The end of OS9 development

[Jeffrey Reynolds]

Dan,

Its to tell K12 to bite the bullet if they had a bullet to bite. in  
schools It is not a matter of justifying anything, its a matter of  
the money just plain not being there to buy the software, or in many  
cases, the hardware, to bump everything up to OSX. i could easily  
justify that there be less than 3 yr old computers in the schools,  
with updated systems and apps, and all teachers paid a fair wage, but  
pigs will be flying from somewhere before this happens in our current  
culture. in the schools tech money is going away quickly when things  
get tight. teachers (and the few lab/tech folks left around) are  
happy to just keep things going as is (that means a whole mix of  
machines and operating systems). Getting the money and resources  
together to migrate all the systems to osx just aint gonna happen in  
most situations. what will happen in most cases is the current os9  
machines will live on with os9 till they die (and its amazing to see  
how long some macs can hang on even in the war zone of a classroom or  
computer lab!). anything bought post osx will have osx on them, but  
then again upgrading them all to the latest and greatest or even a  
single standard OSX version wont usually happen. even in the labs  
where they get a big hunk of money to get a whole lab of computers at  
once, things start to age with OSs quickly and the money usually  
isn't there a few years later to bump things up.

I ran what was considered a very well funded high school lab in  
Monterey and we couldnt afford to bump all the computers up to the  
latest osx systems and the older computers couldn't run osx, but i  
needed them to have enough computers for a whole class at 1 student  
per computer. It was more a game of just getting things as best i  
could to run an optimal set of applications to cover as many bases as  
possible w/in the budget.

All my education applications will have to be delivered with OS9 apps  
for the next few years, its a fact i just cant get around. even the  
distributors want it since its still, and for the near future, a good  
chunk of their market they dont want to give up. its going to make  
for some tricky fiddling with rev in the future i expect. i hope that  
rev 261 can live on into the near future well enough to provide the  
OSX, OS9 and Win apps i need before i am forced to start in 261 o  
create the os9, then move up to a newer version to create OSX and  
other newer OS apps then end with a dual development path (ugh!)...

I agree we need to move on to better systems and drop the old ones,  
but it just means education gets the shaft yet again. And its a game  
of economics again since the education is the poorest retail section  
out there so of little concern to business, more the shame. It is,  
unfortunately, a very vicious circle and it just flushes the  
education market. Its funny since many of my students could have  
utilized the power of a newer computer better than most of the  
business folks i know!

I encourage all of you get out in your local school and talk to the  
teachers and tech folks (if they have any) and see what its like and  
how you might help out. You may be lucky and have a rich district or  
one that has put technology on the front burner, but in the average  
school its tight. They can also usually use your help. even if its  
just volunteering to help man the lab at lunch or after school,  
mentor a bright computer kid, even fix some broken or cranky  
machines, do some seminars for teachers and technology. Believe me  
you will get a new appreciation for the K-12 educational system and  
how hard things can be stacked against it in many ways. But a small  
amount of help and grease in the right places can make great things  
happen. Its also greatly rewarding and amazing when you see some of  
the things that the kids can create!

cheers,

Jeffrey Reynolds



On May 7, 2006, at 1:00 PM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com  
wrote:

> Yes, I'm aware that some channels and users -- notably education --  
> haven't
> been able to justify upgrading hardware to run OS X, but as you  
> say, it's
> been four years. Time to bite the bullet, I say.