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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

I upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released

I used to do that—until I realized that 10.7 (and now probably 10.8) don't offer any substantial improvements to things I care about (as discussed here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/mac-os-10-7-is-out...). In other words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's also true, at least for me, of a program like Word. Have we really seen substantial improvements since, say, 2002? Maybe in stability, but not much else.

I'm not arguing that software itself isn't improving—a lot of software has a huge amount of search space left. But some doesn't, and we get diminishing marginal returns. Maybe I'll upgrade to 10.8 or its successor—Textmate 2.0 or iMovie 12 could be the inciting factors—but there's a solid chance I won't.

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YMMV, but I find Mission Control to be absolutely invaluable in Lion (and I was a huge Spaces fan - removing it for Mission Control was one of my biggest apprehensions). It was worth $30 (amortized across all my Macs) to me, easily. I don't buy that we've reached "peak operating system", though I would say that in the Microsoft ecosystem they may have reached "peak Windows" with Windows 7.

Problem is, what happens when they stop supporting the version that you are using and happy with?

Would you feel confident going online with an OS that has known security issues that will never be patched?

Using an outdated OS that is not supported anymore isn't good security, but in theory there shouldn't be much danger as long as you follow some basic restrictions :

1/ Put the computer behind a NAT router with no open ports/outside access 2/ Use a browser that hasn't dropped your platform (just because the OS isn't supported anymore doesn't mean you can't find at least one browser that's up to date with continuous security updates. There are still people porting Firefox to PPC macs, an initiative called "TenFourFox". You can also try Camino or iCab, two alternative browsers that have kept PPC compatibility) 3/ Don't open an email attachment unless it has been scanned through an antivirus

Point 1 and 3 are something I do even on a patched computer anyway. Your desktop shouldn't be directly exposed to the internet.

I've never ran an outdated OS myself but I would feel confident in using one as long as I respect those principles. The one thing I wouldn't be confident in doing, though, would be running an outdated browser or an outdated mail client. Security updates for anything that is in direct contact with the internet is a top priority and using an abandoned mail client like sparrow that doesn't guarantee security updates is a terrible, terrible idea.

I personally hit that point when 10.4 rolled around.

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