The Classic Environment

When it introduced Mac OS X, Apple knew that most users would want to run existing applications written for Mac OS 9 or earlier. Mac OS X offers the Classic Environment, which lets you, in essence, run Mac OS 9 within Mac OS X (see Chapter 13). You can run nearly any application you used under Mac OS 9, in a familiar Mac OS 9 interface. If you have many applications, you might not want to upgrade them all at once and you can use them in the Classic Environment.

When working in Classic, you’ll find that little is different from Mac OS 9; you’ll see the same gray menu bar and the same menus, and have access to all your application’s commands. You can run most of your Mac OS 9–compatible programs in this way, ensuring that you can still access all your files. If your programs have been updated for Mac OS X, you can also use these files with the newer versions.