Re: More on caching and logging

On Fri, 4 May 2007 11:57:30 -0400, geefive wrote
(in article <040520070857309709%geefive@xxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <uce-1E3E05.00330004052007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gregory Weston <uce@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Most of the people who use Classic today probably don't share your
aversion to using free 3rd-party software to let them continue to use a
handful of legacy programs when they do end up upgrading.

That may be true, and I might use it at some point if/when I have no
other choice. The fact that Sheepshaver exists for Intel Macs knocks a
big hole in the argument that Apple dropped Classic because it couldn't
be done in the OS developed for Intel.

Please point to a citation of where, exactly, Apple said any such thing. A
URL will do fine.

Not only do I deplore the
choice by Apple to scuttle Classic use in the future,

Apple didn't 'scuttle' Classic. They merely stopped further development.
Classic has been in zombie mode since the iSteve brought out the OS 9 coffin
lo these many years ago. It's been _years_ that everyone knew that Classic
was going to go away, the only question was when.

I suspect that Classic will still be supported in Leopard... just not on
Intel machines. PPC machines are still the majority of Macs, and can still
use Classic. I suspect further that Classic will _not_ be supported in OS X
10.6; by that time, the Intel machines will be the majority. OS X 10.7
probably won't run on PPC machines, period. You know, the same way that the
680x0 platform was slowly dropped by successive versions of OS 8.x. My old
Quadra will not run any version of OS 8 past 8.1. It still works, though. My
old beige G3 isn't supported past OS X 10.2.8; I could make it run 10.3.x for
sure and 10.4.x I think, if I wanted to go to a bit of trouble. I'm pretty
sure that it ain't gonna run Leopard, come what may. The one time I put
Panther on it, it misbehaved sufficiently that I took Panther off and Jag
back on. I think that XPostFacto will let it run Tiger, but _I_ will not be
wasting my time on that project.

Classic is to software as the Quadra and the beige G3 are to hardware:
obsolete. Just as Apple no longer supports obsolete hardware, they drop
support for obsolete software.

but it tells me
that we can expect more surprises from them that fly in the face of
tradition.

Kiddo, the first Mac I bought had no fans, a nine-inch 542x320 pixel
monochrome display, no hard drive and no way of putting one in, no
networking, (no communications whatsoever, in fact, as it didn't have a modem
either) a single-button mouse connected using a proprietary method, a
keyboard which lacked a numeric keypad and function keys and which also
connected by a proprietary method, only 128 kB of RAM which was upgradeable
only by a motherboard swap, an OS which lacked the subdirectories, and no
real slots, just 'virtual slots' based on (proprietary!) serial ports. The
iSteve-to-be insisted that those who 'needed' a numeric keypad could buy an
after-market extra. He insisted that there were no fans, by design, and there
would be no fans, period. Ditto no internal hard drives. The single-button
mouse is all that anyone would need.

By the end of the first year I had that machine, Mac 'traditions' which were
broken included the RAM, keyboard, and mouse. The mouse was still
single-button, and the connection was still proprietary, but the ADB
connection made a lot more sense than the previous version. And the ADB
keyboard had a numeric keypad. Still no function keys, though. The
motherboard was re-done (twice, actually) and now you could put extra RAM
into the machine without doing a motherboard swap. And you could get a hard
drive! And there was networking built into every Mac! Slow networking, but
there, years before DOS boxes got it! And the OS now could actually use
subdirectories!

By the end of the _second_ year, the hard drive moved inside, there were fans
inside too, and there was a whole new Mac design which had _slots_ and _a
colour monitor_! Over the next few years many things changed, notably the
slots (NuBus to PCI to PCI-X) and the file system (MFS to HFS to HFS+) and
the built-in networking (AppleTalk to EtherTalk to, well, straight-up TCP/IP
with AppleTalk as a much-neglected backwater) and the OS (single-tasking
System 1 through 4, just barely multitasking System 5 and 6, semi-crippled
multi-tasking System 7 though OS 9, full-bore multitasking OS X...) and the
CPUs (680x0, PPC, Intel). The keyboard grew function keys and lost
proprietary connections. The mouse, the longest holdout from the Olde Daze,
finally got more than one button.

Exactly _which_ 'traditions' are you referring to, and what are they?

Not only that, but I blame the shift toward consumer
products like the iPod because it took resources away from the computer
side.

The iPod _is_ a computer, just one with a specialised function.


Something has to give, so what will the next surprise be due to the
shift of capital and manpower away from computers?

You have no idea, do you?


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