Margin note: Reason for OS X-only booting; the resource factor

We've received a lot of reader e-mail recently attempting to analyze the reasoning behind Apple's decision to move to Mac OS X-only booting. Some see it as a purely tactical marketing effort - a symbolic shift to entice developers who still are not fully embracing Mac OS X; while others see a genuine legacy-extinction motive - cutting the fat to move forward swiftly.

For the record, Apple's official stance on this issue can be found in a September 10, 2002 press release with the following quote from Steve Jobs:

"We expect that 20 percent of our entire installed base will be using Mac OS X by the end of this year, making it the fastest operating system transition in recent history. Now it?s time for Apple and our third-party developers to focus all of our resources exclusively on Mac OS X, rather than dividing them between two different operating systems."

Jobs' statement is backed up by lead managers at Microsoft and Adobe who echo the sentiment of freeing resources for better concentration of development efforts.

In Cupertino, there is a very real need to conserve software development resources. Apple is pushing more iApp upgrades and new projects than ever, through a faster product cycle. In addition, Mac OS X component technologies like Rendezvous, Inkwell, Sherlock, and Quartz Extreme are reportedly absorbing significant distributed development time with each incremental Mac OS X 10.2.x upgrade.

The result has been two-fold: a stunning array of well-working software; but also some seemingly rushed releases that generate piles of bug reports.

Our friend Wil Shipley, President of the Omni Group, offered us some insightful opinion on the issue:

"Running OS 9 in Classic mode only, Apple doesn't have to write native OS 9 drivers for hardware, so if they start selling, say, a really smoking new video card, they only have to write a driver for Mac OS X, not Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.

"The driver architecture is completely different in OS 9 and OS X -- they had to maintain two completely separate code-bases for every driver for each version of each hardware component: fix two sets of bugs, do two sets of QA, pay twice as many engineers, have twice as many tech notes on their web site, etc.

"In the latest round of changes, by my count Apple changed at least their Firewire hardware, Airport hardware, video cards, the system bus, bluetooth, and the memory architecture. That's a whole lot of drivers.

"It's not just writing the drivers -- it's that developing the hardware goes hand-in-hand with the drivers, and sometimes you can't do things with the hardware because the software doesn't support it. Supporting two operating systems means you're twice as likely to drag your hardware designs down."

What's your opinion? Let us know at late-breakers@macfixit.com, or post a comment below.

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