[Comments] Finally Some Truth About OS X

Friday, December 29, 2000

There's a provocative item at osOpinion entitled "The Age of Everyman Tech: Step Backward To Go Forward" that makes a very simple and obvious point: "Apple should modify OS X to run on anything that has a G3/G4 chip in it." If this is possible, we certainly concur.

We can't tell you how glad we are to see someone come out and say this. Up until now, most Mac sites have been all too full of a kind of techno-arrogance we thought we'd never see in the Macintosh community (anyone complaining about OS X is called a "whiner" or worse). But as we have pointed out time and time again, OS X will not run on the majority of Apple computers in use today. Most G3 and G4 upgraded Macs and all pre-G3 PowerMacs can't use OS X, yet OS X is supposed to be the Next Big Thing that saves the company. True, removing the incentive to upgrade hardware by supporting OS X on upgraded PowerMacs won't immediately increase sales of new Macs, but can the company afford to bully so many Mac owners? If the majority of current Mac owners are made to feel like second-class citizens, we think Apple will lose something much more precious than the value of its stock. One can argue all one wants to about the need to advance technologically, but millions of Mac users with perfectly good non-OS X-compliant machines still deserve better treatment. [Offer some hope, Steve! -- JHF]

We also think it is APALLING that most major Mac news sites have not addressed this issue! As writer John Holmes points out, OS X breaks the "gentleman's agreement" Apple has always had with Mac users to support older machines -- and please don't throw the switch to PowerPC processors in our face: that was different, because no processor change is involved here. Macintosh computers are not supposed to be disposable, after all.

We leave you with Mr. Holmes' concluding thoughts:

"There is no doubt in my mind that the majority of Mac users I know would have bought OS X beta if they could have run it on their existing machines. They can't. The price of buying a new computer simply didn't justify buying a beta, the beta of an OS, one that they won't be able to use. Ever. Apple may lose these people, and Apple can't afford to lose anything anymore."