Classic Environment in Mac OS X

E38943

Classic Environment in Mac OS X was a compatibility layer that allowed users to run applications designed for the classic Mac OS (pre-OS X) within the Mac OS X operating system.

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Observed surface forms (1)

Surface form Occurrences
Classic Environment 0

Statements (47)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Mac OS X feature
compatibility layer
software component
allows running pre-OS X software without rebooting
architectureDependency PowerPC-only
basedOn Mac OS 9
bootRequirement does not require booting directly into Mac OS 9
category macOS Cocoa
surface form: Mac OS X technology

application compatibility
contrastWith Carbon (late transitional API)
surface form: Carbon API

Rosetta
developer Apple Inc.
discontinued yes
discontinuedOn Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
discontinuedReason transition to Intel processors and end of Mac OS 9 support
emulationType API-level compatibility layer
introducedIn early versions of Mac OS X
lastSupportedIn Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on PowerPC
notAvailableIn macOS
surface form: Mac OS X on Intel

macOS
operatingSystem macOS
surface form: Mac OS X

Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah
Mac OS X 10.1 Puma
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
primaryUseCase businesses and users dependent on legacy Mac OS 9 software
provides legacy software support during transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X
purpose run classic Mac OS applications under Mac OS X
requires Mac OS 9 system folder
PowerPC processor
requiresLicenseOf Mac OS 9
requiresRebootToMacOS9 no
runsAs separate Mac OS 9 process under Mac OS X
runsWithin Mac OS X graphical environment
status obsolete
successor none; classic apps eventually required rewriting for Mac OS X
supportedPlatform Power Macintosh series
surface form: PowerPC Macintosh
supports classic Mac OS applications
supportsClipboardIntegration yes
supportsFileSystemIntegration yes
supportsMultitaskingWith native Mac OS X applications
supportsPrintingVia Mac OS X printing system
timePeriod early 2000s transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X
unsupportedPlatform Apple Macintosh computers
surface form: Intel-based Macintosh
userInterface runs classic apps in windows on Mac OS X desktop
visibleToUserAs Classic preference pane in System Preferences

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Classic Mac OS emulationEnvironment Classic Environment in Mac OS X