Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Managing Classic Applications

Mac OS X’s Finder manages your Classic applications just like any other; the only difference is that they are stored in /Applications (Mac OS 9), rather than /Applications. When Classic is running, you won’t work with the old Mac OS 9 Finder; however, when a Classic application is running in the foreground, the menu bar changes to that of Mac OS 9. Similarly, the Dock provides space for the icons of Classic applications and even lets you keep them in the Dock.

You can easily identify a Classic application in the Dock, as its icon will have a Mac OS 9-style (32 × 32 pixel) icon, which will look “chunky” if viewed at a higher resolution.

Classic Applications and Memory

As mentioned earlier, Mac OS 9 applications don’t benefit from Mac OS X’s protected memory space or its dynamic memory allocation. In Classic, a Mac OS 9 application is still a Mac OS 9 application, requiring you to assign memory the old way: via the Get Info window. Figure 3-5 shows the Get Info window for Mac OS 9’s Script Editor (/Applications (Mac OS 9)/Apple Extras/AppleScript).

Figure 3-5. Mac OS 9’s Script Editor’s Info window, showing the Memory section

The Memory section of the Info window (available only for Classic applications) lists the following three items:

Suggested Size

This number represents the amount of RAM (in kilobytes) that the application’s developers suggest to get ...