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http://www.macnn.com/articles/03/01/08/wozniak.in/

Wozniak in no hurry to move to OS X

updated 02:10 pm EST, Wed January 8, 2003

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"Like Wozniak, many Macworld attendees say they do use [Mac OS X] but also when they want to run older applications and hardware," states a MacWorld article. Citing QuarkXPress as a main reason some people use Mac OS 9, other reasons include printers, scanners and other hardware not yet being supported as well as the price of upgrading software. "I use ( Mac OS X) but I have computers with ( Mac OS 9) doing important tasks. Why would I switch when it just works forever?" Wozniak said, noting that his home computer collection includes a number of desktop and notebook machines running various versions of Apple's operating system.

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01/08, 03:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
not quite..

I don't know... I really love the way X feels, you can tell that it's an advanced system.. but in a lot of ways it just doesn't feel quite ready... 9 is just so streamlined...

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01/08, 03:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
Woz ordered new PB

Well... woz will have no choice but to use OSX... he commented on the screensavers last night that he's already ordered 2 of the 17" PowerBooks... and they boot only into OSX.

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01/08, 03:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hello Apple!!!!

I love OS X, but fonts are a nightmare, no printer drivers for our Epson Stylus Pro 5000 yet, our scanners don't work and Quark is still a no show.

I enjoy OS X so much, but I need to make money also, so I am forced to stay in OS 9.

Enough iApp fun stuff Apple, help the pros make money in OS X, we need some attention now.

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01/08, 03:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
Woz ordered new PB

Well... woz will have no choice but to use OSX... he commented on the screensavers last night that he's already ordered 2 of the 17" PowerBooks... and they boot only into OSX.

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01/08, 03:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Woz ordered new PB

Well... woz will have no choice but to use OSX... he commented on the screensavers last night that he's already ordered 2 of the 17" PowerBooks... and they boot only into OSX.

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01/08, 03:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: booting into OS X

I'm sure Woz could get them so they boot into any OS.

I'm sure a firmware hack will come out allowing it.

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01/08, 03:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
boo, 9

I feel sorry for people in the print industry... they seem to be having the toughest time making the switch. I don't think Apple's completely to blame, though... after all, it is the responsibility of the developers to port their apps. Fortunately, for what I do (3D and video) all I ever have to use is X. Everytime I am on a machine that is stuck with 9, I am reminded just how many features of X I am missing. It truly is an amazing OS.

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01/08, 03:44pm | report spam | close Reply |
I wonder...

if Woz gets a former-employee discount? :-) TWO 17" powerbooks. Wow. Being a laptop you can only really use one at a time. I wonder what the second one is for?

I've been using OS X as my exclusive OS ever since the public beta. It was a bit painful at first, but by weening myself off early, I saved trouble later. I replaced a printer and scanner (both very cheap now) and all my devices now work with X. I can see that serious desktop publishing types will still have trouble though.

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01/08, 03:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Hello Apple

9 is just so streamlined...

I never considered 9 'streamlined'. After 15 years of hacking on features upon features, it was more of a mess of paradigms and options. 9 might be more flexible, esp. if you're used to it and have a workflow, but OS X is actually more 'streamlined' in the sense of it having less options. (Hey, I didn't say it was better, I'm just talking about semantics).

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01/08, 03:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
Stylus Pro 5000.....

From the GIMP-PRINT Page....

New as of December 8, 2002! Gimp-Print 4.2.5-pre1 is released. This is a beta pre-release on the Gimp-Print 4.2 release line. This release offers major improvements particularly for users of the Epson Stylus Photo 925, 950, 960, 2100, and 2200, and the Stylus Pro 5000. In addition to the source, an installation kit for Macintosh OS X 10.2 is available

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01/08, 03:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
Printing (and Scanners)

Is it pressure to be put on printer manufacturers or on Apple to get printing working, easier supported?

I know people that have been waiting forever for a printer driver so they can use their printers ... they boot into OS9 to do most of their work (printing speeches, etc.) so OSX is not being utilized.

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01/08, 04:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
Booting into 9

I'm sure a firmware hack will come out allowing it.

Possibly, but I'd be somewhat skeptical. First, some of the hardware may not work without proper OS 9 drivers (firewire2, airport 'extreme'!). Second, most Macs won't work without a proper Mac ROM file (or enabler or whatever they call them, sorry, my mac doesn't have these things, its too old). Even the last TiBook upgrades wouldn't boot with the boot disks from earlier TiBooks, they needed a newer, special one. And since these new books have a much different motherboard (I'm guessing since it includes the above new features, plus support for DDR RAM - yes, I know, it's not REAL DDR ram, I don't want to hear about it - plus other changes), I doubt any current OS 9 will boot with it. (And no offence to the hacking community, but I have yet to see them come up with a way to boot newer macs with older system disks/files without basically making newer boot CDs/disks which include the newer software from the later OS). Since these specialized ROMs/Enablers/whatever aren't needed for Classic, Apple won't be releasing them. So, I'd say Woz, and all you "9 for life" people out there are out of luck.

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01/08, 04:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
9 who?

I am a graphic designer that does heavy print work and NEVER boot into 9...not sure what everyone's problem is. the printing presses here even bought InDesign for me, and are moving to a PDf workflow...and well, my wab stuff is all OS X too, VueScan works wonders for my scanner...life is good as I see it..

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01/08, 04:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: printing

Is it pressure to be put on printer manufacturers or on Apple to get printing working, easier supported?

Well, consider that GimpPrint works for a whole slew of 'unsupported under OS X' printers, and I can't see it as being anything but lazyness or not caring (and, just like Apple, remember these guys would rather you just went out and bought another printer, rather than keep using that ancient Pro 5000 you have). I'm sure they'd give some excuse about the time it takes to rewrite the driver from scratch and support all the features their customers expect, but no one believes that. I mean, software makers don't usually wait until their stuff is 100% complete. They release buggy code or missing features, then update it over time. Epson could release drivers that at least just worked, then put out updates once they added the extra features, rather than make people wait.

As for scanners, it seems they all were waiting to get their scanning software/viewer programs done as well as the actual drivers, so people could have that whole 'one-click scanning' process that the neophites like. Who cares if professionals just need the drivers.

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01/08, 04:11pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hello Apple

I tried the Gimp print work around. But we are a mid size publishing house. We need the manufacturs of the printers and scanners to update thier own drivers. We need Apple to assist them.

Regardless, it is time Apple spent some time/energy/money pleasing the Pro Publishing crowd. Then again, damm Quark is the hold up. When we run Quark through classic, we have all kinds of font problems. We tried InDesign, but we don't have time to train all of our employees on a new program. Not to mention all of our templates and special xtensions.

Apple has been helping out the pro audio/video crowd and home users a lot lately. It is time to help out the pro publishing crowd. We use to be their bread and butter.

Clive
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01/08, 05:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Moving - just can't

I don't know who these people are who just skip over to X, I've tried it, I just can't do it. XPress runs in Classic, sure enough, but I get Finder windows drawing on top of my XPress docs, trying to load fonts into Classic apps on the fly seems to be a complete nightmare... on and on.

Whatever. But here's a bit of a killer. Woz can maybe stand using X, I can't. I saw the 12" PowerBook and I thought "want one" and I would have probably ordered one there and then, it's exactly what i want - a small G4 powered laptop. But then the killer, only boots X, sorry, cant' do it, maybe next year.

Who loses, me or Apple? Both? Not a good situation for anyone.

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01/08, 06:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: moving - just can't

Who loses, me or Apple? Both? Not a good situation for anyone.

But apple loses more if they keep supporting OS 9 for years to come. Hardware gets restricted, or resources spent trying to keep OS 9 running on new hardware. Plus, without an incentive, people won't switch to X. It could be that whiz-bang great OS, but someone will say "What, there's no pop-up finder windows? Then I can't switch." And companies are also then less inclined to switch their software over to X, as they'll say "See, Quark users still use OS 9. So we'll just keep making Quark for OS 9."

Clive
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01/08, 07:11pm | report spam | close Reply |
No incentive

There's no incentive to switch to X from 9.0 by stopping 9.x booting - it's just an overriding incentive to not buy new kit.

I really would like a new PowerBook, really. But I've never really liked the Titanium, too big. The iBook is neat, but I'm not buying anything with a G3 in it (I do want to run X one day!).

My problems with X go deeper than "pop-up Finder windows", unfortunately. And I really don't buy the Apple line that they can't support 9 in newer machines - the two new PowerBooks don't have anything significantly different from existing machines, aside from 800Mb Firewire, but that's not available in the 12" PowerBook anyway.

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01/08, 08:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: no incentive

There's a good chance that these new PowerBooks are using a new G4 chip, which would require reworking support in OS 9. Also, they utilize the new 802.11g Airport card, which is *not* an option for any of the older Macs out there. Again, that would obviously require working in OS 9 support. Same with the 800Mb FireWire, and same with the new nVidia chipset. Just an assumption, but i would imagine that the logic boards themselves in the new PowerBooks are not simply popped out of the 15.2" TiBooks. Apple saved themselves a good bit of development and testing time by scratching OS 9 support from the list.

At any rate, they do still run Classic. And although some people may simply not want to accept it, you can get real work done---web, a/v, design, or otherwise---in a mixed environment of OS X & Classic (or simply OS X, for some). Maybe you can't figure it out on your own, but there are consultants out there who can help you make a smooth migration to OS X. And once you do it, you will be damn glad you did.

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01/08, 10:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
hardware

theres no real reason why they can't support os9, afterall, its the same old tired cpu and most of the other parts in it are old technology, except the graphics card at best. DDR memory is something that the bios in a motherboard needs to know how to use, but not the O/S, it could care less, it is a low level function....

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01/08, 11:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
don't miss 9

I have no use for 9 and don't miss it either. I agree with the above user, I'm also a designer who does a fair amount of print work thanks to InDesign. Quark? What's that? *sarcasm*

I always hated Quark anyway, once InDesign 2.0 came out I was pleased. This seems to be the reaction of most of my colleagues, accept that one guy who is afraid of change. Hey hey, I like the spell check in Safari, nice!

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01/08, 11:24pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: don't miss 9

of course Safari can't help me with my crappy grammar, "except" not accept. sorry about that.

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01/09, 03:41am | report spam | close Reply |
Woz

So Woz buys 2 new 17" PowerBooks and then wastes his money by running 9? Does anyone really care whether Woz likes OSX or not? I certainly couldn't give a toss if I never hear another word about the man again. I don't have a problem with him (I never even met the him!) but I don't see why he really has any relevance to Apple any more. You can harp on about what he did in his past and to give him credit for it is right, but you can't continue to live off of past glories. He just seems to wander MacWorld nowadays being sour faced about OSX and generally dishing out the odd barbed comment to the usual sites. Is this of any consequence? I doubt it. For my money you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to use OS9 again - I am fortunate to not have to use Quark (thank God) but it does seem that there are alternatives. Many of those who complain OSX doesn't work with their stuff are trying to squeeze life out of old hardware and X is a convenient place to lay the blame when it doesn't work. Just look at how often printers, scanners and other peripherals are updated - Doesn't that tell these people something? These kind of items are designed to last a couple of years and that's about it; They're almost consumables now and when you can buy a good, useful OSX supported scanner for a couple of hundred Pounds/Euros (or Dollars to our friends across the pond) I think it's unfair to blame Apple if your 4 year old one doesn't work with OSX. Yes, it's c*** that things have to be this way but if you want to ignore progress and stick with old hardware (including your computer) then you're going to have to make allowances. I'm sure I'll get the usual "but it's too expensive" excuse from people on this one - Sorry, it doesn;t wash. Apple have no divine responsibility to make product you can afford - It's just great if they can do so. I have an old E-30 3 Series BMW that is really getting old - Is it BMW's fault that I can't afford to buy a brand spanking new M3?

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01/09, 04:16am | report spam | close Reply |
pro publishers

Apple does need to help pro publishers. They are facing some hard choices:
1. keep working machines unchanged, transition to OS X only when absolutely essential

2. Plan to move to OS X eventually but figure out the cost vs. the benefits

3. Smile be happy

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01/09, 04:37am | report spam | close Reply |
pro publishers

Apple does need to help pro publishers. They are facing some hard choices:
1. keep working machines unchanged, transition to OS X only when absolutely essential

2. Plan to move to OS X eventually but figure out the cost vs. the benefits

3. Smile be happy

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01/09, 04:51am | report spam | close Reply |
OS X Freehand Sucks

Apart from the non existent quark (bunch of tight prats - should've been ready ages ago), Freehand is the most evil player in the OS X game. Fonts just don't work, postscript errors account for half the paper use in many of customers businesses and crappy interaction with Suitcase X (or vice versa) is a pain. Illustrator works a thousand percent better but there are reasons why people use Freehand. Can we get a resolution? Will we? When has Macromedia posted any updates - never!. Oh and long live InDesign may it piss on quark.

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01/16, 02:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Makes sense

Woz is an Engineer and reckognizes s*** when he see's it.
The person that says "CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR MAC OS 9 RESTRICTS FUTURE HARDWARE", is full of it.

The only reason they want to drop support for 9 is to appease Jobs and his NeXT C*cks*ck*ers inside apple for "saving the company".

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Wozniak in no hurry to move to OS X

updated 02:10 pm EST, Wed January 8, 2003

not quite..

Woz ordered new PB

Hello Apple!!!!

Woz ordered new PB

Woz ordered new PB

Re: booting into OS X

boo, 9

I wonder...

Re: Hello Apple

Stylus Pro 5000.....

Printing (and Scanners)

Booting into 9

9 who?

Re: printing

Hello Apple

Moving - just can't

Re: moving - just can't

No incentive

Re: no incentive

hardware

don't miss 9

re: don't miss 9

Woz

pro publishers

pro publishers

OS X Freehand Sucks

Makes sense

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Wozniak in no hurry to move to OS X

updated 02:10 pm EST, Wed January 8, 2003

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not quite..

Woz ordered new PB

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Woz ordered new PB

Re: booting into OS X

boo, 9

I wonder...

Re: Hello Apple

Stylus Pro 5000.....

Printing (and Scanners)

Booting into 9

9 who?

Re: printing

Hello Apple

Moving - just can't

Re: moving - just can't

No incentive

Re: no incentive

hardware

don't miss 9

re: don't miss 9

Woz

pro publishers

pro publishers

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Makes sense

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