF?" or similar, but that's just a lazy dismissal. It's even more lazy and less helpful than a good troll or flamebait. How are you supposed to even respond to that -- "I do!" - ? It's a totally useless comment.
A more insightful response might have been along the lines of, "I had no idea there was still a market for new browsers/applications for what I assumed was a dead or near dead operating system. Could someone enlighten me on the value proposition of MacOS 9 in today's world?"
Now I'd give such a response 2 mod ups for interesting or something.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, seriously, who cares?
Somebody will. Most of the projects I work on at home come under the category of "because I want to". I am currently building a digital clock which has been in the planning process for twenty years.
The software I work on in my day job is much older than MacOS 9. A lot of my work involves shoehorning modern stuff into it so this type of project is of interest to me.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would've cared.
I picked up a free G3 iMac awhile back, just because I've never had an Apple computer, nor does anyone that I know near here.
All I wanted to do with it was turn it into a handy Internet browsing machine. But I couldn't find a decent browser for it. I thought about upgrading to OS X, especially since I found some more RAM for it, but the process (involving a strange shamanistic incantation of multiple serialized firmware and OS updates) was scary.
Right. So, I put Ubuntu on it. Works fine, of course, but it's really not very much of an Apple anymore. A newer Firefox would've helped that.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you heard of iCab [www.icab.de]? It's the only Acid2-compliant browser that runs on Mac OS 9, and is much more standards compliant than Gecko 1.3 (the version used in Classilla).
Although iCab is no longer maintained for Mac OS 9, its last release for Mac OS 9 was in 2008, far more recently than Gecko 1.3 (2002), and the Mac OS 9 version is still a full-featured modern browser with tabbed browsing, built-in AdBlock, excellent standards compliance (iCab was the first browser with an Acid2-compliant public build) - the only thing it's really missing is CSS3 opacity, and all that good stuff.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (you insensitive clod) (Score:3, Informative)
i've upgraded many many old G3 iMacs to run OSX - and they run OSX just fine (so long as you update the firmware first). you need at least 128-256Mb RAM - but you should be able to get at least OSX 10.3 on ANY old G3 iMac.
once you got OSX installed on your old imac, its a piece of cake to install Firefox -- now the caveat is -- if you only have only OSX 10.3, then you can only run up to Firefox v2 -- to get Firefox v3 or later, you will have to have Tiger (OSX 10.4) installed.
now, unless you got one of the
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
schools ... you would be surprised at the number of elementary school class rooms that still have OS 9 apps and machines that run them ...
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody can afford to throw away old computers and buy new hardware. If you're a teacher at an elementary school in Mexico, and all you have in your classroom is an old mac, then this could be very important to you. It turns that mac from something that can't surf the web (or can't do so securely) to something that can.
No, I'm not an Apple fanboy. I run linux.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Or just put one of the Linux or BSD distributions on there. They're certainly more usable and more stable than Mac OS 9 ever was.
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No kidding. Then you could get some modern software on these machines as opposed to waiting around for someone to compile something on top of an old version of Gecko.
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I will not feed the troll, I will not feed the troll, I . . .
Are you out of your mind? The point other commenters are making is that a non-trivial number of folks, with an emphasis on schools and other educational institutions, have old hardware that runs Mac OS 9. It might be that, in some abstract, general sense, Linux or BSD is more usable and stable than OS 9 (although I d
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to side with the GP here. I love linux just as much as any other slashdotter, but the knee-jerk reaction to ANY problem around here is "JUST INSTALL LINUX."
There are a gazillion reasons that it's not as simple as that in all of these cases, first and foremost is COST. Who is going to pay for these installs, who is going to do the research to find someone able and willing to do these installs, who is going to pay for that? What about legacy software you CAN'T run on Linux, what about dongles, what about the network, etc etc etc. What about the cost of training the unionized teachers to use something completely new and unfamiliar as opposed to the same old "window thingy" they used to access their email?Does anyone around here even realize how much of a bureaucratic process it is to something "simple" as installing a new operating system in publicly-funded schools??
Undoubtedly, I'll get modded down as troll of flamebait for pointing out that a solution to a technical problem is not "just install linux" because there are other non-technical factors to consider in each scenario.
By the way, I think it's very cool that there is still active development going on for a legacy system, and that it has an active community, and I am in no way, shape or form trying to take away from that with this post.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Name me one school that still uses old Macs
Does a fairly affluent school that is two blocks north of a prominent Canadian university count? Some teachers love making computers available to the children that they teach. Unfortunately, when board policies only allocate two per classroom and place the rest in computer labs, teachers often have to scrounge for what's cheap or free.
While on the note of obsolete technology in the classroom, I recently donated a Pentium 90 to another school in an affluent neighbourhood. In their case, the teacher actually wanted that extraordinarily old computer because many of the good educational games were designed to run on 486's or early Pentiums.
Mac OS 9 did not have memory protection or preemptive multitasking. It crashed a lot.
Just a note here: cooperative multitaking may cause a system to become unresponsive, but it won't cause a system to crash. In both the case of cooperative multitasking and the lack of memory protection, the stability issues were caused by applications rather than the operating system (in virtually every case). As such, it was quite possible to choose applications that did not affect the responsiveness or stability of the system as a whole. Granted, that was virtually impossible to do for web browsers in the case of the classic Mac OS.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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I would definitely agree that MacOS 9 was a bad OS. It was by far the worst computer operating system I ever used -- much worse than earlier versions like MacOS 6 or 7, much worse than MacOS X, and much worse than Linux or FreeBSD.
The problem is that installing, say, Linux on an old mac is not something that a lot of people (e.g., my made-up Mexican elementary school teacher)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're a teacher in Mexico using an old Mac, this is of no interest to you. You don't have Internet access anyway. Nice try though.
Nice try indeed. Harking back approximately two decades, Mexico became the first country in the American continent to begin installing fiber-optic telephone wiring for widespread use, even before the United States. FYI, this happened in Baja California.
Nowadays, the majority of Mexicans hooked up to the Internet do so through the telephone monopoly Telmex, Telnor in the Northwestern states (both owned by one of the ten richest men in the world, Carlos Slim). A minority hook up through TV cable services, fewer still via satellite (Starband), usually in remote rural areas where Telmex or Telnor have not arrived yet.
Nationwide, junior high schools in rural areas have adopted a teaching system via satellite known as telesecundaria, which can easily be adapted for Internet access and may have already done so.
Now, if you go to any urban area in Mexico and peruse the secondhand stores with electronics, chances are that you'll bump into an early generation iMac in working condition, and be able to purchase it dirt cheap, as the casual Mexican computer user has only used Windows in his/her entire life, so these things may sit on the shelves for awhile. As anecdotal evidence, a friend with a graphic design business once found and bought three iMac Graphite models in one swoop, a five hundred dollar deal, at one of these stores.
Therefore, if you're a savvy teacher in Mexico, or just plain a Mac user with a penny to pinch and a little luck, Classilla could potentially be a godsend.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
I care.
My daughter is getting old enough now to use a computer, and I've dug out an old iMac G3 DV that was given to us by a friend, and loaded several older pre-school games my mom had lying around from when my brothers were little.
Now, not only can it be a great little preschool computer for her, but it can also be used online in a pinch.
Or perhaps letting her have access to several of the show based sites that have content for the kids
(Sid the Science Kid, Sesame Street, and several other PBS, Disney and Nick JR. shows)
I could now let her go to those, without having to worry about what she could get into on my computer.
(she decided to rename a good chunk of my songs last time she sat on my computer)
Bottom line:
Is it state of the art, the next big thing? of course not.
but it did just make some older equipment just that much more useful.
Parent
Not with that computer (Score:3, Informative)
Those sites use Flash extensively and it runs like a dog on my daughter's hand-me-down iBook G4. I don't think you'll be happy with the results on a G3. Flash isn't written well or at least with the same optimizations as the Windows version.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty sure you can install Mac OS X in that thing. Not saying you have to, or if those games are compatible with it, but if you wanted to...
In my experience, "old" versions of Mac OS X (like from five years ago) are very nearly as much of a pain in the ass to deal with, in terms of getting reasonably modern software on the thing, as Mac OS 8 was when I tried it several years back. OS 10.3, for instance, is now old enough that most new software doesn't support it. OS 10.4 is very nearly at that point as well.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
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The SE/30 had colour - you just needed an extra video card and external monitor to see it. That's how I used mine...