Hacker News Reader

Comment by binarycrusader | Hacker News Reader

What? This is not a case where the simply flipped a magic flag in the installer to prevent you from using software "just because". The belief is that they are doing this because they're requiring a new version of the OS -- they're using newer APIs that aren't available in 10.5.

View on HN

They mean you will not be able to install existing versions. The ones that presently work.

Even if the installer could handle older versions, Google has chosen to not even archive older versions of Chrome and only makes the latest version available.

Third-party sources such as filehippo and others have archived every version of Google Chrome produced since 2009(?) and that's the only option.

Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions.

It would be bizarre if Google provided old versions of Chrome. Chrome tries hard to make you not even notice what version you're running, running a version that is not the latest is against Chrome's ethos. They would have to be special builds too because the first thing it would do is upgrade you to the latest (if your system is supported of course). That would be amusing, but useless.

> Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions.

It's actually extremely popular with web developers because almost everyone is on the current version. It's awesome.

Unlike some types of software, browsers actually do suffer bit rot. Running an old, unsupported browser is dangerous.

If Google isn't going to support (i.e. provide security fixes) for the branch that supports older versions of OS X, it would be irresponsible to let people continue to install it.

I'm doing pretty okay with Safari 4.1 on my PowerBook running 10.4. What exactly is "bit rot", are the magnetic particles on my disk going to grow mold?

But isn't Safari 4.1 still supported by Apple? The issue isn't the age of the codebase -- it's whether anyone is still bothering to patch known security issues!

From Wikipedia:

Safari 4.1.3 is the final version for Tiger as of 18 November 2010.[9] Despite not having received security updates since then, Tiger remains popular with Power Mac users...

Yikes. Surely there have been security bugs discovered since then, no? I wouldn't use that browser.

Security issues, most likely.

Plus new HTML features, but they are secondary.

Sort of. Cosmic rays, for one. And bad sectors.

But, half-joking aside, it's dangerous to run old browsers with no security updates. It might not have bitten you, and it might never bit you (like how you can run off a red light lots of times and you might not crash into anyone).

That doesn't make it less dangerous than running a browser WITH security updates.

You will be able to install a working version, provided you can find a link to it. The only "real" download of Chrome is the current version, so installing that file won't work. But if you find an older version via a 3rd-party archive, it will still install.

For example, downloading Chrome v10 may work on 10.5 now, but downloading Chrome v10 will not work in the future. That's not how software versioning works. I could be wrong (and I hope I am) but I remember fighting with this a few years ago on a windows machine.

I fail to see how software versioning is related here.

Google simply doesn't archive older versions of Chrome and doesn't offer them for download.

This is covered in their support FAQ. They only support and offer the latest version.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com