Moving to Version 10.4 from Mac OS 9.x.x or Earlier

Mac OS X has been around for a while now (this is the fourth edition of this book) and if you are still using Mac OS 9 or earlier, you probably fall into one of two camps.

Camp 1 consists of those people who are running Mac OS 9 on old hardware, such as that produced before Mac OS X was released. If you are in this camp, you should really consider getting a new Mac. The many improvements made in hardware since Mac OS 9 was the standard OS are almost as useful as the improvements that OS X made versus OS 9.

Camp 2 includes those people who are using a modern Mac but have chosen to continue running under Mac OS 9 for some reason until now. Perhaps an application they rely on has just been updated for OS X (unlikely since most Mac applications have had OS X versions for a couple of years).

If you are in camp 1 and get new hardware, Mac OS X will be installed by default, so you don't need instructions on how to upgrade from version 9. If you are in camp 1 and don't get new hardware, you aren't likely to be happy with Mac OS X so I recommend that you stick with OS 9 until you can get a new Mac.

If you are in camp 2, well, you'll just have to make the jump to OS X from Mac OS 9 without detailed instructions. Because moving to Mac OS X version 10.4 from Mac OS 9 isn't a likely scenario, I don't provide the detail to make that transition here. (Even though this is a huge book, I do have page limitations believe it or not!) Generally, the steps you follow are similar to those in the Erase and Install option described earlier in this appendix.

To see the steps for using the Erase and Install option, p. 1090.