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647156

Cancelled
Dec 4, 2011
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The fact that Apple themselves provided new versions of iTunes for 2001's Windows XP for longer than they did for 2009's Snow Leopard (and for a lot longer than they did for PowerPC), and still provides them to date for 2009's Windows 7, says a lot here...
 
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akator

macrumors newbie
Mar 27, 2016
29
27
I have a current version of Linux Mini running nicely on a Core Duo 1.67 Mini that used to run Snow Leopard. There are no driver issues with Mint on this machine, it just works. Primary use is as a file and media server with surprisingly low CPU load. It has performed well with all of the external drives and formats I've used (Mac, NTFS, exFat, ext3/4), another nice perk. Firefox runs acceptably.

The only caveat is installation, but that was because I forgot how nasty Mac EFI was about installing other systems from USB drives. After several attempts using different solutions I gave up, burned Mint to a disc, and installed it with the optical drive.

Like others I also have a Core 2 Duo Mini running SL that cannot upgrade past Lion. This one has been upgraded with a SSD and runs SL beautifully. The SL experience is so nice I haven't been able to convince myself to put Mint or Windows on this machine. I'm going to hold out until Firefox 45 is completely dead and there is no other option before ditching SL on that machine.
 

Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,550
418

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eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
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Am I missing something here...?
Yes, but thanks for pointing out my error. I should have been more specific.

Firefox 45ESR. That is, the versions between 45 and the next ESR.

From the original link:
…move 10.6-10.8 users onto 45ESR as well so that they'll still get a year-ish of support on that branch in a sort of graceful wind-down…

I have edited my first post to show this. Thanks for pointing it out!
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,321
6,399
Kentucky
The fact that Apple themselves provided new versions of iTunes for 2001's Windows XP for longer than they did for 2009's Snow Leopard (and for a lot longer than they did for PowerPC), and still provides them to date for 2009's Windows 7, says a lot here...

If you think about, Apple really has a good reason to do this.

iDevices are dependent on iTunes, and it's in Apple's best interest to target as many PC users as they can by making it available even on ancient hardware.

On the other hand, Apple has a BIG incentive to push current Mac users to either newer OSs or newer computers.

I'm not saying I like it, but I do think they have their reasons
 
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blindpcguy

macrumors 6502
Mar 4, 2016
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Bald Knob Arkansas
yeah i get that but still theres quite a few people still on sl that use it but then again there is not many mac models stuck on sl except the 1st gen macbook and macbook pro and the core duo iMac other then that you can go to at least lion witch as of right now still supports modern iTunes. and every mac that shipped with sl is still supported and can run el cap the only reason i see people hanging back is rosetta and powerpc apps they don't want to give up. but hey theres always the option of duel or triple booting el cap sl and if u need it windows
 
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eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
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I'm not saying I like it, but I do think they have their reasons
I've always seen this as Apple's greatest flaw.

Apple is a hardware company. They build quality items and it bites them in the ass because those quality items last for a very long time and remain relevant during that time. Unlike PC manufacturers, whose customers are quite used to buying a brand new PC every two years or so most Apple users buy less frequently. Apple makes less money when that happens.

Oh sure, Apple has OS X and iOS. But since Lion, you don't really buy it anymore and to get iOS you have to buy a device because it's not sold commercially without the device.

So, Apple charges a premium and is constantly trying to update and push people to update. If they didn't then sales would be far less. So, yeah, it's in their best interest to push the customer forward while marginalizing those who choose to hold back.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
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Kentucky
and every mac that shipped with sl is still supported and can run el cap the only reason i see people hanging back is rosetta and powerpc apps they don't want to give up. but hey theres always the option of duel or triple booting el cap sl and if u need it windows

There in lies the catch. If you notice, the last three OSs have been free upgrades, and Apple has been seeing a VERY high installed percentage of the most recent OS. Heck, even my Mac Pro 1,1, which hasn't been officially supported since Lion although the old beasts keep on trucking with upgraded GPUs and simple hacks, has been bugging me for a while to upgrade to El Capitan(it's running Mavericks).

Getting old OSs out of the equation makes life easier for Apple both for security and application support. They've provided a path for continued Rosetta use by(legally) allowing SL Server to be virtualized on Apple hardware and then selling it for $20.

Again, I'm not saying I LIKE any of the above(heck, I would have loved to see PPC support extend to Snow Leopard-heck look at the folks who bought late G5s or Powerbooks and only got one OS update. The early Core Duo Macs weren't much better off since they only got two updates(Tiger->Leopard->SL) but it's still not as bad as buying a high end Quad with Tiger in late 2005 or early 2006 and having it EOLed after Leopard.

By the way, as another random thought, the Quad and late Powerbooks were the last Macs sold that could run every piece of Mac software from 1984 on ever written out of the box. If you wanted to fire up Macdraw on them, it would work fine since the program would run in Classic mode and the 68K emulator in Classic mode would take care of it. Once Intel Macs came along, the ability to run pretty much everything written before 1999 or so went out the window(without messing around with emulators).
 

MacCubed

macrumors 68000
Apr 26, 2014
1,618
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Florida
yeah i get that but still theres quite a few people still on sl that use it but then again there is not many mac models stuck on sl except the 1st gen macbook and macbook pro and the core duo iMac other then that you can go to at least lion witch as of right now still supports modern iTunes. and every mac that shipped with sl is still supported and can run el cap the only reason i see people hanging back is rosetta and powerpc apps they don't want to give up. but hey theres always the option of duel or triple booting el cap sl and if u need it windows
The issue here isn't just SL, 10.6-10.8 is being dropped. This means that people with pre-2009 MacBooks wouldn't have support, unless they used MacPostFactor to get to 10.9 which would lack graphics acceleration, creating a total mess. This thread will apply to practically any Mac that does not support graphics acceleration in 10.9+
 

MacCubed

macrumors 68000
Apr 26, 2014
1,618
494
Florida
The thing is that Firefox 45 will still be "current" for many years to come. Its not like older versions of Safari, like on Tiger for example, that will fail to display pages. (Don't quote me on this, as I'm not too sure) Another thing is that Firefox is moving away from "Aurora" to "Electrolysis", which (from what I remember), Kaiser said that it makes it more difficult to port Firefox to unsupported OSes. Again, I am not sure on this! Could someone confirm or deny?
 

blindpcguy

macrumors 6502
Mar 4, 2016
422
93
Bald Knob Arkansas
well that is so worrying we need supported browsers on these old oses hopeful.lly someone picks up the torch then maybe on the powerpc scene someone could port the full linux ppc firefox that might work but idk for intel seems like a bad situation for our old hardware in the future
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,849
26,977
witch is a major shame hopefully someone will make tenfourfox for intel
Someone did. It's just not current. Version 17.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/TenFourFoxIntel.app.zip
[doublepost=1461727282][/doublepost]
The thing is that Firefox 45 will still be "current" for many years to come. Its not like older versions of Safari, like on Tiger for example, that will fail to display pages. (Don't quote me on this, as I'm not too sure) Another thing is that Firefox is moving away from "Aurora" to "Electrolysis", which (from what I remember), Kaiser said that it makes it more difficult to port Firefox to unsupported OSes. Again, I am not sure on this! Could someone confirm or deny?
I think Kaiser was using phrases like "Impossible, Extremely Difficult, No Compatible PPC Code" and so on.

Electrolysisis is pretty much the end for us as far as backporting the code.
[doublepost=1461727432][/doublepost]
well that is so worrying we need supported browsers on these old oses hopeful.lly someone picks up the torch then maybe on the powerpc scene someone could port the full linux ppc firefox that might work but idk for intel seems like a bad situation for our old hardware in the future
The issue is not Linux code. If it were that easy, Cameron Kaiser would just have gone that route from the beginning. The problem is making the current code work using only the tools and code available to Tiger Macintosh users.

Hell, Kaiser has invented half the tools he's needed just to make things work. It can be done, but not by one person working all by himself with no other coders. And that's exactly what we have here. No one else has jumped in to help Kaiser in anything more than a support role.
 

Aika

macrumors regular
Apr 7, 2006
207
177
At this point is there any software compatibility advantage to using Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard? I have a 2006 iMac that I can do the MacPostFactor dance with but I don't know if iCloud compatibility is worth taking the performance hit and losing Rosetta.

I really think that OS X peaked at Tiger and Snow Leopard (although El Capitan was finally a return to form) but those of us who bought late PowerPC and early Intel Macs really got screwed over in the OS upgrade stakes. That's not something that gets talked about enough.
 
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MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,561
1,740
At this point is there any software compatibility advantage to using Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard? I have a 2006 iMac that I can do the MacPostFactor dance with but I don't know if iCloud compatibility is worth taking the performance hit and losing Rosetta.

I really think that OS X peaked at Tiger and Snow Leopard (although El Capitan was finally a return to form) but those of us who bought late PowerPC and early Intel Macs really got screwed over in the OS upgrade stakes. That's not something that gets talked about enough.

I liked Mountain Lion. Yeah, you lose Rosetta but you'd lose that from 10.7. It felt like using OS X again, as 10.7 was a very awful experience for me. Then you had Mavericks, which was all right and felt like I stayed on 10.8 with a couple of changes.

Then we had 10.10 and OH GOD was that experience awful. Memory Cleaners were pretty much required for that abortion.
 
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