future of classic

[Polith]

osx and bloatware

Not to criticize OS X at all because I love the thing. However, I do have a concern about Classic and X.

-Can Apple remove the Carbon API's? And if so, how would this affect the system performance in X?. Is there a need to remove them? How much longer can people write to use the Carbon part of X?

I was reading about the downfall of BE, and the overall streamlined system it had was awesome. I know these are very different systems, but OS X has so much stuff and it just came out. Classic is about 13-14 years old, and this system is still being added to. What will OS X look like 13 years from now?

-How Bloated will it become? Will it be bloated?

 

[idkew]

Re: osx and bloatware

Originally posted by Polith

I was reading about the downfall of BE, and the overall streamlined system it had was awesome. I know these are very different systems, but OS X has so much stuff and it just came out. Classic is about 13-14 years old, and this system is still being added to. What will OS X look like 13 years from now?

-How Bloated will it become? Will it be bloated?

X would not be near as popualr if it started out a feature free as classic did back in '84. I doubt it will become bloated, almost every new addon will seem as a needed improvement the we now can not live without. I am still dissapointed X does nto have springloaded folders.

not to mention that in 13-14 years, according loosly to moore's law (and i know it is about transistors...) we will be somewhere in the low terahertz (thousands of gigahertz) so X will be able to handle the extra bloating.


also, classic will never leave. independent people will never stop developing for it. remember people still develop for the long "dead" newton os. I just see is never needing to launch the app anymore, unless we want to play an old, old game. the classis environment app will go the way of the Apple II app, it will be around and available, but few will actually use it. New hardware will no longer support it without special addon hardware in the next 2 years or so (maybe the g5?).

-idkew

 

[GeeYouEye]

not yet

get rid of classic only when 1. Yahoo brings messenger to OS X, 2. a decent AudioGalaxy client (sputnix sux)

 

[oldMac]

Fire?

Fire is a Cocoa Instant Messaging app the supports Yahoo! IM as well as AOL. Still some bugs, but looking nice.

 

[Catfish_Man]

I don't know where...

...you heard that Cocoa is harder than the OS9 toolbox. There have been quite a few articles written about how great Cocoa is and how it speeds up development. Also,

Carbon is not slower than Cocoa. There are a few Carbon things you can't do in Cocoa and vice versa. It is slower to develop for, but the apps run just as fast.

Classic being integrated instead of a seperate OS would be great. Drop most of the GUI, file system, and IO code from OS9 (have it just route commands that use these to their OSX counterparts) and Classic would probably run faster than OS9. All it would do is emulate the stuff that programs need, everything else (all the user interface stuff) isn't useful in Classic.

 

[Xapplimatic]

For a couple of reasons, OS X is easier to write for.. Cocoa is vastly easier to learn than C++ or Carbon. But for people who like C++, a free compiler is provided with every copy of OS X! And Unix applications can be ported to OS X with not too much effort for an experienced programmer.

As for losing Classic and OS 9.. well.. OS 9 and "Classic" could be completely removed from OS X, and most Carbonized apps would still work on both new systems with a pure "OS X only" setup and on old "OS 8.5-OS 9.X only" systems. At this point, most aps shipped with OS X are Carbon simply because Carbonized apps will work on either system..

OS X has in truth 3 "native" languages. Carbon, Cocoa, and Java. Carbon apps will continue to work under both systems for the forseeable future just because developers have made most initial OS X apps with Carbon. Apple hasn't announced any plans to get rid of Carbon. Because they don't want to alienate developers by moving too quickly to entirely different systems, I doubt they will get rid of Carbon any time soon--ESPECIALLY considering that the Finder is written in Carbon..(!)

 

[macfreek57]

you guys seem quite hateful of classic!
classic mac os is the operating system(s) that i fell in love with. i still enjoy an occasional rampage into the world of the OS 9 finder. and, i'm all about old hardware found at going-out-of-business places and cool, simple games found wherever on the net.

what about a carbon compiler? a drag and drop application that takes a classic app and "carbonizes" it. it would obviously be huge, but is it probable?

 

[Chrisnorth]

OS8 and 9 really are approaching dinosaur status now. Apple needs to put all its resources into OSX and make it as good today as the classic OS was in its day.

I do have a thought about OS6.x though; There is nothing more satisfying than starting my old SE30, having it boot almost instantly and run almost flawlessly. Perhaps, Apple could do something with this minmalist operating system like, say, burn it onto a CMOS chip and create a very low priced, very portable web appliance for those who don't really want to wait 5 minutes for their state-of-the-art gigahertz grinding, voltage munching desktop wonder to boot just so they can check their e-mail or see what's changed at their favourite web site.

With a little of their famous ingenuity, Apple could resurrect a system that was truly fantastic in its day, adjust it for the internet world and release it as the solution that those internet phones and internet tablets needed all along. Talking moose and Meko thrown in free, of course...

 

[Geert]

Originally posted by Chrisnorth
I do have a thought about OS6.x though; There is nothing more satisfying than starting my old SE30, having it boot almost instantly and run almost flawlessly.

Hey Chrisnorth, can you somehow send the OS6.x?
I have here an old mac+ but no functioning OS anymore.
If you happened to have system 7.x also, would be welcome as well.
Thxs a bunch.