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“This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

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Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#181

Post by d5tryr »

Timmmmbob wrote: post #102
RyanZAG wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I agree entirely here - Microsoft is definitely a far better bet than Apple for this kind of stuff, but it's still not a perfect bet. As Microsoft has shown with their Win8/phone platform, they are trying to transition away from their old platforms (although the market currently won't let them). It's almost a guarantee that eventually old Office versions will fail to run and after that running into data inco…

Saying Microsoft isn't perfect at backwards compatibility is nit picking to say the least! They are far far ahead of any competition in terms of backwards compatibility. It's practically measured in decades whereas Apple can't manage 5 years.

'far ahead - in terms of backwards compatibility'

something poetic about that...

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#182

Post by jasonlotito »

drewcrawford wrote: post #135
tolmasky wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important point here is that if you are aware of the problem and provide an incredibly lame dialog to deal with it, then you should have just provided the solution. Clearly Apple has all the necessary tools in their possession to fix this problem: they own the source to both Keynote '09 and the latest Keynote. Why not either 1) make a small conversion utility and provide a direct link to it in the dialog (st…

#2 isn't viable because it breaks the primary design goal and the entire purpose of Keynote '13--that every presentation opens the same way across desktop, web, and mobile. The Keynote '09 source code does not and never has compiled for ARM, and so you would be faced with exactly the same dialog you have now, except instead of on your Mac it's on your iPad and instead of asking you to find an old version of keynote i…

> #2 isn't viable because it breaks the primary design goal and the entire purpose of Keynote '13--that every presentation opens the same way across desktop, web, and mobile.

Except, right now, it doesn't. If that was their primary design goal, than it has not been achieved, because their web version still lacks features that are front and center on the desktop. So, you can't use that as an excuse.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#183

Post by reeses »

kzrdude wrote: post #148
jakejake wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the way Apple has always been. Keep up or fall behind. They're not focused on providing backwards compatibility. They leave the door open to losing customers to companies like Microsoft with these kinds of decisions. But that's the choice they made.

How is that a viable model for the users? I can keep up with my system and applications just fine, but are you saying that I have to re-visit my archive of past documents with each new keynote version, and re-open & re-save them all?

What's nice is that you often don't realize you need a document from several years ago until you've already upgraded through two or three computers, none of which have the (non-app-store) older versions of the software. You thought backing up your data was enough when upgrading computers and installed apps as needed to avoid bloat and clutter.

It doesn't even degrade gracefully. Pages tosses out a lot of formatting and embedded media from earlier documents, which has pushed us to eliminate iWork from our 'productivity' apps.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#184

Post by reeses »

Touche wrote: post #65
jakejake wrote: post #54

The author might consider using Microsoft products because they are obsessive about providing backwards compatibility. That's one of the positive things about Microsoft products. The downside is that they have to deal with a lot of old baggage as a result. Apple, on the other hand is almost the opposite. They're obsessive about upgrading everyone and leaving the past behind. That's great because they're free to make…

Files are data. Data should be eternal. You should be able to convert a presentation you make today 30 years from now to a newer format. Making software not-backwards compatible is fine and normal but if files expire in a few years Apple is saying that the things you do on their computers are disposable.

Assuming arguendo that data = information, a printout will suffice. Your conversion will be manual, but you should not expect a complicated, performant, object serialization format to last through several generations of computer architecture.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#185

Post by eru »

legulere wrote: post #157
npsimons wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant; you can fix (or pay/trade/beg someone else to fix) FLOSS. You can't say the same for closed source.

You can also patch the binaries of proprietary software, technically possible, but exactly as unfeasible as your solution when you want to get stuff done.

> [...] technically possible [...]

But often not legally possible?

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#186

Post by [deleted] »

jakejake wrote: post #115
tolmasky wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important point here is that if you are aware of the problem and provide an incredibly lame dialog to deal with it, then you should have just provided the solution. Clearly Apple has all the necessary tools in their possession to fix this problem: they own the source to both Keynote '09 and the latest Keynote. Why not either 1) make a small conversion utility and provide a direct link to it in the dialog (st…

This is just the way Apple has always been. Keep up or fall behind. They're not focused on providing backwards compatibility. They leave the door open to losing customers to companies like Microsoft with these kinds of decisions. But that's the choice they made.

[deleted]

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#188

Post by acqq »

001sky wrote: post #163
tlrobinson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow Apple has been able to port their entire operating system from PPC to Intel to ARM. I think they could manage porting a bit of iWork code.

exactly... they friggin switched CPUs

Two times!

1994 -- switch from Motorola to PowerPC.

2006 -- switch from PowerPC to Intel

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#189

Post by bluenose69 »

Advice: switch to latex with beamer.

Latex has a fairly long life time. A friend found the 20-year old source for his thesis and thought it would be fun to see if it would still compile in latex. Sure enough, it did, after just a few header lines being changed (sometimes library names change).

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#190

Post by dTal »

tlrobinson wrote: post #22

Apple is pretty obnoxious about this sort of thing. They recently stopped printing photo books for the version of iPhoto my mom used, with no warning at all. I had to upgrade her iPhoto, which required I upgrade to Mavericks, which required I add more RAM to her computer.

Sounds like they played it pretty well.
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