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Mozilla Puts Tiger Out To Pasture

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-a-new-kitty dept.

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."

6 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, I don't undersand this... by Cowclops · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Wait, I don't undersand this... by carlhaagen · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple moves at a completely different pace when it comes to updates and reworking their OS, compared to Microsoft. The PPC part is just one bit, but Leopard does run on PPC machines, so Firefox will still contain both PPC and x86 code for the OS X version. The problem is more that there were a lot of favorable improvements taking place in 10.5 almost coercing developers to make use of them, combined with lots of API-level stuff from the 10.4 selection going deprecated.

  2. How can I upgrade? by The+Flymaster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:How can I upgrade? by jimicus · · Score: 5, Informative

      I called up my local Apple store with exactly this question. They said "Come in and buy a retail copy of 10.6, we'll burn you a disc with 10.5 on".

      YMMV.

  3. Re:Good decision. by Albanach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's foolish to continue supporting obsolete platforms until the end of time

    And as many posts above demonstrate, 10.4 is hardly obsolete, having come installed on new Macs purchased two and a half years ago. The official upgrade cost is around $100. 17% of the cost of a new Mac Mini.

    So the operating system is in wide use by people faced with a pretty substantial upgrade cost.

  4. Re:Nooo ! by Mr.+Pibb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's exactly this issue that pisses me off about Apple. While your typical /.er might be on a 1-3 year upgrade cycle, a lot of people (ie older parents/grandparents) buy a Mac because it's "easier" and are more inclined to be on a 5-10 year cycle. Their machines serve them well and do what they need--WP, email and web. Speed is NOT an issue when you're reading the news online or writing your Xmas letter. As far as my mom is concerned, there is no difference between the versions of OS X-- and why new versions of Firefox won't run anymore will baffle her.

    Yes, Apple is trying to be revolutionary and keep themselves at the forefront of technology, as well as maintain a manageable codebase. But this has been coming at the expense of (prematurely) obsoleting still-good hardware in the hands of a market that Apple has decided to ignore.