Flying ToastersBased on recent comments made by Sierra On-Line division Berkeley Systems, it appears that the company's venerable After Dark screensaver has hit the end of the road with Mac OS 9. Readers report compatibility problems between Apple's new OS and the screensaver software, and while Berkeley Systems acknowledged the problem to MacCentral recently, they also indicate that they don't have any plans to fix it.

Featuring Berkeley Systems' trademark Flying Toasters, After Dark has been a popular screensaver package for PC and Mac users alike. Berkeley first produced the screensaver for the Macintosh a decade ago, and since then the package has gone through numerous revisions and changes. It's even spun off a stand-alone game package. Berkeley has diversified its product line in the intervening years, as well, focusing its attention on casual games like the immensely popular You Don't Know Jack series.

After Dark users using Mac OS 9 have reported Type -1 errors when manipulating the screen saver collection's control panel. Pleas for assistance to Sierra Attractions' tech support e-mail address elicited this response from the company:

"Due to changes made by Apple in the most recent OS, After Dark is not compatible with OS version 9. Since the After Dark engine was developed for OS 8.6 and below, the program is unsupportable when installed on this version of the OS. Our best suggestion is to install After Dark on a system running OS 8.6 and below. Since the Macintosh OS is not made to be backwards compatible, software developers often need to update their programs for them to run correctly with newer versions. At this time it is not known if an update will be developed for After Dark to give compatibility with OS 9. We apologize for any inconvenience."

After querying Sierra Attractions and Berkeley Systems about plans to update or patch the software to correct the problem, MacCentral received this response: