MacOS X - can you emulate version 9?

[SagaLore]

I bought my wife a macmini, and for the most part it has been a good little machine. But the reason we got it was so she could do desktop publishing work on the side, and bring home some of her work from the print shop. But at work she uses an old G3 with MacOS 8. All through high schoo / vocational, and college, she used a version of the OS prior to X.

I don't know what Apple was thinking. The original interface architects put a lot of thought and logic into how the GUI is supposed to be. How easy and intuitive it is suppose to feel. But when they decided to overhaul the OS and pop in a linux kernel, they cut off all roots and redesigned it into a x-windows gui or Win XP wannabe.

/rant

So is there a setting in X that will allow you to switch back to a pre-X gui, without sacraficing the new os? I don't really want to dish out the $$$ just to install an outdated os, but it would be nice if my wife could work on both work and home machines without having to relearn how to do things.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Yes, it's called Classic. If you used the cd that says "Install additional software" it should have installed Classic. Classic is an emulator of OS 9.

 

[DaveSimmons]

This is one reason why my brother (a graphics designer) built himself a nice P4 3.2 GHz system with Windows XP instead of "upgrading" to a G5 mac with OS X.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Lucifer
Yes, it's called Classic. If you used the cd that says "Install additional software" it should have installed Classic. Classic is an emulator of OS 9.

Poor explanation of Classic. Doesn't address the OP's rant, I mean his wife's complaint.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Originally posted by: manly

Originally posted by: Lucifer
Yes, it's called Classic. If you used the cd that says "Install additional software" it should have installed Classic. Classic is an emulator of OS 9.

Poor explanation of Classic. Doesn't address the OP's rant, I mean his wife's complaint.

The topic title says "MacOS X - can you emulate version 9?" I thought he wanted to emulate OS 9, even after reading the OP. jeez. :disgust:

If you want OS X to look like the OS 9 look, you need to download a third party application to skin the OS X GUI. According to some users on the Apple Discussions boards, such applications cause OS X to crash. But there are some who don't have problems at all.

 

[chcarnage]

Oh yeah, the many immaturities and changes OS X imposed the OS 9 userbase... You're by far not the only one moaning the end of OS 9's way of doing things (on the front end). This was the reason why I waited three years before I installed OS X.

OS X includes the "Classic Environment", if you launch an OS 9 application, it should boot up. While working in the OS 9 app, the Menu bar and the windows have the classic look. When the program is in the background, the OS X GUI reappears and everything works normal. The Classic Environment does a fair job and performs just as a native OS 9 would do on your hardware. It has a few flaws like browsing in save dialogues on a unix-like organised hard disk but it's okay.

You can't install any OS prior to OS X 10.3 on your Mac Mini even if you have regular OS 9 system CDs!

It's possible to skin OS X with the shareware ShapeShifter and a OS 9-like Theme, but the logic of the OS basically remains unchanged. I don't know if it's worth your effort or if you just should try to accept your OS X-fate. In the meantime it has its very own logic, it just happens to differ sometimes from the thoughts behind OS 9.

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
This is one reason why my brother (a graphics designer) built himself a nice P4 3.2 GHz system with Windows XP instead of "upgrading" to a G5 mac with OS X.

Sometimes it's just obvious how people get 10k+ posts on a board. :thumbsup: