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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”

#191

Post by pif »

345723 wrote: post #69
Touche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is eternal, as long as you have the system and the software that it was created with. This can be said for all sorts of things, from the Commodore 64 to Keynote. If you want to be able to access the data on an NES cartridge you are going to need special hardware and software. Yes the ROMS are available now online, but that's only because someone with the hardware and software made it available to others. This is t…

> This is the nature of proprietary formats.

Indeed. When you choose to save your work in a not-public format, you are decidîng not to care about its lifespan: complaining later is just useless, unfortunately.

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

#192

Post by tfinniga »

Silhouette wrote: post #132
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.

If I were Apple, right now I'd be more concerned with losing customers to Android devices. Case in point: we have an iPad here that is still on the iOS 5 generation it came with. It has been widely reported that iOS 6 was slower (as well as breaking things like Google Maps), iOS 7 was slower still (as well as making various visual styling changes we don't like) and both iOS 6 and iOS 7 have suffered at least one seve…

> Can we "downgrade" that app back to something that works, which we already had before, via the app store or otherwise?

Yes, if you plan ahead. Keep the .ipa files, those can be loaded onto the phone via iTunes.

If you've upgraded iOS, you can also downgrade that. It's a pain, you need to get the .ipsw file and store some sort of activation code.

Is this more or less of a pain than on the desktop? Well, if you want to downgrade an app on the desktop, you'll need to keep the old installer around. Same thing with an OS, you'll need to wipe and reinstall everything from the old OS installer.

It's more unexpected on iOS, because generally you never need to deal with installers, but I don't think it's more painful. It's just more painful by contrast, since upgrading is so nice on iOS.

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

#193

Post by Silhouette »

nwmcsween wrote: post #174
Silhouette wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it could be a very expensive business to get into if there are patent-encumbered formats involved. In the cases where it's most likely to be useful, it also seems least likely to happen.

Reverse engineering file formats is covered by fair use due to this very reason.

What does fair use have to do with patents?

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

#194

Post by userbinator »

eru wrote: post #185
legulere wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Practically, it's more of a "not legally possible to distribute".

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

#195

Post by userbinator »

knodi wrote: post #151

Hey look another thing Apple "simplified". Really not happy with this trend of dropping support/feature and calling it "we simplified it".

The other thing to note is that hardware is still continuing to get faster and bigger (although that's slowed down a little most recently), while people are slowly being able to do less with new software that consumes more resources than their predecessors. "Do less with more"?

I think we've reached the point where computers have become much more than powerful enough for a lot of the common tasks people use them for. The rest is just marketing with an aggressive "newer is better" campaign.

IMHO "forced deprecation" is nearly never a good thing. Change in software (and hardware) should be an evolution, not a revolution. Fix bugs and add features, don't take away what was there before. I think a lot more people value stability over "latest fashion" than what companies and the like would want you to think, so they can keep you consuming.

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

#196

Post by fredsted »

chris_wot wrote: post #142
drewcrawford wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#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…

You must be joking. The amount of time that it takes a consumer to build a product is not the same amount of time a paid developer uses to build a software product, and take it through a QA process. It's ridiculous that you cannot open the previous version of a Pages file in the current version of Pages! What an absolute joke.

When I upgraded my iWorks to '13, it put the old versions in a folder. I can still access Pages '09, Keynote '09, etc.

Did OP delete those old versions? I don't see what the problem is here.

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

#197

Post by yincrash »

tfinniga wrote: post #192
Silhouette wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Apple, right now I'd be more concerned with losing customers to Android devices. Case in point: we have an iPad here that is still on the iOS 5 generation it came with. It has been widely reported that iOS 6 was slower (as well as breaking things like Google Maps), iOS 7 was slower still (as well as making various visual styling changes we don't like) and both iOS 6 and iOS 7 have suffered at least one seve…

> Can we "downgrade" that app back to something that works, which we already had before, via the app store or otherwise? Yes, if you plan ahead. Keep the .ipa files, those can be loaded onto the phone via iTunes. If you've upgraded iOS, you can also downgrade that. It's a pain, you need to get the .ipsw file and store some sort of activation code. Is this more or less of a pain than on the desktop? Well, if you want…

It should be noted that downgrading iOS is not supported by Apple and you need third party tools to save a signature code to emulate Apple's signing servers

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

#198

Post by scholia »

jkimmel wrote: post #86
nols wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the news that majority of the world's ATMs run on Windows XP or earlier. Or lab equipment that's air-gapped because it only works on some obsolete OS that's horribly insecure. Proprietary software is fine, but if long-lasting hardware is dependent on it bad things happen when that software company decides it's no longer worth supporting.

>lab equipment that's air-gapped because it only works on some obsolete OS that's horribly insecure. Just to emphasize how prevalent this is, I work in a 5 story life sciences research center with hundreds of personnel. All of our lab computers are airgapped, many of them stuck on OS versions >10 years old. I used OS X 10.1 the other day. That was certainly an experience.

Mac OS X 10.1 is roughly as old as Windows XP, isn't it?

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

#199

Post by hughw »

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…

> Just put a Mac with two versions of keynote behind a REST endpoint and charge a buck or two per conversion

That would violate the Keynote license agreement. So, we're back to needing Apple to help out here.

edit: from Section 2A, Permitted License Uses and Restrictions... i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control; and (ii) if you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, to download, install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software for use either: (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer(s) that you own or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use the Apple Software on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer, or multiple students may serially use the Apple Software on a single Mac Computer located at a resource center or library.

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

#200

Post by hughw »

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…

It's not charity to support your old versions. It's customer retention.
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