Classic Mac Os 9 Games
jonathan: perhaps AndrewC should have to use OS 9 for a day or two ;)
LeeH: omg
LeeH: that's actually a great idea
Sep 30, 2011 If you already own a PowerPC Mac running any version of OS X up to and including Tiger, you can employ Apple's own built-in emulation software 'Classic' to run OS 9 applications and games. As with any emulator, there is some software out there which may not run perfectly, though everything I've been able to test has run flawlessly and so this. Snow Leopard (10.6) Mountain Lion (10.8) Mavericks (10.9) Yosemite (10.10) El Capitan (10.11) High Sierra (10.13) Catalina (10.15) This list contains 2430 video game titles released for Classic Mac OS (1 through 9.2.2) and MacOS (MacOS X). This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it. PrintToPDF – a free utility to create PDF files on classic Macs running System 7 through Mac OS 9. This is a handy way to keep the formatting of old documents you can’t otherwise convert. The Vintage Mac Museum is a private, working collection of the pre-Intel Apple Macintosh.
The above is a lightly edited conversation between Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson and Automotive Editor Jonathan Gitlin in the Ars staff IRC channel on July 22. Using Mac OS 9 did not initially seem like such a 'great idea' to me, however.
Mac apple games on steam. If you click on 'Games' and scroll to the bottom you will find 'Mac OS X'. Clicking that will bring up ALL of the Mac compatible games.
I'm not one for misplaced nostalgia; I have fond memories of installing MS-DOS 6.2.2 on some old hand-me-down PC with a 20MB hard drive at the tender age of 11 or 12, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in trying to do it again. I roll with whatever new software companies push out, even if it requires small changes to my workflow. In the long run it's just easier to do that than it is to declare you won't ever upgrade again because someone changed something in a way you didn't like. What's that adage—something about being flexible enough to bend when the wind blows, because being rigid means you'll just break? That's my approach to computing.
I have fuzzy, vaguely fond memories of running the Mac version of Oregon Trail, playing with After Dark screensavers, and using SimpleText to make the computer swear, but that was never a world I truly lived in. I only began using Macs seriously after the Intel transition, when the Mac stopped being a byword for Micro$oft-hating zealotry and started to be just, you know, a computer.
So why accept the assignment? It goes back to a phenomenon we looked at a few months back as part of our extensive Android history article. Technology of all kinds—computers, game consoles, software—moves forward, but it rarely progresses with any regard for preservation. It's not possible today to pick up a phone running Android 1.0 and understand what using Android 1.0 was actually like—all that's left is a faint, fossilized impression of the experience.
As someone who writes almost exclusively about technology at an exclusively digital publication, that's sort of sobering. You can't appreciate a classic computer or a classic piece of software in the way you could appreciate, say, a classic car, or a classic book. People who work in tech: how long will it be before no one remembers that thing you made? Or before they can't experience it, even if they want to?
So here I am on a battered PowerBook that will barely hold a charge, playing with classic Mac OS (version 9.2.2) and trying to appreciate the work of those who developed the software in the mid-to-late '90s (and to amuse my co-workers). We’re now 12 years past Steve Jobs’ funeral for the OS at WWDC in 2002. While some people still find uses for DOS, I’m pretty sure that even the most ardent classic Mac OS users have given up the ghost by now—finding posts on the topic any later than 2011 or 2012 is rare. So if there are any of you still out there, I think you're all crazy.. but I’m going to live with your favorite OS for a bit.
Finding hardware
My first task was to get my hands on hardware that would actually run OS 9, after an unsuccessful poll of the staff (even we throw stuff out, eventually). I was told to find something usable, but to spend no more than $100 doing it.
You'd think it would be pretty easy to do this, given that I was digging for years-old hardware that has been completely abandoned by its manufacturer, but there were challenges. Certain well-regarded machines like the 'Pismo' G3 PowerBook have held their value so well that working, well-maintained machines can still sell for several hundred dollars. Others, like the aluminum G4 PowerBooks, are too new to boot OS 9. They'll only run older apps through the Classic compatibility layer in older versions of OS X.
I didn't want to deal with the pain of an 800×600 display, so the clamshell G3 iBooks were out, and I never really liked the white iBooks at the time—I found their keyboards mushy and their construction a little rickety. White plastic iBooks and MacBooks were never really known for their durability. Anything with a G3 also rules out support for OS X 10.5, which I'd want to install later to actually get stuff done on this thing.
The laptop I decided to go with was the titanium PowerBook G4. While these weren't without quality issues, they at least promised usable screen resolutions and Mac OS 9 compatibility. They also tend to fall right where we'd want them on the pricing spectrum—old enough to be cheap, but not so old or well-loved to be collectors' items.
Notes on that video:
- The PowerBook G4 is called a 'supercomputer.' You keep using that word..
- What does this music have to do with anything?
- Phil Schiller’s hair!
- Jony Ive pronounces “aluminum” in the American fashion, rather than “aluminium.”
- Titanium was better than aluminum in 2001, but it apparently stopped being that way later in the decade.
- Mac OS X had been out for about six months at this point, and it’s mentioned by name once in the ad, but all of the shots of the computer in action show it using Mac OS 9. The first few OS X releases are best forgotten.
Finding used computers on Craigslist is a great way to get scammed and left for dead in some alley in Brooklyn, so I turned to eBay. Many used computers on eBay are being sold 'as-is' or for parts, a last-ditch effort by their owners to get some kind of value out of them while also getting rid of them. It's a bit risky, but you can save some money if you buy one of these dinged-up models and fix it yourself.
For about $75, I was able to pick up an 800MHz model with 512MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. It worked but included a non-working battery, no power adapter, and a wonky power jack. For $8.86, I picked up a new power jack (happily, it was separate from the main logic board in those days), and another $15 got me a used genuine Apple adapter (third-party substitutes are widely available for a few dollars less, but I am terrified of cheap off-brand chargers). That brought my total to a little under $100.
I could have spent between $25 and $95 on a working third-party battery. I just happened to have 1GB of PC133 SDRAM (the maximum amount supported by this PowerBook) buried in my closet, though I would have shelled out another $12 or so if I’d had to pay for it. These upgrades aren’t strictly necessary, and dumping a lot of extra money into a computer this old is unlikely to raise its value much. I did go $30 out-of-pocket to replace the rickety old hard drive with a shiny new one with a faster rotational speed and a higher capacity, though. Sometimes you’ve got to treat yourself.
My iFixit screwdriver kit and the handy iFixit repair guides helped me crack the case, replace the power jack and drive, and swap out the RAM. All repairs went off without a hitch, and I used some canned air to blow out some of the dust and grit that had gathered inside the case. I cleared my 2012 iMac off my desk and replaced it with the repaired PowerBook. Time to get to work.
Listing image by Andrew Cunningham
Back when Ars Senior Products Editor Andrew Cunningham was forced to work in Mac OS 9 by his colleagues in September 2014, he quickly hit a productivity wall. He couldn't log in to his Ars e-mail or do much of anything online, which meant—as someone who writes about new technology for an online-only publication—he couldn't do his work. All Cunningham could do was play old games and marvel at the difference 15 years makes in operating system design.But as hard as it may be to believe in light of yet another OS X macOS update, there are some who still use Apple's long-abandoned system. OS 9 diehards may hold on due to one important task they just can't replicate on a newer computer, or perhaps they simply prefer it as a daily driver. It only takes a quick trip to the world of subreddits and Facebook groups to verify these users exist.
Certain that they can't all be maniacs, I went searching for these people. I trawled forums and asked around, and I even spent more time with my own classic Macs. And to my surprise, I found that most of the people who cling staunchly to Mac OS 9 (or earlier) as a key component of their daily—or at least regular—workflow actually have good reason for doing so.
Why? Whhhhyyyyyy???
The reasons some Mac lovers stick with OS 9 are practically as numerous as Apple operating systems themselves. There are some OS 9 subscribers who hold out for cost reasons. Computers are prohibitively expensive where they live, and these people would also need to spend thousands on new software licenses and updated hardware (on top of the cost of a new Mac). But many more speak of a genuine preference for OS 9. These users stick around purely because they can and because they think classic Mac OS offers a more pleasant experience than OS X. Creatives in particular speak about some of OS 9's biggest technical shortcomings in favorable terms. They aren't in love with the way one app crashing would bring down an entire system, but rather the design elements that can unfortunately lead to that scenario often better suit creative work.
I'm alluding here specifically to the way OS 9 handles multitasking. Starting at System 5, classic Mac OS used cooperative multitasking, which differs from the preemptive multitasking of modern Windows and OS X and Linux. With classic Mac OS multitasking, when you want to change apps it's up to the active program to relinquish control. This focuses the CPU on just one or two things, which means it's terrible for today's typical litany of active processes. As I write this sentence I have 16 apps open on my iMac, some of which are running multiple processes and threads, and that's in addition to background syncing on four cloud services.
By only allowing a couple of active programs, classic Mac OS streamlines your workflow to closer resemble the way people think (until endless notifications and frequent app switching cause our brains to rewire). In this sense, OS 9 is a kind of middle ground between modern distraction-heavy computing and going analog with pen and paper or typewriter.
These justifications represent just a few large Mac OS 9 user archetypes. What follows is the testimony of several classic Mac holdouts on how and why they—along with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people around the world—continue to burn the candle for the classic Macintosh operating system. And given some of the community-led developments this devotion has inspired, OS 9 might just tempt a few more would-be users back from the future.
Programmatic hangers-on
Remembering how the comments on Cunningham's article were littered with stories of people who still make (or made, until only a short time beforehand) regular use of OS 9 for getting things done, I first posed the question on the Ars forums. Who regularly uses Mac OS 9 or earlier for work purposes? Reader Kefkafloyd said it's been rare among his customers over the past several years, but a few of them keep an OS 9 machine around because they need it for various bits of aging prepress software. Old versions of the better-known programs of this sort—Quark, PageMaker, FrameMaker—usually run in OS X's Classic mode (which itself was removed after 10.4 Tiger), though, so that slims down the pack of OS 9 holdouts in the publishing business even further.
Wudbaer's story of his workplace's dedication to an even older Mac OS version suggests there could be more classic Mac holdouts around the world than even the OS 9ers. These users are incentivized to stick with a preferred OS as long as possible so they can use an obscure but expensive program that's useful enough (to them) to justify the effort. In Wudbaer's case, it's the very specific needs of custom DNA synthesis standing in the way of an upgrade.
Classic Mac Os 9 Games Free
'The geniuses who wrote the software we have to use to interface the machines with our lab management software used a network library that only supports 16-bit machines,' he wrote. This means Wudbaer and colleagues need to control certain DNA synthesizers in the lab with a 68k Mac via the 30-year-old LocalTalk technology. The last 68k Macintosh models, the Performa 580CD and the PowerBook 190, were introduced in mid-1995. (They ran System 7.5.)
This DNA synthesis lab has two LC III Macs and one Quadra 950 running continuously—24 hours a day, seven days a week—plus lots of spare parts and a few standby machines that are ready to go as and when needed. The synthesizers cost around 30,000-40,000 Euros each back in 2002 (equivalent to roughly $35-50k in 2015 terms), so they want to get their money's worth. The lab also has newer DNA synthesizers that interface with newer computers and can chemically generate many more oligonucleotides (short synthetic DNA molecules) at once. This higher throughput comes with a tradeoff, however. Whereas the old synthesizers can synthesize oligonucleotides independently of each other (thereby allowing easy modifications and additional couplings), the new ones do them all in one bulk parallel process, meaning the extra stuff has to wait until afterward. More work means more time, and as Wudbaer says, 'time is money.'
Classic Mac Os 9 Games Free
On the Facebook group Mac OS 9 - it's still alive!, people trade more of these OS 9 endurance stories. Some prefer it for writing environment. Others keep it around for bits and pieces of work that require expensive software such as Adobe's creative suite or a CAD package or Pro Tools or specifically to open old files created with this software. Most use it for old Mac games, of which there are far more than the Mac's game-shy reputation would suggest—but that's a story for another day. A scant, brave few not only struggle through OS 9 for these sorts of offline tasks, but they also rely on it as a Web browsing platform.