Alternatives for outdated assembler (AS)?

[Chris Jones]

On 10 Apr 2015, at 6:35 pm, Jeffrey Walton <noloader at gmail.com> wrote:

>>>>> Apple really needs to support their products longer than 12 or 18
>>>>> months. That includes security bugs, operating systems and Xcode.
>>>> 
>>>> They do, just not necessarily in the way you want/expect. The update from 10.8 to 10.9 or 10.10 is free, so that is clearly now their support mechanism which allows them to drop old OSes sooner. Personally i think this is fine, buy YMMV.
>>> I know I'm really drifting off-topic here, but Apple sold me a
>>> defective product that they claimed to be safe and secure. Its not the
>>> case, and they won't fix it.
>>> 
>>> Do we really need to go to court with Apple and ask for a court order
>>> so they fix it? And beg the case under consumer protection laws....
>> 
>> Exactly in what way is your machine 'defective', that cannot be solved by installing the OS update ?
> The machine came with OS X 10.8. I don't want the risk associated with
> the 10.9/10.10 upgrades. So its fixed at the version of the OS that
> Apple supplied.
> 
> And in case its not obvious, I don't agree to any terms of service
> that would require me to upgrade. Purchasing future versions of the OS
> was not a term of the sale when I bought the MacBook.

We clearly have very different opinions in this area. AFAIK OSX 10.8 is still, for the moment, receiving important security updates which is all I would expect for an OS that age. The update to a new OS is there for you and the fact you *choose* to not apply that update is totally your choice, but you should then not complain if you start to miss new features etc. Frankly I am glad they drop OSes as quickly as they do, as for me it helps prevent unnecessary bloat, which is some other popular OSes have had to deal with to their cost.

I suspect we are not going to agree on this, nor does this discussion really help your issue, so lets leave it here..

Chris