{"slug": "mac-os-9", "name": "Mac OS 9", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 7, "warners": 2, "score": 2.054, "rising": -1.64, "first": "2025-11-15", "latest": "2026-07-03", "why": "both considered to be great examples of principled interface execution", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "both considered to be great examples of principled interface execution", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Mac OS 9", "Mac OS 9 Lives", "MacOS9Lives"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 780517873, "item_id": 48782367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782367", "by": "0x20cowboy", "date": "2026-07-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would run it", "excerpt": "Those exist e.g. https://menuetos.net/ it\u2019s just most people dont use them. I agree with you though. If Apple open sourced os9, and the community could get it to run on modern hardware, I would run it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Quake in 13 Kilobytes"}, {"id": 778889872, "item_id": 48680617, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680617", "by": "favorited", "date": "2026-06-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it works great.", "excerpt": "And, unofficially, MacOS9Lives can boot directly to OS 9 on FW800 PowerMacs, which have 1.42GHz processors with 2x the L3 cache. Officially, those machines only supported OS 9 via Classic. I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.", "context": "has a G4 Mac mini", "use_case": "booting OS 9 natively on PowerMacs", "switched_from": "", "story": "OS9Map"}, {"id": 755630386, "item_id": 47226899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226899", "by": "chongli", "date": "2026-03-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It really makes me miss Classic Mac OS 9.", "excerpt": "I have been so irritated by this that I've been considering switching TO the mac ecosystem, BUT this thread is good on my eyes and makes me disinterested now. It really makes me miss Classic Mac OS 9. I used it from 7.5.1 to 9.2.2. I remember being so excited about Mac OS X when the Public Beta came out that I switched immediately. It really sucked and I went back immediately. But eventually Mac OS X got better and I", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Welcome (back) to Macintosh"}, {"id": 744019632, "item_id": 46501227, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501227", "by": "BugsJustFindMe", "date": "2026-01-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "both considered to be great examples of principled interface execution", "excerpt": "\"Perfection\" is an irrelevant concept here, but \"principled\" is not. The reason people favored certain older OS UIs is because they were substantially more principled in their designs, not because the executions of those principles looked a particular specific way. The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines were seriously well thought out. Apple just doesn't follow them anymore, and that leads to demonstrably poor desi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"}, {"id": 737423184, "item_id": 46088949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46088949", "by": "WoodenChair", "date": "2025-11-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pre-install the Mac OS 9 Lives hacked version of Mac OS 9 that runs on them", "excerpt": "Very related but self promotional\u2014I have a hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s. I clean all of them internally, upgrade them with 128 GB SSDs, max them out at 1 GB of RAM, put a new clock battery in, and pre-install the Mac OS 9 Lives hacked version of Mac OS 9 that runs on them. You can buy one from me here: https://os9.shop I don't think I'll start pre-installing System 7 since most of my customers are usi", "context": "hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s", "use_case": "Legacy Mac desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 778331088, "item_id": 48645693, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645693", "by": "PaulHoule", "date": "2026-06-23", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "at some point in the 8-9 era they added a bunch of locks to stop the crashes and then it was beachball city all the time.", "excerpt": "When I was in grad school I worked in a corner which had a mac on one side and an IBM POWER system with a huge screen on the other side. Early on the mac was crashing all the time when I was browsing the net, at some point in the 8-9 era they added a bunch of locks to stop the crashes and then it was beachball city all the time. My understanding was that classic was built on the assumption that events come in from th", "context": "grad student", "use_case": "web browsing in grad school", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple Is Going to Raise Device Prices \u2013 But When?"}, {"id": 735077873, "item_id": 45942367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45942367", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-15", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "lack-of-memory-protection Mac OS 9 and below", "excerpt": "From a UI standpoint, I agree. There\u2019s nothing like the classic Mac interface and its associated Apple Human Interface Guidelines for GUI software. I love Jobs-era Mac OS X, but the classic Mac and its ecosystem of applications were something special. However, when it comes to UX, stability is a major component, and this is where Mac OS X is vastly superior to cooperative multitasking, lack-of-memory-protection Mac O", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'"}]}], "who": [{"by": "favorited", "context": "has a G4 Mac mini", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680617", "date": "2026-06-25"}, {"by": "WoodenChair", "context": "hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46088949", "date": "2025-11-29"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["booting os 9 natively on powermacs", "web browsing in grad school", "installing os 9 on ssd-upgraded macs", "legacy mac desktop os"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084956", "title": "System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693428", "title": "Quake in 13 Kilobytes", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674484", "title": "OS9Map", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643079", "title": "Apple Is Going to Raise Device Prices \u2013 But When?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47224118", "title": "Welcome (back) to Macintosh", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497712", "title": "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 780517873, "item_id": 48782367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782367", "by": "0x20cowboy", "date": "2026-07-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would run it", "excerpt": "Those exist e.g. https://menuetos.net/ it\u2019s just most people dont use them. I agree with you though. If Apple open sourced os9, and the community could get it to run on modern hardware, I would run it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Quake in 13 Kilobytes"}, {"id": 778889872, "item_id": 48680617, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680617", "by": "favorited", "date": "2026-06-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it works great.", "excerpt": "And, unofficially, MacOS9Lives can boot directly to OS 9 on FW800 PowerMacs, which have 1.42GHz processors with 2x the L3 cache. Officially, those machines only supported OS 9 via Classic. I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.", "context": "has a G4 Mac mini", "use_case": "booting OS 9 natively on PowerMacs", "switched_from": "", "story": "OS9Map"}, {"id": 778331088, "item_id": 48645693, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645693", "by": "PaulHoule", "date": "2026-06-23", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "at some point in the 8-9 era they added a bunch of locks to stop the crashes and then it was beachball city all the time.", "excerpt": "When I was in grad school I worked in a corner which had a mac on one side and an IBM POWER system with a huge screen on the other side. Early on the mac was crashing all the time when I was browsing the net, at some point in the 8-9 era they added a bunch of locks to stop the crashes and then it was beachball city all the time. My understanding was that classic was built on the assumption that events come in from th", "context": "grad student", "use_case": "web browsing in grad school", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple Is Going to Raise Device Prices \u2013 But When?"}, {"id": 755630386, "item_id": 47226899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226899", "by": "chongli", "date": "2026-03-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It really makes me miss Classic Mac OS 9.", "excerpt": "I have been so irritated by this that I've been considering switching TO the mac ecosystem, BUT this thread is good on my eyes and makes me disinterested now. It really makes me miss Classic Mac OS 9. I used it from 7.5.1 to 9.2.2. I remember being so excited about Mac OS X when the Public Beta came out that I switched immediately. It really sucked and I went back immediately. But eventually Mac OS X got better and I", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Welcome (back) to Macintosh"}, {"id": 744019632, "item_id": 46501227, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501227", "by": "BugsJustFindMe", "date": "2026-01-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "both considered to be great examples of principled interface execution", "excerpt": "\"Perfection\" is an irrelevant concept here, but \"principled\" is not. The reason people favored certain older OS UIs is because they were substantially more principled in their designs, not because the executions of those principles looked a particular specific way. The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines were seriously well thought out. Apple just doesn't follow them anymore, and that leads to demonstrably poor desi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"}, {"id": 737434656, "item_id": 46089666, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46089666", "by": "WoodenChair", "date": "2025-11-29", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Boot from the Mac OS 9 Lives 9.2.2 image (v9 of the image) by CD", "excerpt": "I use a mSATA to IDE adapter that I buy in bulk. This is the Amazon available equivalent of it: https://amzn.to/48qEaOm I use only 128 GB mSATA cards from reputable brands. I always do the following: - Boot from the Mac OS 9 Lives 9.2.2 image (v9 of the image) by CD - Wipe the SSD using Disk Utilities 2.1 - Restore from the CD I will say this fails perhaps 1 out of 20 times. Hard to say how often this is an actual ha", "context": "", "use_case": "installing OS 9 on SSD-upgraded Macs", "switched_from": "", "story": "System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4"}, {"id": 737423184, "item_id": 46088949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46088949", "by": "WoodenChair", "date": "2025-11-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pre-install the Mac OS 9 Lives hacked version of Mac OS 9 that runs on them", "excerpt": "Very related but self promotional\u2014I have a hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s. I clean all of them internally, upgrade them with 128 GB SSDs, max them out at 1 GB of RAM, put a new clock battery in, and pre-install the Mac OS 9 Lives hacked version of Mac OS 9 that runs on them. You can buy one from me here: https://os9.shop I don't think I'll start pre-installing System 7 since most of my customers are usi", "context": "hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s", "use_case": "Legacy Mac desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4"}, {"id": 735077873, "item_id": 45942367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45942367", "by": "linguae", "date": "2025-11-15", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "lack-of-memory-protection Mac OS 9 and below", "excerpt": "From a UI standpoint, I agree. There\u2019s nothing like the classic Mac interface and its associated Apple Human Interface Guidelines for GUI software. I love Jobs-era Mac OS X, but the classic Mac and its ecosystem of applications were something special. However, when it comes to UX, stability is a major component, and this is where Mac OS X is vastly superior to cooperative multitasking, lack-of-memory-protection Mac O", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'"}]}