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SAN FRANCISCO --The split between Macintosh users running Apple Computer's new and old operating systems came under the microscope at the Macworld Conference and Expo here as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak joined industry experts in a panel discussion Tuesday on the merits of Mac OS X.

Like Wozniak, many Macworld attendees say they do use the new operating system but find themselves in the world of Mac OS 9 when they want to run older applications and hardware.

Mac OS X, now in version 10.2.3 and known by the moniker Jaguar, is on the desktops of 5 million Macintosh users--up from 1.2 million a year ago--according to Apple.

"We hit our goal," said Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive officer, citing the figure during his keynote address here on Tuesday. "The X transition is basically over."

Left Behind

If you are a Macintosh user who depends on the Quark's QuarkXPress desktop publishing software, however, the transition probably isn't over. That's because Quark XPress still isn't available for Apple's newest operating system, leaving many of the Quark faithful stuck on Mac OS 9.

"We have a few laggard applications that we need to get out. You all know which ones we're talking about," Jobs said in an apparent reference to Quark.

Quark is not alone. Though more than 5000 applications are now available natively for Mac OS X, a number of others still aren't. In addition, drivers for various hardware devices, including printers and scanners, continue to be unavailable for the new operating system. That leaves some users stuck with Mac OS 9.

That's not a bad thing, according to Wozniak, known affectionately to Macintosh enthusiasts as "The Woz." But it makes the transition tough for some users.

"You have to eventually make a transition," Wozniak said. "Some people are just not ready to convert."

"I use [Mac OS X] but I have computers with [Mac OS 9] doing important tasks. Why would I switch when it just works forever?" Wozniak said, noting that his home computer collection includes a number of desktop and notebook machines running various versions of Apple's operating system. One of those home machines is Apple's ill-fated Cube.

Money Matters

For one thing, Wozniak noted that many people may not be able to afford to upgrade from Mac OS 9 to the new operating system because repurchasing software can strain pocketbooks.

"That expense hurts a lot of people," Wozniak said.

Miles Kaplan, a show attendee who manages technical support and graphics for Ace Mailing, a small direct-mailing company in San Francisco, said that the cost of upgrading applications has kept him on the old operating system part of the time.

"I use [Mac OS 9] for some of the older Adobe software that I haven't paid the hundreds of dollars to upgrade [from]," Kaplan said.

Similarly, Michael Bayer, president of Computer Telephony Solutions, in Saratoga, California, said that his company maintains a mixed environment of Macintosh computers running old and new operating systems thanks to a pricey scanner he owns that Mac OS X doesn't support.

Even so, Bayer said: "Before Jaguar, I couldn't conceive of any reason to make my primary machine run OS X."

The instability of new applications has been another deterrent to adopting OS X, Wozniak said. When asked what Apple could do to drive users to upgrade, Wozniak said, "I would urge a lot more testing of applications. These things need more testing before they come out."

Sturdier Systems

Despite his criticism, Wozniak also praised Mac OS X, commending its roots in Unix, a sturdy operating system that has long been used in enterprise computing.

"I think that Unix is great because it opens up the Mac OS to a ton of computer science students," Wozniak said. "I use it for a few simple network tasks, and I'm glad it's there."

The Unix component of the operating system plays its most important role in making Apple a member of the enterprise computing world, Wozniak said.

"The real credibility of OS X...applies to business IT departments, and even to high-level networks," he said. "It will fulfill enterprise computing needs much more than OS 9."

Finally, Wozniak suggested that new Macintosh users are best served by choosing Mac OS X for their first machine, mainly because it is the platform that Apple will support most strongly going forward.

On a related note, he said the new operating system will offer a far better experience to new users than did some past versions.

"There was a point in time when the Macintosh crashed an awful lot more than Windows machines," he said.

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