Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Chapter 6. Back to Mac OS 9

If only we could move into Mac OS X and live there! Unfortunately, software makes the world go around, and not every program you 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 flip ping back into Mac OS 9. There are two ways you can flip back, as described in this chapter.

The bad news is that, if you do, you have two different operating systems to learn. The land scape, features, and locations of favorite commands differ in each one. If you're new to the Mac, you can easily get con fused. 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 desirable program 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 tricks described in this chapter, the better—especially because they probably won't work on the new Intel Macs.

Two Roads to Mac OS 9

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

• Run Classic. The program called Classic is one of the crowning achievements of Mac OS X. You can think of it as a Mac OS 9 simulator or emu ...