Supporting Tiger Forever?

[Scott Haneda]

On Nov 26, 2009, at 6:51 PM, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> On Nov 26, 2009, at 3:50 AM, Michael Crawford wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> I'm sure those folks exist, but it's also worth pointing out that  
> they represent a vanishingly small fraction of the overall installed  
> base now, so I'm not sure how much bang for buck the MacPorts  
> community would really get in supporting them "forever."  Sure, if  
> you're one of those people then it's pretty darned important from  
> your perspective but, as the years go by, you'll probably notice  
> that your Mac/G3 user group meetings are getting smaller and smaller  
> and the Newton User Group is showing increasing interest in merging  
> with you. :-)

I have to agree with you on this point here strongly.  The only thing  
I can add, is that as time goes on, these computers keep getting less  
and less expensive.  The Mac Mini at 599.00 probably will not get that  
much less in cost, but used versions will, which will all support  
something current.

There is nothing that is going to make any of your current software  
that runs on your current hardware today break.  If it works now,  
today, it will work 10 years from now.  You may not be able to update,  
but it will continue to work.  I think date based bugs would be about  
the only marginal area in which this could prove wrong.
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *