Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Chapter 5. Back to Mac OS 9

If only we could move into Mac OS X and live there! Unfortunately, software makes the world go ‘round, and it’ll be a long time before every program you’d ever want to use has been written or rewritten for Mac OS X.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use them at all, though. You can certainly run your old favorites within Mac OS X—by flipping back into Mac OS 9. There are two ways you can do that, as described in this chapter.

The bad news is that now you’ve got two different operating systems to learn. The landscape, features, and locations of favorite commands differ in each one.

If you’ve got the old Mac OS in your blood, you’re way ahead of the game. But if you’re new to the Mac, you can easily get confused. You may see a shiny blue

menu one moment, and a striped one with completely different commands the next, as the machine flips back and forth between the two OSes.

There’s no solution to this dilemma except to wait until every program you’d ever want to use is available in a Mac OS X version. Fortunately, most of the biggies are already available for Mac OS X. The sooner you can stop using the Mac OS 9 tricks described in this chapter, the better.

Two Roads to Mac OS 9

You can return to Mac OS 9 in either of two ways. Here’s a summary that outlines the pros and cons of each method:

• Run Classic. The program called Classic is one of the crowning achievements of ...