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Mozilla Puts Tiger Out To Pasture
Barence writes "Mozilla is ready to exorcise support for Mac OS X 10.4 from Firefox's development code, closing the door on Apple's aging OS. The foundation stopped supporting 10.4, codenamed Tiger, in September 2009, but, according to Josh Aas, a Mozilla platform engineer, 'we left much of the code required to support that platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision." We had come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific code,' he notes on the Mozilla developer planning forum."
Please no !
There are a lot of old G3 macs around that can run only Tiger and are perfect as a browsing machine (if you don't want to watch flash videos).
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Leopard (10.5) was released end of october 2007, 2.5 years ago, and 2.5 years is well enough time to let end-users move on and revision their computing. Everyone knows there are 10.4'ers out there still, and even 10.3'ers (may the Universe and the Great Magnet help them), but dragging excess weight is nothing short of a problem akin to shooting oneself in the foot - just take a look at microsoft and their eternal love for backwards compatibility, and all the hell that comes with it in windows.
I'm not a Mac person so I don't keep track of every update, but why is it that OSX 10.4, a version which only came out in 2005 according to Wikipedia, has so much code that prevents Mozilla from trivially continuing to maintain compatibility in Firefox? Does it have something to do with the PPC->Intel switch? The fact that they'd drop support for an OS version thats only 5 years old, when Firefox quite obviously still works on 10 year old Windows 2000, is sort of surprising.
This is far too premature. Firefox is still supported on Windows 2000, yet Tiger was still shipping on new Mac less than three years ago. Lots of people are still running this on G3 machines that can't upgrade to Leopard. I think this is just too soon.
I'm surprised that so much version specific code is needed to support a minor release of the OS. Why is that?
We still have a computer running 10.2 hooked up to a microscope. It still works just fine, and I'm hesitant to upgrade without a real good reason. It would be really nice to continue to get updates for Firefox.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's foolish to continue supporting obsolete platforms until the end of time -- Windows developers take notice. Besides, very few people are put out in the cold by this decision -- 10.5 will run on most Macs (with the exception of iBook G3s) from the end of 2002 onward. I think between 5 and 7 years of backward compatibility in hardware is good enough.
Those of you still running Tiger on your G3s will have to switch to Opera 10, and considering how slooooow those ancient machines are with the modern Web you ought to be using Opera anyhow.
So, where can I get a guaranteed legal version of Leopard? I've got a G4 Powerbook that I never upgraded, and it seems that Apple doesn't sell 10.5 anymore.
excise
My "recreational" computer is a G4 Powerbook running 10.4, and I've found that realistically, Mozilla stopped caring over a year ago. Even chatting in Facebook is an exercise in futility. Switching to Safari 4 was a no-brainer.
A shame. I know people who bought nice new Macbooks running 10.4 in 2008, and they won't want to upgrade their OS after just over a year. I have a 700 mhz ibook that is great to travel with and does everything I want it to, but is slowly becoming insecure because it's gradually becoming unsupported. Yet it runs fine, and I'd cheerfully stick with it if I could.
Buy, buy, buy...what a pain. How hard is it to just keep up on security patches for old browsers?
they can always install ubuntu (or whatever linux distro) on their laptops/computers and continue to receive updates for firefox or am i wrong ?
It would seem strange to drop support for OS X 10.4, released in 2005, while keeping support for Windows 2000, released in 2000. Even if Win2000 support is dropped, XP was released in 2001 is certainly staying.
I know Apple isn't exactly famous for backwards compatibility, but is it this extreme? Is the stereotype true that Mac owners are people with too much money to spare that will buy anything as soon as Apple tells them too? Are there no businesses using 10.4 that are holding off on upgrading?
The Mozilla Foundation is just as retarded as they claim closed source houses are.
Where do these assholes get off screaming about Microsoft's upgrade treadmill and abandonment when they pull stupid and unnecessary stunts like this so there's more room to bloat up their stupidly unnecessary and broken "features" (hello Autisticbar?) that nobody actually wants? Nevermind that every damned version renders pages differently, throwing the whole "but but but itz standurdz cumpliantz!" argument right out the fucking window.
You're in a glass house, so stop throwing stones already. Thank God Microsoft doesn't actually listen to you idiots.
I'd expect that very few people still running Tiger (two major releases out of date) are going to be updating their Firefox install to the latest and greatest. And no, the ten people in the Slashdot audience who pipe up and say they're running Tiger for some esoteric reason are not representative of the whole.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Buy, buy, buy...what a pain. How hard is it to just keep up on security patches for old browsers?
It can be really hard if the OS designer really doesn't care about backwards compatibility and just expects all the users to buy new versions of every piece of software every couple years. This is part of the reason why Apple computers will never be able to make it in the business world. And by business world I mean the people in suits and ties who drink real coffee and get stuff done, not those guys with turtlenecks and lattes whose job is to pat other turtleneck wearers on the back while simultaneously judging them on their eyewear.
Funny that Apple doesn't have any problem writing Safari updates that still work on 10.4...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
How hard is it to just keep up on security patches for old browsers?
A security patch isn't as simple as deciding "Oh, we don't want to have that vulnerability any more" and commenting out a setting. If it was that easy, there wouldn't be very many vulnerabilities at all.
On the one hand, any time you find a new vulnerability (or a new class of vulnerabilities), you have to audit all the nooks and crannies of the code base in order to identify either the problem itself, or the problem areas that are affected.
On the other hand, any time you change a line of code, you have to recompile. That means, to release the patch, you'll have to recompile for *every target OS*, and you'll have to *test* on every one of those OSes.
Surely when considering both of those complicating factors, you can see what Mozilla's motivations might be for retiring old support branches with a relatively limited user base?
You might look into using Opera, its latest 10-series still supports not only 10.4, but also 10.3. Also has quite good security record and on older machines it is readily apparent how snappy Opera is (don't forget using its built-in adblocker)
One that hath name thou can not otter
There are rumours that Apple are less enthusiastic about 10.4 as there are vulnerabilities patched in 10.5 updates that have not been released for 10.4 (here are the 10.5 fixes).
For anyone who has been with Apple since the beginning of Mac OS X, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Mac OS X is on a definite upgrade treadmill: Apple wants to do a major OS update every 2 years and nothing is sacred - they're boldly going forward and they can't find reverse. More to the point, Apple has decided not to put a lot of effort in to supporting legacy operating systems, so they only do feature updates on the current OS, and security updates on the previous OS. In other words, 10.4 no longer gets security updates since it's 2 OSes back.
So to release new software with 10.4 compatibility is a dubious proposition, because you're deploying software on an OS with an ever-increasing number of security vulnerabilities which in turn may impact your product. In this case Moz is better off avoiding 10.4, not only to avoid the dangers of deploying software on a retired OS, but also so that they can focus further development on using the features of the 10.5+ API.
Welcome to the upgrade treadmill, guys. Not a lot of people like it, but that's the price of admission to Steve's world.
They are still releasing security updates for 3.0. I would imagine that translates into at least another year, probably more, of security updates for 3.5.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is Mozilla pure and simple. Apple offers Safari 4 for OS X 10.4 (Tiger), so it's clearly not an impossible task to have an up to date browser on the OS.
You mean the kind who are shackled to a desk 9-5 with a strict 30 minute lunch break, and get kicks out of really awesome spreadsheets?
You can keep your "real coffee" and your fucking suit, I'll stick to working a job that is flexible around me, not the other way around.
What is...?
Vista (6.0) was released early november 2006, over 3 years ago, and 3 years is well enough time to let end-users move on and revision their computing. Oh wait, it's not; Windows XP (66%) still greatly outnumbers Windows Vista and Windows 7 put together (25%).
Speaking for myself; keeping the G5 on 10.4 because it's the last OS X version specifically designed for the power pc chipset, right? 10.5 ushered in the migration to intel architecture, and 10.5 supposedly served both ppc and intel, but was considered relatively inferior to Tiger stability-wise. With Snow Leopard, even apple made it clear they've retired support for legacy, non-intel, systems. Can't remember the last time i got a software update for anything other than safari or itunes...
"It's a doughnut stuffed with M&M's. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don't have to eat any M&M's."
According to Omni Software update statistics, a third of all macs are still running tiger. http://update.omnigroup.com/
Mac OS X is going to be phased out in favor of what the iPhone platform is running anyway.
On which platform will developers make apps for "what the iPhone platform is running"? As I see it, the big draw of a Mac for developers is that you need one to make iPhone apps. Or will it get to the point where only developers who have a track record on a non-Apple platform will be allowed to develop iPhone apps?
And even if the grandson does the deed, she won't know how to use it or update it (Firefox on OSX updates automatically).
Ubuntu's Update Manager updates just as automatically. In fact, I find updating in Ubuntu more convenient. First, Ubuntu is like Windows in that you can update in the background, unlike Mac OS X where updating forces all applications to close. That wouldn't be a problem except that Mac OS X (at least 10.6) forces a restart, not a shutdown or restart-to-hibernate, after an update. That's a pain if updating is the last thing you do in a day before leaving the computer; you have to sit around and wait for it to finish instead of setting it and forgetting it.
Don't get me wrong, here: I do understand that an OS has to change as it develops, in order to make any progress... And I understand that an almost unavoidable consequence of this is that older versions of the OS will not be able to support programs built for newer versions, and that maintaining application code for older versions of the OS is a lot of extra work...
But I really found it very frustrating when I was a Mac user, that I had to either continually upgrade the OS, or else lose access to new versions of things like VLC and Mozilla. It's a cultural thing, I guess: I'm used to those kinds of updates being free. This is why my 12" powerbook has been gathering dust ever since I got a EEE.
Bow-ties are cool.
The answer is: Mozilla should have a very clear policy about backwards compatibility and follow it to the letter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't currently have that.
I understand this is Slashdot and RTFA is rare, but it appears you didn't even bother to read the summary either:
"The foundation stopped supporting 10.4, codenamed Tiger, in September 2009"
KDE [...] its broken and does not work properly.
In what way?
As far as display PDF goes... look it up.
Apple calls it "Quartz", not "Display PDF". Calling Quartz "Display PDF" is like calling QuickDraw "Display PICT" or calling GDI "Display WMF".
I don't think that matters much on PPCs, which is the main reasons for not installing 10.5
If they are truly "browsing machines," then what is there to retrain about? Firefox on Linux doesn't work differently than Firefox on MacOS.
If you're doing generic "internet stuff" then all OSes are about the same. It's only when you get into local apps that you start to see "oh shit, application xxx hasn't been ported to OS yyyy."
This is the OS that came with my 3 year old macbook and it's already no longer being supported. Most recently I had to compile subversion from source just to get the latest version running (universal binaries for subversion are no longer available for the latest release.) Apple should know better and release these updates as part of some sort of "service pack" if you will. If this were Microsoft's operating system the haters would be all over it, but I guess since it's Apple, I should have been expected to replace my laptop with one running the latest OS last year.
A shame. I know people who bought nice new Macbooks running 10.4 in 2008, and they won't want to upgrade their OS after just over a year.
People with older PowerPC hardware may feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, yes. But there are a couple free/cheap solutions for those running Intel Macs:
- Use Safari: The current version (4.0.4 at the moment) is available for 10.4. Granted the next major version may or may not, but we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
- Get Snow Leopard for only $29 and run any version of Firefox you want.
Where do these assholes get off screaming about Microsoft's upgrade treadmill and abandonment when they pull stupid and unnecessary stunts like this so there's more room to bloat up their stupidly unnecessary and broken "features" (hello Autisticbar?) that nobody actually wants?
For sure I hate what they did to the location bar (and prefer not to use its current, rather stupid name) - but I am curious... Do you find some connection between the current behavior of the Firefox location bar and Autism, or is this word choice solely the result of a slight similarity between "Awesome" and "Autism"?
Bow-ties are cool.
Buy, buy, buy...what a pain. How hard is it to just keep up on security patches for old browsers?
Firefox is open source. If you want the patches, write them yourself. If that is too much work for you, then I am sure you will understand why others are reluctant to do it for you.
Although Firefox does still appear to have Windows 2000 support, it hasn't supported Windows ME since, I believe, version 2.0. That just recently caused me problems, when I was trying to recycle an old Pentium 2 class machine to give to an unemployed woman who just needed a *really* cheap computer to do an Internet job search with. I discovered that with Windows ME (or by extension, Windows '98), there are really no "up to date" browser choices (except possibly Opera) they can use anymore. Internet Explorer 6 is the last version Microsoft offers for those OS's, and everyone's trying to kill that off as we speak.
Since Windows ME and 2000 were released in the same time-frame, I'd say Firefox's continued Win2K support has more to do with it being trivial to do than any conscious sense of a need to support an OS for "x number of years". Windows XP, after all, was pretty much based on the Windows 2000 foundation.
As far as Macs go, I'd tend to side with your view that it's "too soon to kill off Tiger support" ... simply because 10.6 "Snow Leopard" doesn't really count in my book as a full-blown OS X "new version". I don't say that to knock 10.6 in any way, shape or form. (I run it on my Mac at home and love it.) I'm just saying, it's the first time Apple has sold 2 versions of OS X side-by-side on store shelves -- because Leopard isn't really superseded by Snow Leopard for PowerPC Mac owners. Snow Leopard is, essentially a "Leopard +" release to give Intel Mac owners the maximum benefit out of their processor architecture. (Why waste hard disk space with a bunch of PPC code on an Intel Mac that will never utilize it? And why not provide tools in 10.6 so developers of new apps can optimize them for the multi-core Intel processors?) The fact you could buy Snow Leopard for only $29.99 reinforces this concept.
I am still using Jaguar on a number of machines.
Me too! Also, I have a long memory, and I'm still pissed at all the Classic apps I couldn't run in 10.2.
I switched to Vista, when it came out. Despite the complaints (which mostly applied to laptops anyway), Vista ran like a champ on a relatively cheap $700 desktop-- as a former Mac users, the thought that a $700 computer runs just as well as the $1800+ tower you're moving off of is mind-blowing. From there, I've upgraded to Windows 7 and never going back.
Actually, I might buy another Mac simply because I think their laptop hardware is better-built. But I'd almost certainly run Windows 7 on it.
(Anybody tried that, and can comment on how well the Mac's trackpad works in a Windows 7 world? Is it a pain in the ass to right-click?)
Comment of the year
I'm a long time Mac user. Firefox developers are asking the wrong question of Mac users by focusing this discussion on continued support; of course, everyone wants their platform supported as long as possible.
But if you ask about whether Firefox should feel more like a "native" Mac app, you'd get a lot of Mac faithful saying "ditch Tiger if that's standing in the way". For example, ATSUI is the legacy text engine from the days of OpenDoc and System 7.5; apps that still use it under Mac OS X draw fire from Mac users because it's not integrated as well as CoreText or the Cocoa Text Engine. They don't make this text engine distinction directly, but it's clear they don't consider ATSUI to be Mac-like anymore with the "bugs" they file and complaints they have about lack of integration e.g. "Why doesn't the command-control-d shortcut to look up something in the dictionary work?"
Based on the goals of the Firefox roadmap, 4.0 looks like a "must-reluctantly-kill-Tiger" release just based on its lofty memory isolation goals; that's a feature you do not want to compromise the quality of.
Keep the bug fixes and security updates of the 3.x Firefox platform able to work with Tiger. This helps Mac users. This helps support people. This helps propagate a good standards compliant browser to as many people with legacy hardware as possible. But a major release number like 4.0 is a good end-user aware point for removing significant backwards compatibility.
Or use one of the other options: Safari, Camino, iCab, or Omniweb. Probably some others that I've missed.
It's interesting these folks don't have any apparent problem with supporting 10.4.
Tweet, tweet.
Its open source. You're more than welcome to branch it and maintain a 'security fix only' release for yourself and share that with others.
The problem is, no one wants to do that. They'd rather just use the new version since everyone capable of doing that has newer hardware anyway so it doesn't effect them.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The iPhone runs OS X, just like your Mac.
And how many of you OS9/Classic Mac apps ran on your Vista box?
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
My point is that since neither OS could run the apps I wanted to (Classic apps), and since OS X usability is now on the same level as Vista usability, I might as well use Vista if only so I have so many more apps (and games) available to me. The logic here isn't difficult...
Comment of the year
First of all, I'm still running 10.4 just because it works perfectly fine for me, I've got everything installed and running, and I don't want to pay for an upgrade only because I've got to have the latest version. Since Leopard came out, I've only found a handful of apps that I couldn't run, but I've always found an alternative (either an older version or a similar app). Therefore, I don't feel compelled at all to upgrade: my machine works well, it is still very responsive, and the apps available are more than enough. My only concern is the Java version included, but I've managed to stay clear of 1.6 compatibility issues.
I've always used Firefox in my Mac Book Pro, and with the few upgrades that caused problems I noticed that problems never lasted for more than a couple of weeks, until a new update solved everything. In that regard I'm very happy with Firefox's development team.
I did some quick research and I found two sources of information about the usage of Tiger as of 2010. One comes from Adium, the other from something called The Panic Blog. As you can see, the percentage of people still running Tiger is close to 10 percent in both cases. It is a pity that there is no information available about how many Firefox users on Mac are still using Tiger.
Adium report: http://adium.im/sparkle/?year=2010&week=05&graph=bar
The Panic Blog report: http://www.panic.com/blog/2009/12/mac-os-x-stats-12-2009/
If she's got a Core2Duo laptop, get her the Mac Box Set for a present. It will be like getting a brand new computer. Even if all she does is use a web browser, it will run so much better under Snow Leopard than it does under Tiger that it's not even funny.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
More and more projects are starting to drop support for v10.4. I don't want to switch to Leopard because Tiger works fine. I feel that spending my money on an upgrade is just not worth it. When the time comes that the majority of Mac OS X apps would no longer work on v10.4, I'll just reformat my MacBook and replace its OS with FreeBSD.
It's only like seven years old. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
And how many of you OS9/Classic Mac apps ran on your Vista box?
A better analogy would be "how many of your Windows 3.0 apps ran on your Vista box?" Or you could even go as far forward as Windows 98 and it'd still be a reasonable comparison - twelve years in the past for Windows, twelve years in the past for Mac. I think Windows would do pretty well at that test. The Mac platform has gone through two serious upheavals in that time, so I think the fact that it fails is at least understandable - but it also tends to make me frustrated in terms of actually using the platform. :)
Going the other way (which is what my post was about) I think Windows would still do pretty well. Taking today's apps on systems from six years ago: How many Windows apps these days don't run on XP?
Realistically I think Linux doesn't rate too well in terms of forward and backward compatibility either. Changes to the libraries are probably the big problem there. But the updates are free and the distro makes 'em easy, so I don't mind as much usually. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
Getting Snow Leopard for $29 while running Tiger is not a valid upgrade path according to Apple. The $29 version of SL is only allowed to be used to upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard. Users of Tiger should buy the Mac Box Set for $169, including iWork and iLife 09.
Not that the installer complains, it'll install on every hard drive inside a Mac, with Tiger, Leopard, Windows or nothing on it, without checking for any previous versions.
How hard is it to just keep up on security patches for old browsers?
It's not a question of being "hard" or not - maintaining another platform/configuration simply takes time and resources. As I understand, on top of that there was a big deprecation of API calls moving from 10.4, so they also need specialized people that know their way around and systems that have 10.4 installed ready for testing.
When a user reports a problem on 10.4, someone has to spend a day trying to reproduce it and find its way through old code ...
Build breaks because of old forgotten code made for 10.4 ...
At this point it's purely a business decision - keeping support for 10.4 adds the need for X extra developers and delays releases for Y days. Is it worth the cost?
Mozilla offers Firefox 3.6 on Tiger too.
The question is what Firefox whatever-the-next-version-is will be offered on, and the right comparison there is to Safari 5. Which will be offered.... somewhere. Who knows where.
Why are browser security updates such a big deal to you when you're running an OS that hasn't gotten any in ages?
I thought he had some kind of uncontrollable sex addiction. Now I see he's just been turned out to stud.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your friends did not buy 'new' Macbooks running 10.4 in 2008. They shipped with 10.5 at that time, and if not, they'd be eligible for a $10 upgrade disk. Apple brought out Tiger in April 2005. And Leopard came out in October 2007.
Go with Leopard if you can. You may have your upgrade path ended there, but it will be supported for a long time.
But if you ask about whether Firefox should feel more like a "native" Mac app, you'd get a lot of Mac faithful saying "ditch Tiger if that's standing in the way".
How about "replace all that XUL [expletive] with the Camino shell"?
I wouldn't be using FF at all, except that there's a problem with proxy URL handling that's worse in Camino than Firefox.
OSX 10.0 - released March 2001. Unsupported since the release of 10.2 in August 2002.
Windows XP - released October 2001. Can't buy it in the shops anymore but it's still supported.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle
On April 8, 2014, all Windows XP support, including security updates and security-related hotfixes will be terminated.
Now wash your hands.
A shame. I know people who bought nice new Macbooks running 10.4 in 2008
No you don't. OS X 10.5 was released in October 2007. Any new Macbook bought in 2008 would have shipped with it.
As of now, 10.5 is nearly two and a half years old. By the time Firefox 3.6 stops getting patched, (end of 2011?) it will be about four years old.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
the evil bit was set to "0"
Yea, the 9x series of Windows is very different from the NT series. It is just that it happened that the last release in the 9x series (Me) was released after NT 5.0 (Win2000) was released, thus Win2000 had none of Me's features. It was XP that finally stopped development of 9x series and merge most of the feature of the last release into the NT series, and split the server editions into a separate line.
You mean the kind who are shackled to a desk 9-5 with a strict 30 minute lunch break, and get kicks out of really awesome spreadsheets? You can keep your "real coffee" and your fucking suit, I'll stick to working a job that is flexible around me, not the other way around.
Yea, kind of off-topic to discuss this here.
I don't think I ever saw any of his ads for Firefox though.
not a big fan but KDE shipped with the latest Ubuntu is pretty stable. Lots of stuff I don't need but it has been rock stable over the last month for me.
The nursery rhyme above is actually an old racist saying from our dead brothers in the Southeastern United States. It is about searching out and recapturing escaped slaves.
No, it's not. For one thing, it's an ip dip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_dip
NeXTstep used the PostScript model for the display and called it "Display PostScript". I'm aware that Mac OS X uses a model based closely on PDF for screen display and called it Quartz. But can you give a reliable source that Apple actually called Quartz "Display PDF", or is "Display PDF" just a nickname given by NeXT fans familiar with Display PostScript? The closest thing I can find when using Google to search Apple.com for the phrase "display pdf" is PDF Kit, a control used to display a PDF document.
who bought nice new Macbooks running 10.4 in 2008
Not bloody likely, since Leopard came out in October 2007.
Well, if you must have the latest possible Firefox while keeping the oldest possible hardware, you could just run Linux on your 6-year-old iBook. Nobody's putting a gun to your head to make you use a certain OS. But I can't imagine it's much fun to browse the web with it. I would assume flash slaughters it. But then again you're using Firefox so maybe if you tricked it out with all kinds of ad and flash blocking it would be useful-ish. As long as you stayed away from too many DOM-manipulating fancy webapps.
I have plenty of respect for older computers (I was sad when my little 12" PowerBook G4 finally died last year) but honestly I'd much rather Mozilla spends their resources making new features and improving performance for the 90% than catering to the 10% who are too cheap (no offense--i'm just sayin') to buy new hardware (or even OS) more than once per decade. This is the fourth laptop I've had since yours was new, and I'm far, far, far from rich. I find that keeping up to date with hardware improves my experience and helps me get things done faster. YMMV.
I feel that spending my money on an upgrade is just not worth it. When the time comes that the majority of Mac OS X apps would no longer work on v10.4, I'll just reformat my MacBook and replace its OS with FreeBSD.
Time is money. Don't you place any value on your own time? Surely it takes a few hours to do a full backup, install a new OS, find replacements for apps you had on your old OS, fix any driver issues that come up...Really, after all that time, you think you'll come out ahead? When you could just buy Snow for like $40, pop it in, do an upgrade (1 hour max and it's primarily unattended time), and suddenly all your apps work and get upgrades again, and your hardware is still fully supported? I get your "if it ain't broke" argument but you're basically saying "It ain't broke, except for the fact that less and less software works for it these days." Well what else is the OS there for but to run software, right?
I'm not trying to be a fanboy about it, I would caution you of the same thing if you were thinking of blowing away a BSD environment you'd used for 4 years to put on OS X. Perhaps at least give it a shot. Why not download an ISO of Snow, spend the few minutes doing an upgrade, and if you like it you won't have reservations buying it. If you hate it then go ahead and wipe it out and go for FreeBSD and you're not out any money or any serious time.