Why I Run Old System Software

[Chris Jones]

> On 11 Oct 2014, at 8:13 pm, C.T. <semaphore45 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> El 11/10/2014, a las 6:25, Chris Jones <jonesc at hep.phy.cam.ac.uk> escribió:
>> 
>> A lot. Rosetta was not just an application you could install, but an extension of the underlying OS to provide the translation layer for PowerPC applications. It would need to be kept in sync with any updates to the OS, and clearly Apple decided they wanted to stream line things by removing it, and I can understand that. For me, 10.7 was the right time to do it.
> !0.7 was way too early to ditch Rosetta IMHO. Apple never provided a suitable replacement for my scanner driver that would render Rosetta unnecessary.

Did Apple make that scanner ? I presume not, in which case its not Apples responsibility to provide drivers for all possible third party devices, but the vender of those devices. If they choose not to provide an Intel driver supporting 10.7, thats not Apples fault.


> But I also understood Rosetta is patent-encumbered. A FOSS alternative would be nice. I can make a makeshift network scanner with a Raspberry Pi and hours of tweaking, but I feel for people who wouldn't want to go through such lengths just to operate a perfectly good scanner with a now-awful XSANE interface.
> 
> 
>> El 11/10/2014, a las 5:31, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> escribió:
>> 
>> On Friday October 10 2014 19:18:06 Michael Crawford wrote:
>>> (On the thread about the bash function problem, someone asked why the
>>> fellow runs such an old version of OS X.)
>> 
>> Progress for the sole sake of progress ain't progress
> Exactly. What significant progress was made from SL to Lion? Cutting functionality isn't progress. Most netadmins refused to "upgrade" to Lion as everything was dumbed-down and much useful functionality was lost. And I disliked subsequent versions purely on aesthetics. Flat and translucent is ugly, sorry.
> 
>> 
>> I'd thrown in the trend to ever bigger is better (remember the 17" iMac? That's the one I would have had place for but it was no longer available when I also had the money). And that includes software packages (oh, Apple also sells disk space? O:-) ).
> iMac or MacBook Pro? In the latter case I always thought its $3k base price tag broke a psychological barrier, even as far as an Apple product is concerned.
> 
> 
>>> No. Snow Leopard no longer receives updates of any sort, and Lion will
>>> likely follow as soon as Yosemite drops.
>>> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
>> 
>> I see they still haven't produced an EOL statement (is 10.6 Server still for sale??), we just have to deduce the fact for ourselves.
>> That said, we cannot really complain that 10.6 was EOLed as soon as 10.7 came out.
> Have they produced EOL notices before? Can't recall that.
> 
>> It wouldn't cost Apple anything either to change the 10.6 EULA and allow it to be run in a VM.
> I think some parts of this OS are patent-encumbered and that Apple would have to ask for permission to other editors before allowing that.
> 
>> About 10.9:
>>> It's also much nicer all around.
>> 
>> Tastes differ. I wouldn't call it that way. 10.6 is faster, more stable, never required me to ssh in to reboot the machine after the initial upgrade because it'd gone off on an IMMENSE "local TimeMachine" backup I never asked for, etc. 
>> In fact, certain changes in 10.9 (like with Mail.app) have gotten me to investigate KDE for alternatives ... And 10.6 still has Rosetta (and frankly, how much would it have cost to provide that tech as an optional install?)
>> That said, there's very little not to prefer in 10.9 if you're coming from 10.8, from what I've seen. Apart from plugins for QuickLook, apparently :)
> But now 10.6 has less of the automation and integration we love from OS X. Using its Safari is now strongly discouraged because of security flaws. I absolutely need two independent browsers, and I won't install a Google product on my machines. I can't launch two Firefox profiles in the same user session. And I need one of these browsers to be very fast. 
> 
> Its iCal doesn't play well with third-party iCal servers.
> 
> There's no reason why iCloud compatibility wouldn't be made available as an option to SL users.
> 
> And 10.9 is widely known to cause some mysterious issues on perfectly capable machines if the upgrade process goes wrong. The problem being, Apple isolated the user from the underlying process a bit too much. With previous versions, you could choose an automated install process, or a more advanced one where you could manually set parameters to your liking. When reinstalling a Mac (or any OS), I prefer to install a clean copy, then applications, then import documents and avoid migrating potentially corrupted settings into the new OS. "Never trust your machine". 
> 
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