Sonata vs. Mac OS X

Regarding my query last time as to why a PowerPC Mac user would be interested in Sonata, when Mac OS X was coming out at the same time, several readers replied.

For example, David Atkinson wrote: "I listened to a 45-minute webcast where Andy Gore was interviewing Avie Tevanian and Jon Rubenstein. According to Avie, Mac OS X will definitely not run on a PowerPC 603, "maybe" would run on a 604, and may or may not run on a 3rd-party G3 upgrade card. In other words, Mac OS X is intended for Apple G3 Macs only, and Mac OS 8.x is for the rest of the PowerPC-powered Macs." (Thanks also to Marc Ostroff and Jon Pugh.)

Joel Ingulsrud adds: "Sonata is slated to be the first version of Mac OS 8 that supports the Carbon API. There are millions of G1 and G2 Power Macs that Mac OS X will not run on but that third parties will want to sell Mac OS X-savvy apps to. Sonata guarantees that Carbon apps will run on older Power Macs that will never run Mac OS X and on G3 owners who choose not to deal with the larger footprint of Mac OS X. Sales of Sonata vs. Mac OS X will also serve as a gauge to determine how much longer Apple should continue developing Mac OS 8."

I guess it's nice that users of "older" Macs are getting this kind of continuing attention from Apple. On the other hand, the idea that third party G3 upgrades might not be supported by Mac OS X is not good news. But this does not yet seem "written in stone."