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Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

computerworld.com

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Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#21

Post by teacup50 »

eropple wrote: post #13
doomlaser wrote: post #10

Snow Leopard was the high watermark release for OS X, before focus and engineering talent migrated to iOS, and successive releases of OS X began to become cluttered with throwaway useless user interface candy and naggy GateKeeper dialogs.

YMMV, but a lot of that "useless user interface candy" makes my day noticeably better. Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control desktops per-monitor. This is the best OS X release by far. As far as Gatekeeper dialogs go, I'm curious what you…

> Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control desktops per-monitor

YMMV, but Mission Control completely broke the way Spaces worked as compared to prior Mac OS X releases -- which also happens to be the way I've worked since the 90s.

I don't need full screen apps, or separate spaces per head, so from my perspective, that change was an enormous net loss.

There are work-arounds, but they're imperfect: http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/

Factor in silly stuff like notification center, and all Apple seems to have done UX-wise for me is make it harder to actually get work done.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#22

Post by r00fus »

tolmasky wrote: post #19
chm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Mavericks? I was on 10.6 until 10.9 came out, and I have not been disappointed. I actually gained about 30 minutes more battery time. I also enjoy the notification integration with so many apps. Growl used to do the job, but it didn't always work. 10.6 to 10.9 is a good upgrade, try it.

Considering we spent months where Mail.app didn't perform it's most basic duty (receiving mail) and Messages continued it's almost simulated organic decay, I beg to differ.

Blame Google's crappy IMAP folder implementation.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#23

Post by teacup50 »

sbuk wrote: post #20
tolmasky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering we spent months where Mail.app didn't perform it's most basic duty (receiving mail) and Messages continued it's almost simulated organic decay, I beg to differ.

Nope. It didn't perform it's most basic duty with the non-standards compliant email provider that is Gmail. Literally every other service that offered standard IMAP worked fine.

I don't use or like Gmail, but given that it's quite likely the most popular IMAP server on the planet, I'd say it's Apple's responsibility to their users to not break compatibility.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#24

Post by eropple »

teacup50 wrote: post #21
eropple wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but a lot of that "useless user interface candy" makes my day noticeably better. Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control desktops per-monitor. This is the best OS X release by far. As far as Gatekeeper dialogs go, I'm curious what you…

> Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control desktops per-monitor YMMV, but Mission Control completely broke the way Spaces worked as compared to prior Mac OS X releases -- which also happens to be the way I've worked since the 90s. I don't ne…

You can turn off spaces-per-monitor, so I don't know what your complaint there is.

I also don't really get what Mission Control's "your virtual desktops are in a line" rather than Spaces' "your virtual desktops are in a square" makes you lose. You can turn off the reordering (I do) and it becomes functionally the same thing.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#25

Post by teacup50 »

jader201 wrote: post #11
interstitial wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My $2700 Cintiq is 7 years old and works dandy, but Wacom will not be making Maverick drivers -- ever. So I won't be upgrading ever. My TV is 10 years old and working. We have a 15 year old TV in the office. My 2001 ibook is going strong and my six year could use it -- but it can't even be updated to the new wireless networking protocols, and linux abandoned the G3.

I can't tell if you're complaining about Apple abandoning support for Snow Leopard, or just making a statement supporting why people still stick to old(er) hardware. If the latter, then I completely understand, and you make a valid point. If the former, though, then my question would be why would one be content with sticking to old(er) hardware, but not be content with sticking to old(er) software? Again, not saying…

> If the former, though, then my question would be why would one be content with sticking to old(er) hardware, but not be content with sticking to old(er) software?

Security, and network effects.

Supporting deployment back to 10.6 / iOS 6 / etc isn't inherently difficult, but the fast pace of Apple's deployment, the lack of support for downgrading on iOS devices, and the now-constant API churn makes it seem like more hassle than it's worth.

Apple is intentionally driving new demand by pushing early obsolescence of old software and hardware.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#26

Post by sbuk »

teacup50 wrote: post #23
sbuk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It didn't perform it's most basic duty with the non-standards compliant email provider that is Gmail. Literally every other service that offered standard IMAP worked fine.

I don't use or like Gmail, but given that it's quite likely the most popular IMAP server on the planet, I'd say it's Apple's responsibility to their users to not break compatibility.

Which service then? I'm using it with iCloud, Yahoo!, Exchange and my own heady build based on Dovecot. All work flawlessly. If a provider uses non-standards complaint implementations of services such as IMAP, it is their responsibility, not the email clients, to support the end user.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#27

Post by teacup50 »

eropple wrote: post #24
teacup50 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control desktops per-monitor YMMV, but Mission Control completely broke the way Spaces worked as compared to prior Mac OS X releases -- which also happens to be the way I've worked since the 90s. I don't ne…

You can turn off spaces-per-monitor, so I don't know what your complaint there is. I also don't really get what Mission Control's "your virtual desktops are in a line" rather than Spaces' "your virtual desktops are in a square" makes you lose. You can turn off the reordering (I do) and it becomes functionally the same thing.

> You can turn off the reordering (I do) and it becomes functionally the same thing.

It's not.

You lose spatial organization; I place related projects next to each other (top and to the right) to make it easy to switch between related working contexts, eg LaTeX editor for documentation of a project + IDE for the actual project code + source code for a related project to use as a reference, etc

Ditching the grid also means decreasing the amount of room in which spaces can be laid out; The grid is a very efficient mechanism for switching between LOTS of spaces.

I maintain a 4x4 grid of 16 spaces, and I never quit anything, or close a document -- RAM is cheap. I simply treat different areas of the grid as different contextual workspaces. If I come back to a project two weeks later, it's all still there.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#28

Post by teacup50 »

chrisbolt wrote: post #12
doomlaser wrote: post #10

Snow Leopard was the high watermark release for OS X, before focus and engineering talent migrated to iOS, and successive releases of OS X began to become cluttered with throwaway useless user interface candy and naggy GateKeeper dialogs.

Naggy GateKeeper dialogs? It's extremely rare that I see them, and even then it's nothing like UAC was back in the Vista days.

If you manually extract something and create a broken signature in the process, Gatekeeper helps you out by refusing to open the bundle in ANY application, and instead simply stating that the file is corrupt and should be deleted.

I've hit these things often enough that I just turned it off. Gatekeeper doesn't protect against unsigned code execution; it's merely the same old quarantine code with code signing bolted on. It prevents you from stupidly double clicking an evil executable -- in theory.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#29

Post by teacup50 »

sbuk wrote: post #26
teacup50 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use or like Gmail, but given that it's quite likely the most popular IMAP server on the planet, I'd say it's Apple's responsibility to their users to not break compatibility.

Which service then? I'm using it with iCloud, Yahoo!, Exchange and my own heady build based on Dovecot. All work flawlessly. If a provider uses non-standards complaint implementations of services such as IMAP, it is their responsibility, not the email clients, to support the end user.

I'm sure all of Apple's customers agreed that, simply on principal, it was better that their e-mail was broken in the new OS release.

Re: Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable

#30

Post by r00fus »

liviu wrote: post #17
wiradikusuma wrote: post #14

I attempted to upgrade my old MacBook White (Core 2 Duo) to Mavericks, but apparently it only supports Snow Leopard.

Because you have 32 bit architecture. It is 2007 or 2008 model?

Core2's are 64bit chips. It's the graphics card (Intel GMA 950) that Apple is likely deeming too old.

Hopefully my 2008 AL macbook stays supported for another release - it's just as nice looking as a modern macbook pro, and with an SSD it's quite functional yet.

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