Hi everyone and thanks for letting me join this community.
A word to anyone who is interested in this here Mac fan and unofficial Apple technician.
I’m a 26 year old film maker who is glad to return to the classic Mac OS at last.
I got started in 2000. I was 10, I got a abandoned Mac at primary school up and running with its system 7 (it may have been 7.5, but its too long ago to remember and I wasn’t allowed to take it home with me). It had a few games on it and the interface fascinated me. I wanted one, but 'modern' computers were beyond the family budget in my house. The best I could do with for years was an old 80s machine from my stepdads work running DOS and I didn't really like it, but it was a computer so I tinkered on it, then killed it by accident.
The OS7 Mac I used seemed to be so much faster than any PC I touched in those days, including the in the primary school library PC running bindows 98' (see my 'love' for PC... I started early...)
They had the coloured iMacs running OSX 10.1 and then 10.2 at my intermediate school. Those were awesome. I could have taken one of them home. From there, every film I saw with a Mac in it was a Mac I would have happily have taken and used myself. But it was a dream. I remember all the iMac models and occasional Powermac and Mac laptop that I saw on the big screen (Independence Day and the mighty Mac portable that took out a vastly more advanced alien system anyone?). Those Mac experiences left me wanting one of my own and it took me a long time to get used to the PCs running windows Xp at high school. Mac OSX 10.2 seemed much nicer to my eyes than XP.
2007, near the end of my high school days, I tried to acquire the music departments old dual G4 powermac as it had replaced by an iMac. I was informed that they would be using it as a secondary machine
My Mum told me that if I wanted a Mac, I could go out and get a job so I could buy it myself.
So I got a job in one of the local supermarkets and stayed on just long enough to afford some games and my 2008 white MacBook 2.4ghz running 10.5.2
Programming class in the final year of high school became so much more fun for me on a Mac and I had to decide between going to film school or studying computer programming (with my interest in making Mac apps and games).
A year later I attended film school, focusing on editing and writing. I began converting the class from PC to Mac and everyone, even the staff got to know me as the Mac guy (I succeeded in converting almost everyone in my class of 45 film students by the end of the 3 year course and even personally sold Macs to two of them. I was dedicated…). Snow Leopard came out in my first year there and I jumped on it on its first day of release. It blew 10.5 away on both my MacBook and the 2006 17" MBP I had been given, fixed and now owned. As a Mac gamer, I also spent many a day playing UT2004 on my MacBook Pro in theory class with a friend who also had a MacBook Pro.
Also while at university I toyed around with 10.4.11 on my 2006 17" MBP but found Snow leopard preferable as the 'classic' mode on the intel Macs didnt seem to work so I figured Tiger offered me nothing compared to Snow Leopard. I also picked up and held onto the 2g iPhone 1 and I still use it because its a mighty classic (and it now runs features of ios7 too)
I then bought the 2011 17" MacBook Pro as soon as that came out, stuck two 750Gb hard drives in it in Raid to make sure it could handle my editing work and I have loved that Mac right up to this day (it now runs 2x2tb Iron wolf drives and still runs like new).
I enjoyed hearing the stories of those who used to run the hardware and software from last century as thats something Ive long felt I missed out on as I was only a kid back then. Apples earlier years and how their software and hardware have changed over time is something that fascinates me. Ive done a lot of reading into how Mac OS and Final cut Pro have become what they are and the impacts Apples decisions have made. It annoys me to hear that Apple killed off a potential 9.2.4 (probably because of Steve Jobs coming back and pushing OSX super hard, although now that he's sadly not here anymore, anyone think we have a chance of asking Apple really nicely to release that update?)
Despite my interest in the G4 powermac line and OS9, I couldn't justify spending money getting some cool old hardware because of the kind of work I was getting into (and as I was always buying my own gear, I remained poor for a long time). It all revolved around Final Cut Pro 7, and FCP X (once it hit 10.0.3). This meant I could only work on powerful Intel based hardware as the powerPC Macs can’t run Final Cut Pro X. As someone who still works as a DOP, editor and writer the turning point for me as a Apple advocate of their new hardware happened first when they killed off the 17" MacBook Pro.
I lost a lot more faith in Apple’s pro hardware when they brought out the trash can and my 2010 Mac Pro with a Sapphire HD 7970 had more power per graphics card and could run 6 drives internally. When I came to upgrade, I still wanted a Mac I could play around with, hence… Xeon in a hackintosh and a second Sapphire 7970 to match the 2013 Mac Pro. Its annoying when my ‘Mac Pro’ doesnt want to work, but largely feels like a real Mac and looks badass. Unlike apples offering, I have 16.5Tb in this monster without the need for a lot of external drives.
The release of the 2016 MacBook pros prompted me to begin looking for alternatives to my ageing server Mac that is from 2011 and thats when I stumbled upon a dual 1.42ghz G4 on TradeMe (the New Zealand local equivalent to eBay). Despite it being at the end of 2016 and therefore quite a old computer, I snapped it up as it reminded me of the Dual G4 in my high school, then put Tiger and some old Mac OSX games on it. Playing with Tiger made me want to go older and more classic. I was disappointed to find out I couldn’t put OS9 on my dual G4. Still, its now my fileserver for my newer Macs and my hackintosh to utilise and I’ll be installing some Sata drives (as big as I can fit, hopefully 4+Tb) on it and beefing it up as much as I can. I’ll be shooting then editing my third movie this year and it will be my pleasure to hopefully see cool old macs running alongside my hackintosh to get the job done.
Reading online, I found this site. It initially surprised me that you could still do professional audio work (or for that matter, any work at all) in OS9 and that gave me confidence to at last look for a Mac that would run Mac OS9. Sadly, editing in OS9 is defiantly out. I don’t think theres anything system 9 able that will handle 4k+ raw footage from my cinema cameras.
So this year I have at last taken the plunge and I went out hoping I wasn’t too late for me to get started. I found the best iBook G3 clamshell (a mighty 466mhz!) as I’ve wanted its unique design on my desk for a while. It looks so cute and unique! I want to test run the most up to date version of OS9 I can on it. Thanks to the universal installer on this site for 9.2.2, that page made me want to sign up here and thank the die hard OS9 team for such amazing work getting that together. I look forward to running one stable OS9.2.2 for writing and some classic games and one other partition can host a test OS9.x for me to play around and hopefully one day use as my main OS if we can get some kind of OS ‘9.3’ or ‘9.4’ going.
I didn’t stop there and I now also have a G4 466mhz digital audio Mac too and it runs 10.2.8 and 9.2.2 (thanks again to the universal installer on this site for 9.2.2).
Starting up OS9 brought back some serious memories and made me wish I had been lucky enough to get a Mac running it when I was younger as its a truly special OS.
The universal installer that is pinned on these forums got my Radeon 9000 Pro going but I hear there is a newer ATi driver?
I’ll happily take suggestions for what I can use OS9 for as anything I can get my older Macs to do, I’ll happily do on them. Things such as my writing of fan fiction on my G3 iBook clamshell. But aside from PDF viewing of scripts and some old games, I don’t know what else to do with it as of yet.
Its a bit weird going to a mostly greyscale interface with a very simple finder, when I’m used to Sierra on my 8core Xeon hackintosh and Path finder with its all its extras and custom colours, pink finder!
Im sooo used to column view in OSX finder. Is there any way to get that in OS9? Also networking OS9 and a fairly modern OSX?
I look forward to properly learning Mac OS9 and all its features and oddities as despite its similarities to Mac OSX (A finder, the Apple and menu set up top etc) it is different, I can tell It thinks differently and runs a bit differently. First time running OS9 again, I didnt even know how to shut the thing down! (Thats sad considering I use my Macs every day and know the interface and shortcuts so well I could operate any 10.4+ Mac in my sleep…)
And if I'm honest, Im kinda tired of the continual upgrade cycle. It was fun going from Mac to Mac in the Snow Leopard and even Mountain Lion days. Its something that as a editor using FCPX its hard to move away from, especially when mountains of 4k footage in a movie can claim 50+Gb of my ram. But ever since Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion (forget Lion...) Ive not felt like the Mac has really moved forward in a way that suits me as pro user. Theres been more and more for me to turn off or disable with each new version of OSX.
And this is where OS9 and the ideals I see on this site has extra special appeal to me. Its awesome seeing successes can be had 15+ years out of that constant upgrade cycle that most people are caught up in. And even if my main editing rig can't have in on the fun, I would at least like my older Macs to do what they can with optimised OS9 on them.
I got a G5 sitting around which I would love to one day run OS9 on too.
If I can find the time, I wouldnt mind trying some OS9 coding too…
So yea, I’m here to stay as long as this site keeps going as a lot of what goes on here has me excited.
