Interesting and I can see that it would be useful to some people. For me though, starting with 10.2 I began to aggressivly get rid of Classic. I haven't used OS9 either boot or classic in a couple of years.

Oddly enough I dug into the page and found that my 1.25Ghz G4-DP is the fastest Mac still capable of booting OS9.

http://www.everymac.com/articles/q&a/macos-9-classic-support/faq/last-macs-to-boot-startup-macos-9.html

Classic and Classic apps should be available for any Mac user that wants to use them. I still use some Classic apps every week. Apple should dedicate a few programmers to helping third-parties continue Classic availability -- even on Intel Macs under Rosetta. Why not?

This is an interesting Mac Observer article about Classic Support dropped on PPC Macs running Leopard. This is probably a good move because it forces services, vendors, and customers to get current with their app upgrades and stop working in backwards environments.

It also makes the Intel Macs and Intel native Mac apps very mainstream. It would not be reasonable for Apple to continue to support 2 legacy environments, Classic and Rosetta!

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Guest wrote:
Classic and Classic apps should be available for any Mac user that wants to use them. I still use some Classic apps every week. Apple should dedicate a few programmers to helping third-parties continue Classic availability -- even on Intel Macs under Rosetta. Why not?

To start with OS9 and Classic is dependant on PPc processors. Now that Macs sell with Intel processors it would require developing a complete emulation layer, no small task. Also Classic has been around for a number of years (five? seven?). The transition to OS-X should be complete now. I see an opening for some small software company to make an emulator, but the market would be very limited. It doesn't bother me that Apple has dropped the old OS.

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geoduck wrote:
To start with OS9 and Classic is dependant on PPc processors. Now that Macs sell with Intel processors it would require developing a complete emulation layer, no small task.

Well, they already have a complete PPC emulation layer in Rosetta. I don't have any real idea how easy it would be to get Classic to piggyback on that, though.

For now, there is Sheepshaver, a PPC emulator that can run OS 9. It's a major pain to set up, but if you really need it, the option is there.

I can understand that it's not a priority of Apple's for Intel Macs. It does bother me that they ripped it out of Leopard for PPC.

I still occasionally need Classic to open some old StuffIt files I made in System 7 to OS 9. For some reason newer versions of StuffIt just can't handle it (although it's possible the latest version fixed that, since I haven't tried in a while).

Sheepshaver isn't really that difficult, and the documentation is surprisingly good. The only down side is it can't be updated to 9.2.2. At least it couldn't the last time I checked...

I only use Classic to run Lemmings - my favourite game of all time!

Why it's not OS X I don't know - then I could throw Classic away!

Who the hell cares about OS 9? That OS was a joke from the start!

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Mikuro wrote:
Well, they already have a complete PPC emulation layer in Rosetta.

True. I had forgotten about Rosetta. That would make it easier.
Maybe they are counting on programs like Sheepshaver in the same way they are relying on Parallels et. al. to do Windows Emulation.

Keep in mind that Classic was used to run non-carbon apps, so you have a double problem.

Like it or not, Apple is not going to bring Classic over to Intel. The level of difficulty is not outweighed by any perceived gain. If an application has not been brought over to OS X by now, the developer probably doesn't care or has abandoned the Mac platform.