In 2008 MapRecord Publications will publish the last Macintosh version of the Antique Map Price Record CD-ROM. Starting in 2009, with Volume 24, only a Windows version of the AMPR CD-ROM will be produced.

The Macintosh version of the AMPR CD-ROM is a “Classic” (OS 9) Mac application. Back in 2002, when the first Mac version of the AMPR CD-ROM was produced, the OS X operating system was still relatively new; its first commercial release had been in 2001. Most Mac users were still running on computers that used OS 9, and they would have been unable to use the AMPR CD-ROM had it been produced in a version for OS X. On the other hand, when Apple sold new computers running OS X, they also included OS 9 software, so that users could run either new, OS X, applications, or older (“Classic” OS 9) applications. This strategy made for an easy decision: The Price Record should be an OS 9 application, so it could be run on all Macs, old and new.

In the intervening years things have changed: Apple has started to produce Macs with Intel, rather than Motorola, processors and, sad to say, they have begun to remove support for OS 9. I now hear from an increasing number of Macintosh customers that they have upgraded to a new computer and find that they can no longer run the AMPR, since their new machine can’t run Classic Mac programs.

The obvious solution to this dilemma would be for me to produce an OS X version of the AMPR program. Unfortunately, for technical reasons that are too extensive to detail here, the cost and time of doing a “native” OS X version of the AMPR program would be prohibitive. And as fewer and fewer Mac users can run OS 9 programs, the percentage of AMPR users on the Mac has shrunk. Today fewer than 10% of AMPR users run on the Mac.

It is these changes in the Macintosh environment that have led me to the decision to stop producing the Mac version of the AMPR CD-ROM, though I will continue to produce it (still as a Classic OS 9 Mac application), through the Vol. 23 edition in 2008.

One silver lining to this dark cloud is that the newer Intel-based Macs can run a Windows operating system as well as Apple’s OS X. This allows users to run both Mac and Windows applications on the same machine, and this includes the Windows version of the AMPR program. Using programs such as Parallels (www.parallels.com) you can instantly switch between Macintosh and Windows programs on the same Mac computer, with no stopping and rebooting required. I have had reports from customers that the AMPR program runs perfectly in this configuration on an Intel-based Mac. Any current AMPR customer who can take advantage of this capability can switch from their current Mac AMPR CD-ROM to a Windows CD-ROM; just contact me and I will provide you with a Windows version, to replace your current Mac version, at no cost to you. Or, if you have access to both a PC and a Mac, feel free to transfer your AMPR license from the Mac to the PC; I will be happy to provide you with the replacement Windows-version CD-ROM.

As an encouragment to migrate to the Windows version of the AMPR, I would like to point out that a major new feature, the Map Collection Manager, has recently been added to the Windows version of the AMPR CD-ROM. Information about the Map Collection Manager can be found at www.MapRecord.com/MCMinfo.html.

Jeremy Pool
MapRecord Publications
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