August 26, 2004
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And now for a little Mac geekiness:
I’ve spent the last little while installing Mac OS 9.2.2 on my Mac, because I need to use Classic (which is kind of like needing to use Windows 95 while using Windows XP at the same time).
Since my Mac OS 9.1 installer CD refused to boot (even when I held down the shift key), I dug around for my iBook’s software restore disks. See, for a while there, Apple thought it would be a good idea to solve issues like this by making you boot off the software restore disks, which would then wipe your whole hard drive clean and restore all the software your computer came with. But! You can retrieve the disk image files that are stored on those disks, mount them, and then pick and choose what you want. So I picked the nascent System Folder and most of the Applications (Mac OS 9) folder.
So far so good. Start up Classic. It warns me that Mac OS 9.1 is too old, and that I should upgrade. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Reboot the computer into Mac OS 9. Download the updaters, so I’ll have Mac OS 9.2.2 goodness. They’re stored in .bin files, which is kind of stupid, but that’s no problem, since the software restore disks include Stuffit Expander, which is the de facto software for handling .bin files. (Stuffit is roughly the Mac equivalent to WinZip.)
However! When I double-click on the .bin files, my Mac urps at me. It says that there are some pieces missing from the installation of Stuffit Expander. The installation of Stuffit Expander APPLE MADE AS A BACKUP. Har. It tells me to reinstall from the installer.
No problem! I can download the installer from the nifty neeto internet! Yay internet!
I go to stuffit.com. I eventually end up at this page. It’s a form. They want me to tell them my name and my email address before I can download their software.
In the process of doing this, I tell them how I feel about that. When I click on ‘submit,’ it tells me that email addresses with the word ‘fuck’ in them aren’t allowed. I try a few other permutations. Eventually it accepts something a little less rude. And what does it tell me? It tells me that the link to the software has been emailed to me. If I want to download an installer, I have to check a non-existant email address.
Rather than go back and enter a real email address, I reboot my computer and use the Mac OS X version of Stuffit Expander, because I hate crap like that. I un-bin the files, and un-bin everything else I can find to un-bin. I reboot to Mac OS 9. I install the 9.2.1 update. I install the 9.2.2 update. Yay.
But now, I have the hankering to install the single most useful Mac OS 9 add-on ever to exist, FinderPop. I loves me my FinderPop. I needs me FinderPop! It’s a .sit file, for which I need Stuffit Expander. Time to bite the bullet.
I go back to that evil web site. I enter my email address. I use the webmail part of my ISP to get the link. I click the link and…
Well, it gives me four options of files I can download in order to install Stuffit Expander. Two of them are for Mac OS X, and two are for Mac OS 9. Of those two, one is a .sit file, and the other is an .hqx file. In order to use either, I MUST HAVE STUFFIT EXPANDER INSTALLED. Stuffit Expander is the software I’m trying to install!
No FinderPop joy today. And if I could, I’d delete all my Stuffit-related products out of sheer spite.
Comments (1)
In the Future: use @Mailinator.com, where is, indeed, anything you make up on the fly. You can then visit the mailinator.com web site and retrieve your mail, but be quick about it, since anybody else in the world could retrieve it if they guessed your correctly.