Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable
computerworld.com
computerworld.com
Well, The SSL bug only affected Mavericks. Additionally, I don't think we know if the security updates released for mountain lion and lion also affected Snow Leopard. And if it did, well, Apple moves quicker than Microsoft does anyway with new OS release every year.
If there are still people running Snow Leopard, either they have an old computer that is more than 5 years old, or they specifically don't want to upgrade to Lion. For the former, Apple knows most people will have upgraded their old computers by now, or will soon in the future. For the latter group, most know what they're doing by not upgrading.
Snow Leopard is 4 years old. And the last update for it was September 2013, just 5 months ago. It clearly was Apple's XP, if you will, and the longest supported out of all releases, I think.
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 you fall into that boat, but in general, anybody protesting this decision should be asked that question.
And it's a genuine question -- maybe there is a valid reason. I just can't think of one.
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.
For the Cintiq, or in general?
Are they necessary?
I ask because I have an Intuos Pro and haven't had a problem on Mavericks.
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.
As far as Gatekeeper dialogs go, I'm curious what you're doing with your machine because I have seen a Gatekeeper complaint exactly once, because Cisco hadn't signed their VPN software (which was really awesome of them).
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.
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.
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.
10.6 to 10.9 is a good upgrade, try it.
If I'm paying Company A? It used to work, and it doesn't now? Yes.
Why should users care whose fault it is? This isn't even about fault; the only fault is failing to adequately test with something so widely used. Just fix it.
For a lot of things, It's still good enough. Chrome works. Mail works. ITunes. And for my purposes, terminal and ssh too.
Similarly, I've still got an old PPC mini running Leopard (also it's terminal release) as an iTunes server. It's no speed daemon, but it's not like serving a couple mp3 streams is that hard. But it hasn't gotten updates in a while, so I've got to look at moving on with that one.
I'm biased, but that kind of organization-wide upgrade treadmill would be a nonstarter with most of my clients (ranging from small-business to enterprise). Strange move by Apple if they hope to challenge Microsoft's lion share of PCs in business.
It's a strange move by Microsoft for them to make huge changes every 5 years, rather than small ones every year or two like Apple. It's much easier to adapt to change incrementally.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing anyone technically minded really believes Vista was a disaster. Windows 7 was essentially Vista SP3, but people finally had decent hardware by that time and it seemed to be an improvement.
[0]: http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-200807-2014...
Compare that to MS and Apple forcing new versions of OS (and in Apple's case, hardware) on its users... I can understand their position, but it is still frustrating for the users. I find Windows XP superior to both Vista and Windows 7 (not to mention "Lego" Windows).
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.