Supporting Tiger Forever?

[Michael Crawford]

Hey Folks,

It occured to me recently that there could be a lot of benefit to both
MacPorts and to the Mac user community, if you were to commit to
supporting Mac OS X Tiger for a long time, if not forever.

The reason is that Leopard and all later releases won't run on PowerPC
G3s and the slower-clocked G4s.  The minimum config for Leopard is a
fast G4 or Intel.

Not everyone will have the money to buy a new box just to run a newer
OS X.  What will happen to them in the long run is that they will find
not just system software, but application software increasingly hard
to find.

I fully understand how much extra effort is required to support old
system builds.  Even if you can keep the software running, you may
lack the resources to test it adequately.

But if you can manage to do so somehow, then as support for these
slower Mac dwindles, you may find increasing numbers of enthusiastic
MacPorts users.  Maybe some of them can take up some of the load of
keeping Tiger support enabled.

I realize it's going to be a long time before this will really be an
issue, but thought it would be worth discussing.

Ever Faithful,

Mike
-- 
Michael David Crawford
mdcrawford at gmail dot com

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