OS-9
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You're the Pundit: Identify the Icons
When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the iPhone prototype icons. We were having a look through the prototype gallery over on our sister site Engadget, and a shot of some early icons caught our eye. Some icons seem to have persisted almost unchanged to modern iOS (Safari, Weather, Stocks), others underwent major redesign (Phone and Mail). Looking back at these prototypes, do you think Apple was really going to give us a 4-by-4 puzzle game (shades of OS 9!) and what was up with some of those icons like the lightning bolt, the yellow bar, and the airplane? The blue icon on the bottom bar was the contacts app, right? If anything, it's surprising how close, at least in terms of general functionality, this icon set was to the final version: from SMS to Mail, Photos to iTunes. And that doesn't even mention the dock at the bottom. What do you think of these early icon designs, and what are your thoughts about how their design has evolved in the last 5 years? You tell us. Join in the comments with all your analysis. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Grackle68k: a Classic Mac OS Twitter app
It's always nice to own the latest and greatest Apple hardware, but some of us still use vintage machines. I've got a G3 All-In-One on my workbench that displays iFixIt PDFs while I work. I'll admit that I've wanted to tweet from that machine from a dedicated app, and now I can. Grackle68k is a Twitter application for OS 9 through System 6. Yes, System 6! It's quite bare bones and low on bells and whistles, but it works. You'll have to enter your credentials every time you launch Grackle68k unless you're comfortable using ResEdit (if you're using this app, you likely are). I played with this briefly on ny G3 and had fun. If you've also got a basement full of legacy Macs, give this a try. If only I still had that Powerbook 150...
RIP, Classic Mac OS: 1984 - 2007
It's not a huge surprise, but Apple's gone ahead and posted a note confirming that Leopard will not support Classic, even on PowerPC machines. Of course, Intel Macs have never been able to run Classic anyway, so only like Hypercard user groups and the three printshops still running QuarkXPress 4 will be affected by this. But this does mark the end of the road for the venerable and oft maligned OS, which ushered in the mainstream GUI era with the 128K Mac in 1984 and remained the default boot on all new Macs until OS X 10.1.2 was released 18 years later in 2002 -- prompting Steve to stage a melodramatic mock funeral for OS 9 at that year's WWDC. Still, the old warhorse managed to hang around for another five years, and we're a little sad to finally see it go. Check a vid of Steve's funeral after the break.
This Old Mac: Icebooks
Remember when Apple ditched the clamshell iBooks and created the sleeker "icebook" form factor? My wife calls them Chiclets. Well we have 3 of them: a 500 MHz G3 from 2001 with a 10GB drive, a 800MHz G4 with a 60GB drive but a busted optical drive, and a 1.2GHz G4 with a 30GB drive but working CDR/DVD drive. The 800MHz machine is still my old personal machine, although between hacks and apps and data overload it is very slow. The other two have found new life.The oldest iBook actually has the best build quality, I think. The keyboard feels good, and none of the keys have rubbed off. It is fast and solid. However, since it is so old, I decided to use OS 9 as the primary OS. We inherited a bunch of old educational CD's from the 90's and the iBook plays almost all of them better than the PPC-based Mac mini in the den. Perhaps the biggest drawback? The smell of burning plastic that is emitted from the possibly-not-covered-by-recall motherboard. Oops.The newest iBook is zippy enough to handle video from apps like VLC (for the playlists) without a hitch, so we're using it as a video jukebox of sorts. Connected to the network I can either stream or move videos to it for the kids, plus it runs all the OS X educational software we've got. Oh, and TuxPaint, which also runs on my personal machine in case they both want to draw at the same time. The working optical drive on the 1.2GHz came in handy at the beach recently, when the TV in the kids room didn't work. So we used the iBook as a DVD player.Of course, if you work in primary education this is probably a snoozefest to you. Apple sold quite a few (though not nearly enough) iBooks to the educational markets back in the day. So it should come as no surprise that my wife and I recycle our old work machines as kid machines. What makes the iBook so special is the ability to run OS 9 natively and the form factor. Sure, iMacs are great, but you can't take them on vacation. The old clamshells are OK as well, but a little bulky. Then again, maybe I just can't bear to throw anything away.UPDATE: Added a gallery.%Gallery-3585%
Run Classic on an Intel Mac
We have covered SheepShaver before here on TUAW, the PowerPC emulator that makes running Classic a possibility on Intel Macs so, but we just pointed out that it exists. The good folks at UNEASYsilence have gone through the trouble of putting together a tutorial on how to get Classic up and running on your Intel Mac using SheepShaver.Check it out if you still need a Classic app or two, but you crave the speed of the latest and greatest Mac hardware.
GameRanger to drop OS 9 support, eventually
Inside Mac Games reports that GameRanger, the online Mac gaming service, will stop supporting booting GameRanger client in OS 9 at some point this year. This should surprise no one since OS 9 hasn't been commercially available for years. Now, for you game crazy OS 9 holdouts, fear not. The client will still run in Classic (which itself isn't supported on newer Macs, but lucky there are solutions for that).I'm curious, how many TUAW readers are still using OS 9? Do you have plans to upgrade any time soon?
Found Footage: OS 9's funeral
Ah, a walk down memory lane. Sit back and watch his Steveness conduct OS 9's funeral at 2002's WWDC.
Now that you've turned your Mac into a PC, turn it into a Mac again
So you've done the formerly impossible and unnecessary: installed Winders on a Mac. Cool, best of both worlds. But there you are, staring at that awful primary color, jumbo crayon, sickly plasticky XP theme. Yeah, you could use one of the many mods featured on Download Squad (please, feel free). Or you could turn your XP rig back into a Mac. At least, you can make XP look a lot more like a Mac. Engadget did this nearly 2 years ago, although Aqua-Soft is still updating their content. Or why not go old school with an OS 9 flavor? Ah, that's better.
