Slashdot Mirror
OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) Won't Support Some 64-bit Macs With Older GPUs
MojoKid writes "Apple is pitching Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) as the cat's meow, with over 200 new features 'that add up to an amazing Mac experience' — but that only applies if you're rocking a compatible system. Some older Mac models, including ones that are 64-bit capable, aren't invited to the Mountain Lion party, and it's likely because of the GPU. It's being reported (unofficially) that an updated graphics architecture intended to smooth out performance in OS X's graphics subsystem is the underlying issue. It's no coincidence, then, that the unsupported GPUs happen to be ones that were fairly common back before 64-bit support became mainstream."
10.7 dropped support my 1st gen $2000 MacBook Pro, which otherwise still runs perfectly (but with only 10.6).
Apple's hardware isn't just pricey, but they like you to buy new hardware on a regular basis.
First Post because my graphics card is awesome!
With a first gen macbook pro I think your due for a new laptop......3-5 years is my max of keeping them around.
It appears that any Mac purchased within the last 3.5 years is ok, judging by the list on that site. I'd say that it's not too horrifying that a computer 4 years old may not run the latest upcoming system. It's a tough balancing act deciding between supporting older equipment, but nobody should be surprised that Apple only looks forward in that regard. That's how they've always been.
so what's the news?
I've always been baffled at people buying Mac, hardware to me it's a bit like console gaming, which also baffles me these days, as it's got all the hassles PC gaming has these days with none of the flexibility.
I wonder if anybody dreamed it would be this successful.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
At watching all those experiencing nerd rage that Microsoft is ending XP support after a mere 14 years, and how they are so angry at Microsoft they are going to buy a Mac next rather than upgrade to Windows 7. Then we read stuff like this.
Only a little nerd rage here on slashdot from XP loyalists, but wired.com and CIO magazine's website was filled with them and they were somewhat serious about using a Mac next to avoid planned obscelence in their minds.
http://saveie6.com/
...scrapes by.
That's reedonkulous.
Unmitigated success for Apple has been bad for us.
Loading...
I've always been baffled at people buying Mac, hardware to me it's a bit like console gaming, which also baffles me these days, as it's got all the hassles PC gaming has these days with none of the flexibility.
Really? Last I heard console gaming had no configuration issues, drivers, etc which a PC does..
Holy upgrades Batman!
If they make the next version of X-Code support only Mountain Lion like they made the current version only support Lion - I'm going to scream! Because my clients wanted to support features of the latest iOS, I had to upgrade to a new Mac because my older model couldn't run Lion - which is required for the latest X-Code.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I too own a 1st gen MacBook Pro that doesn't run 10.7 either.
That's perfectly fine because IT'S A 6 YEAR OLD MACHINE.
In computing years, that's an eternity.
You mean Apple is forcing people to buy their hardware again to update their software?
I, for one, am totally shocked at this completely unexpected turn of events.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Maybe you won't be able to run the OS, but it'll still be a long time before apps require 10.8. My 5 year old MBP (late 07) is supported. 5 Years isn't exactly bad. Had the 8600m GPU not burned itself out just after the warranty period, i'd probably still be using the thing.
Why is that so? Should I also sell my MGA for scrap because it was made in 1956?
hmm I guess all those reports of certain games not working correctly if you had a different (older) hardware revision of the console were just false then and that no such thing ever happened.
I've always been baffled by people who think that spending the lowest amount of money on the initial purchase automatically means a lower overall cost.
Mountain Lion apparently doesn't play nice with 32-bit GPU drivers, and while Apple could spend time and resources bringing older models up to par, the Cupertino company decided it was better off dropping support altogether.
If this were a true hardware limitation, it would still be bad. But not wanting to update drivers? While you are sitting on $100 billion cash? How many driver writers do you need for the limited selection of tightly controlled hardware?
Ugh.
With a first gen macbook pro I think your due for a new laptop......3-5 years is my max of keeping them around.
Well, maybe, but Apple fans often triumph how their laptops last for 5+ years, so for Apple to drop support like this is a bit of a smack in the face.
(Yes, I hate Apple, I fully admit it).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
...scrapes by.
My $2200 4.5-year old Mac Pro scrapes by handily. Why did you spend $6000 on a computer again?
Not anymore. A 6 year old machine might not be able to run the latest games, but it can run the latest Windows or Linux OS, the latest work processing and productivity software, and the latest browsers. I have a 2006 Core 2 machine with 4 GB RAM and a nice big harddrive in it. It runs Ubuntu 12.04, Windows 7, and Windows 8, runs Office 2010, runs Google Chrome and Opera 12.... this is a machine that does what most people need it to. This is very different from say 1996, where a computer from 1990 was laughable.
But we're not even talking about 6 year old machines here; where talking about machines you might have bought in 2008/2009. That's 3-4 years old! I have a quad core machine that old that can even run some of the latest games at decent resolution and FPS, and of course runs the latest Windows and Linux OS. It's unacceptable that a 3 year old mac could not run the latest Mac OS.
My Xbox 360 is 6 years old and I have no problems running 2012 games.
In before the haters, just think back to the release of Vista and signed vs. unsigned drivers. In this case, we're talking about drawing a very clear line between four year old Mac hardware which will not be supported, and everything else, which will be fully supported. There is no gray area.
Now think back to the debut of mandatory driver signing with Windows Vista - where individual components in your computer would cease to function after an upgrade for no reason other than Microsoft wanted your manufacturer to pay extra for the privilege. Even worse, there really was no way to know before the upgrade if your system would function entirely. At least Apple's upgrade paths are clearly defined, and always have been - from Classic to OS X, PowerPC to Intel, and now Lion to Mountain Lion. You knew what you were getting into when you bought the Mac, and that's a very rigid upgrade cycle of roughly three years (right after your warranty expires) if you want to remain on the bleeding edge.
Is there any company that doesn't like you to buy their product as frequently as possible?
Every time they update the OS they claim to have added hundreds of new "features." Most are useless crap, and the good ones are quickly orphaned.
Huh? I have a 2000 laptop with P4, 1 Gig RAM, loads and runs Fedora perfectly
YOUR max.
3.5 years is not a horrendously long time. Hell, 3.5 years ago (2009), they were using 1.83 - 2.0 ghz processors and 512mb-1gb ram in the macbook pro. That's not slow...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
And this is why Mac OSX doesn't cost just $19.99. If you bought a Mac in 2011, you've already subsidized your purchase of OSX Mountain Lion you'll buy later in the year. Problem is, if you bought a Mac in 2008, you've already used up your copies of OSX, so you don't get to buy Mountain Lion at $19.99. Apple's decided you need to buy a new Mac to subsidize the next 4 versions of OSX, which you'll be free to buy for $19.99 of course. Until 2016 of course when the process starts over again.
hmm I guess all those reports of certain games not working correctly if you had a different (older) hardware revision of the console were just false then and that no such thing ever happened.
Would love to see a citation on this claim....
It isn't just the graphics card, you need a a Mac with a 64-bit EFI (Ars Technica article has more detail at the bottom).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
If you game on your dad's computer, than you're right.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
As a software company, it's in Microsoft's best interest to prevent "new hardware" from being a barrier to entry for buying their software. (Remember the "Vista Capable" mess?)
As a hardware company, Apple mostly uses their software to try to entice you into buying new hardware.
What do you mean huh? That's exactly my point. Even a 12 year old system can run a modern OS just fine.
I just recently replaced mine because the plastic case was decaying beneath where my hands rested; loving the aluminum.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I stuck a much more modern GPU into my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1, but I bet the 32-bit firmware won't be supported by Mountain Lion anyway. A pox on them all. For the first time I'm seriously considering gutting a Windoze box I don't use any more and turning it into a Hackintosh. Anything future editions of OS X don't like about THAT box, I can upgrade away from piecemeal. Including the mobo.
older Mac Pro with EFI 32 bit likely locked out as well. And the flash is to small to take EFI 64.
Now they have 64 bit cpus and can run 64bit code as well windows 64 so why can't apple work around that?
I happily work some days on a 2006 ThinkPad T60. The 2GB memory limit is the only part that really limits its ability to function as a basic business laptop. MacBook Pro models from 2006 with 2GB of memory are equally fine for routine work, just can't have too many applications running at once.
I have a macpro1,1 with 8 cores(clovertown), 16 gigs ram, and the current 2011 ATI video card.
Yes I have had the machine for 6 years and I could upgrade. But the current hardware is not that much of a performance upgrade for the cost.
Xeon based systems of this generation like the Dell 2900, 1950, are still a viable system and still well supported and will be for years into the future.
Apple decided to stop supporting this machine a few years back by not allowing it to run a 64 bit kernel with the lame excuse that a 32bit boot loader can not boot a 64 bit os.
Solution that works great.
Hackintosh your machintosh.
Install cameleon and boot the mac in legacy mode as a hackintosh. With Snow Leopard, the machine runs the 64 bit kernel and is noticeably faster. There is no reason that Mountain Lion will not work well also since the macpro1,1 is the same hardware as the 2,1 and most of the 3,1.
By doing this you can now run any video card that you want and still maintain a legal right to use the software.
I was starting to decide on upgrading to a current mac pro, but to be honest, there is no reason to drop that kind of change on a machine that Apple will drop within a 5 year period.
I agree, though my Macbook C2D will not be supported.
Apple has become hooked on planned obsolescence via the iPod, and more so with the iPhone, to the point where they are now worse than Microsoft and their clonemaker army. At this point I would be open to something laptop-centric based on Android.
You might have heard people complaining about long load times. I have an old Xbox from 2006, so old it doesn't even have an HDMI port. It doesn't have internal storage so I can't pre-load a game onto the harddrive, and some games like Skyrim have unbearable load times between zones. Newer revision consoles allow you to load all that data locally, so you're not reading if off disk. But the fact is I can still play the game just fine once it's done loading.
I've just dropped a 256gb SSD in a thinkpad from 2006. The thing runs better than when it was brand new and it runs considerably cooler and quieter. It's for development and non-gaming entertainment so even if is no doubt lacking in the gaming department that doesn't matter.
I intended to keep my macbook until it falls apart or the battery dies. There's no need to buy new hardware just for the sake of it if you don't need it. Unless you buy rubbish low-end Dells or Acers which then you'll be lucky to get 3 years out of it.
They are far happier to cut off old things and don't provide the same sort of legacy support that Windows does. In many ways that's a good thing but it's also unforunate because actually the hardware lasts for quite sometime so buying a new machine can feel a bit forced.
Who knows, someone may find a way around that. It could be that your machine will support it but it's not ideal so they refuse to support it properly but it'll work.
3 years ago was 2009, and that was the second generation Macbook which has 2.66 ghz or a 2.8 ghz processor with 2-4 gb ram.
Judging by your price, you went with the higher of the chip & ram.
I bought mine for $1,100 and have a 2.8 ghz processor and 4 gb ram, this year.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The hardware is still 64bit and idential to current models other than the Intel chipset jumps for smaller ICs. This isn't moving from one arch to a new one, it's still generic Intel with Apple's own proprietary crap thrown on top to ensure you still have to buy your cards (and even harddrives in some cases) from Apple only.
Do you really believe a quad core xeon with standard Nvidia GPU is "old"? Because that's what Apple is doing here.
Not really. They don't do legacy support on the scale Microsoft does and I suspect the benefit outweights the hassle of supporting the older hardware. That sucks but that doesn't instantly make the machine unseble and even if someone doesn't want to use an outdated version of OS X for years then put Linux on it or, if you're not very bright, Windows.
Mountain Lion kernel is 64-bit only, and requires 64-bit EFI firmware. Older systems have 32-bit EFI. Unofficial Chameleon EFI emulator can run 64-bit EFI on some older systems.
The DMA channels of the Super NES can run in manual mode or in an automatic mode called "HDMA". Manual mode acts like a hardware accelerated memcpy and is essentially identical to the "Blast Processing" of the Sega Genesis. HDMA restarts at the end of each scanline and is useful for fancy 3D-like scrolling effects. But the first Super NES consoles shipped with a defective CPU that would freeze if a manual DMA finishes right before an HDMA starts. (These older consoles show version 1/1/1 in The Lion King and PowerPak instead of the more common 2/1/3.) I seem to remember one of the three versions of Street Fighter II for Super NES triggering this bug and needing to be recalled.
He is right and there was an offer to replace units so while it sucks you get a new xbox out of it. Between RROD and all the other issues I'm sure MS has given away more hardware than anyone else.
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/18/new-xbox-360-update-incompatible-with-some-models-ms-offering-r/2
Now they have 64 bit cpus and can run 64bit code as well windows 64 so why can't apple work around that?
Because they want you to buy new hardware.
There's a non-trivial amount of hardware that just plain didn't get drivers when the driver model changed between XP and Vista/7. I know I've got an external sound card and a printer that I had to replace.
In this case it was the graphics card. That sucks and all, but what the hell is Apple supposed to do about it?
You are right. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/18/new-xbox-360-update-incompatible-with-some-models-ms-offering-r/2 and there is this list of problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems
That said it's down more to rushed / cost cutting hardware design for most of their problems so even if the system were more open it wouldn't really have helped.
As a software company, it's in Microsoft's best interest to prevent "new hardware" from being a barrier to entry for buying their software.
That's because you are not really Microsoft's customer. Relatively few of us actually buy any version of Windows directly from Microsoft. Mostly it is purchased through OEMs. You are not Microsoft's customer. HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, etc are Microsoft's customers. They sell a license to them and those companies resell it to you. The result is that Microsoft has a hard time paying attention to their users and it shows in the experience of using their products.
As a hardware company, Apple mostly uses their software to try to entice you into buying new hardware.
Actually Apple is fundamentally a software company. Nobody buys a Macintosh because of the hardware. Load Windows on Mac Hardware and without seeing the Apple badge on it you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between an Apple PC and a Dell PC. Sure the hardware is nice and given the price charged it darn well better be. No, the difference comes in the software. You buy Apple hardware to get Apple software. They make their money by bundling the two. Same with the iPhone, iPod and iPad. You can get similar hardware for similar or lesser prices. People might like the iPad or iPhone but if you loaded Android on them there is nothing to differentiate them. People buy the iPhone and iPad for the software when all is said and done. The design and branding is just extra.
Mac Pro != Macbook
Really? You're complaining that a 6 year old computer isn't up to running modern stuff? Really?
Seriously, if you're that concerned about having to buy new machines, sell it after 3 years. Pour $2000 MacBook Pro would almost certainly have fetched $16-1800, and you'd have got a new one, capable of running more modern OSes for effectively $2-400.
Twenty years ago I was the greatest Mac bigot of them all.
Now, why buy Mountain Lion anyway? Lion had exactly one feature (resize windows from any edge) I wanted; the rest I've either turned off (Retard-a-scroll) or ignored (iCloud, software store, social media junk.) Mountain Lion looks like the lobotomized twin of Windows 8.
(I call it retard-a-scroll, but it's actually a good idea, if I hadn't spent all those years getting used to the opposite. What could they have been thinking?)
I never enjoyed programming OS X as much as I did Classic, and now I think that last contract really will be the last. I looked at the new Retina MBP at the Apple store the other day and it didn't impress me much more than a similar Samsung at the MS store (for a third less $) Big selling point: both run the current OS, no being limited by the next.
First gen MBPs are 6+ years old... so fans can still brag about the 5+ year life...
Math is hard.
also the ati / nvidia cards are not that differnt from other ati / nvidia and on the windows side they have 64bit drivers for all the video chips found in macs.
6 years old? How often do you use it, once a month? The oldest one that my friends have is 3 years old.
Depends on what you use it for. The current generation is more than twice as fast. If you get work done on it and the speed makes you more productive, it's beyond the time when an upgrade will likely pay for itself. If it isn't, then you'd probably be better off with something cheaper in the first place.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
3 or 4 nights a week for about 45 minutes each time, after the wife and kids go to sleep. So it still sees pretty regular use.
If you are uncertain of the date from which your Mac was produced, I suggest the CoconutID freeware.
It ID's your MacBook (or other model) and pegs the manufacture date within a few days of precision. Clever - it can also perform a lookup and see if a Mac with your ID has ever been reported as stolen. Interesting, for some eBayer's. ;-)
If you ARE on and Mac portable, look at their Coconut Battery app, at the same location. Great for managing battery age, charge history and cycles. It got me free replacement batteries at the Apple Store, on two different machines/occasions. I haven't ever managed that with Sony or Lenovo...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Oracle likes you to buy their products just once. It's only the paying thing that they want you to do as frequently as possible.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
ok I can buy my own hardware and hack mac os on it or just go windows 7.
but the mac pro is a no go right now 2010 hardware and video card at the same 2010 price.
The problem is that most OS X upgrades contain a number of usability regressions and half a dozen really useful features. It's always (well, except with 10.6) a bit difficult to decide whether the benefits outweigh the pain.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
was no compatibility issues.
For most people the speed difference between these machines will not make any practical difference, since they just create documents, browse the web, and read emails on it. The days in which Macs where exclusively almost used for video/graphic/audio/science editing are long gone. They are now just shiny consumer machines. If you need a true powerhorse, you get a Linux box, and you control it remotely.
You can run Mountain Lion on your 4.5 year old Mac Pro?
When we bought this OSX box we needed a lot o' cores and memory because the box was replacing several dell servers in a rack we wanted to be rid of (we use the monster mac to run a lot of virtualization environments and it is much simpler to debug on one physical machine in this fashion.) We did this with a Mac Pro instead of a WinTel box because it killed several birds with one stone (testing our .mono codebase under stress on OSX, Linux, Win 7, and WS2008.)
Loading...
Ummmm....different people like different things?
Just because you don't like Macs doesn't mean I can't like Macs.
I'm baffled at all the people that stuck with Windows in its various stages of shit. With one exception it NEVER got stable until Windows 7 and that exception is Windows XP with the service packs.
This is a dual hex core, 24 hardware thread, 26GB monster machine running OpenSUSE, OSX, Win7, and WS2008.
Loading...
If it was the GPU then MacPro users could buy a new GPU an be good but since the problem is the older Macs have 32-bit EFIs Apple decided it's easier to make them obsolete. Netkas.org has a workaround and has gotten the 2006 MacPro 1,1 working with OSX 10.8. I'll probably migrate from OSX to Linux when I can't do what I need to do with my MacPro...where's the "guy waving fist angrily in the air at Apple" emoticon?
I bought a MacBook for the HARDWARE. It mostly runs Linux
Well played Sir!
However I have to ask... "Mostly runs Linux"? What else might you be hiding on that hard drive? Hmmm... I suppose it doesn't matter. Run along and play with the 3 other people who traded in OS X for Linux on a Mac.
I wanted to buy a Mac tower when the G5s were popular but heard rumors of Intel MacPros coming out August 2006. I waited to buy that "late model" MacPro and loved it until Apple me with a lack of GPUs and me with no OSX 10.8 compatibility due to laziness. Now when It's time to buy a new computer I will not be buying Apple...I'll get something else and they can go themselves. Great computer and OS but crappy support.
says who? there's no reason for this arbitrary lockout.. the gpus can handle it. apple is just choosing not to ship the driver. it's assinine.
When moving from XP to Win7/64 I noted that there were no 64-bit drivers for my shitty philips webcam.
The OS still installed. The computer still worked. The webcam was cheaply and easily replaced with another slightly less shitty one.
The difference is that Apple is yet again telling their customers "FUCK YOU!"
Win7 runs on 1ghz Pentium 3's for christ sakes (released in 1999)
"His name was James Damore."
And if you're using it in a business environment, it should be fully depreciated by now.
Further, 10.7 should run just fine for a number of years - it doesn't self destruct when 10.8 roles around.
And further further, anyone up upgrades at 10.8.0 is either insane, hopelessly naive, or into BDSM. Never, ever run an Apple OS until it gets to the .3 revision. So you have some time to ignore the issue and just keep working.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you're still doing the work you were doing three years ago, chances are that all your software got faster (example: browsers are) and your old computer is better now that it was out of the box. My almost 6 years old linux laptop is faster now than it was in 2006: faster browsers, faster application servers, faster file system. I doubled the RAM and swapped an 80 GB disk for a 500 GB one. Luckily I could service it myself. That said, I know that I could buy a faster laptop nowadays but probably with a worse screen: I got a 1680x1050 16:10 one, much better than the 1600x900 ones that are considered top notch in the PC world today. So I'll stick to my old one until it will be no more adequate for my job or it falls apart. And just in case one's wondering about it, an OSX machine is not an option for me (very bad GUI IMHO so maybe I'm not at home in this thread).
it's artificial and not due to hardware limitations. this is different than expecting not existent functionality.
My Xbox '07 just stopped working (dvd-rom drive failed). Not every single xbox 360 was/is defective.
What pisses me off is that, even if I had the cash to update my Mac Pro, firstly I don't want to, it's still a great machine and secondly, there are no new Mac Pros available anyway.
Yeah, the Mac Pro issue is pretty annoying. I have a 3,1 from 2008. It's had memory and hard drive updates and is within 30% of the speed of a new Mac Pro. It's also a pretty expensive machine. Now, I can update my graphics card and I should be 10.8 capable, but earlier versions like the 3,0 machines - which are just as fast - won't be upgradable.
So, you decide to bite the bullet and get a new Mac Pro - then you realize that they've barely been upgraded in the past 6 years and you wonder why you'd want to drop top dollar on that old of a design.
Makes you feel unloved, it does.
If Windows 7 didn't just completely annoy me, I might go back to Redmond. Except that Windows 7 is going to be the old version pretty soon and I just can't handle the Metro Interface.
Grrrr. This Photoshop addiction can get ugly.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This is a known issue with these laptops (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377) and apple may very well be willing to replace the logic board for you for free. I recently took in an early 2008 macbook pro with this exact same problem and they replaced the logic board for free within 3 days. I never even had the extended warranty. Best of luck.
I bought my Dell laptop in 2006. Guess what? It is Windows 8 compatible & I'll be getting it.
argument from antiquity.. there's no reason the machine can't run the new os. it's artificially restricted.
ARTIFICIAL_LOCKOUT != FUNCTIONAL_LIMITATION
why are so many people demanding we throw away perfectly good hardware that can run the software, yet are locked out by the OEM? if a dell pulled this, people here would be bitching, but since it's apple, they get a free pass?
Windows 8 compatible yes, capable of running Windows 8 at a usable speed? Not f**king likely.
This is a known issue with these laptops (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377) and apple may very well be willing to replace the logic board for you for free. I recently took in an early 2008 macbook pro with this exact same problem and they replaced the logic board for free within 3 days. I never even had the extended warranty. Best of luck.
I had this happen to me, took it in, and they replaced it for free I was waaaay out of warranty. 100% covered. That's customer service, IMO.
You bought the upgrades from Apple? Blame no one but yourself.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ahhh, maintenance.
If you are complaining:
What are you complaining about? You bought into the OSX way. You are not buying a computer. You are paying for the use of a Mac. Keep paying and they will make you happy with better machines and better software.
If you are not willing to keep paying: that is fine too. You have a great piece of hardware and it will run Linux or even Windows well. Bully for you. At least it's a mainstream intel machine. Don't expect Apple to lift a finger for you.
Most business environments I have seen still use 2004 era hardware with IE 6 half upgraded to IE 8 and XP stil with 512 megs of ram with no plans to trash them until 2014.
Running FF 3.6 under these contraints is quite fun ... before Mozilla tackled the ram issue in more modern releases.
http://saveie6.com/
Coffin makers. Generally a one time purchase aside from stage props.
Really? You're complaining that a 6 year old computer isn't up to running modern stuff? Really?
Yes.
My 4.5 year old netbook is 100% up to date on the latest Arch and still runs everything. It's beginning to be a little slow, but it still runs things. It's also the spec of a new, high end machine from abuout 11 years ago.
10 years ago, the idea of a computer lasting 10 years was stupid. 10 years later, it turns out that they could.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
With a first gen macbook pro I think your due for a new laptop......3-5 years is my max of keeping them around.
Speak for yourself. My Mac Plus is still kicking. Though my frame rate in Starcraft 2 leaves something to be desired.
You are right. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/18/new-xbox-360-update-incompatible-with-some-models-ms-offering-r/2
From the link:
Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs. This issue manifests itself as a unique 'disc unreadable' or 'disc unsupported' error on the screen and is unrelated to our recent public beta. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox LIVE and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console.
Not that it's something I would expect but I don't see Apple reaching out to its customers to replace older unsupported Macs from 2006+ with new ones. Again, not saying they should or would be expected to do that, just that this situation with the XBox is clearly not analogous.
My six year old MacBook Pro 15 runs 10.7 (lion).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
1) Stick with Snow Leopard. AFAICT, Lion and Mountain Lion updates are mostly fluff. 2) Install Linux on it. I dual booted my iMac (2008 vintage) and Linux is noticeably faster than OSX. There are even desktop themes you can download that will make it look a lot like OSX if that is your preference. Plus, everything worked flawlessly - wireless, bluetooth, webcam, sound...everything. 3) Turn it into a Hackintosh (other posts have detailed that). 4) Load Windows 7 on it (ohhh...the humanity!!!). Don't laugh....W7 runs great on a Macbook. 5) If you've absolutely, positively got to have Mountain Lion then sell your machine on eBay and take the cash and put it towards a new Macbook. Or even one that's just a year or two old. I've got a 2008 iMac and the two real limitations to it are memory (4GB max, well 6GB actually but I can't find a 4GB DDR2 stick anywhere) and upgrading the hard drive. I wanted to put in an SSD but trying to do that on an iMac is a nightmare. Having said that it works fine for day to day work. Most of the time I'm firing up Remote Desktop to a Windows server and doing my dev work there. The Windows box is doing all the heavy lifting. The screen is still fantastic and it's never been in for repair.
I have a 5yo Vaio that is perfectly capable of running Ubuntu with XP and Win7 VMs (for testing websites in IE7-9).
My (web designer) colleague has a 5yo Mac that he can't even run any 2yo browsers on NATIVELY!?!
Because we buy them and not lease them. Only rich people with supperior credit can lease anyway and the bottom 80% of us have to buy. Leasing is a terrible deal too unless you are filthy rich and do not care about money.
XP users are moaning if you go to places like www.wired.com and forbes.com thinking they are entitled to keep their 8 year pcs working with comments like "...I get to decide to leave Xp thank you very much! ..". You do not throw out your fridge after 10 years it still works?
Macs are an expensive investment so it should be logical to expect more life out of them. Apple is getting greedy and will push users away with this as it forgets about the customers needs too. In a perfect economy both the customer and the seller reach an equilibrium that satisfies both their needs in a compromise. Apple is taking the ball and telling them to go home.
http://saveie6.com/
People lease cars for 3 years a ...
So WHY do people FREAK out w
Possibly because there's more than one "people" in the entire world.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yeah, and how many Wintel machines bought in 2006 (first Gen Macbook Pro guessing the date) can run ANYTHING.
Core2Duo E6600 + 4GB RAM + 8800GTX SLi, runs the latest AAA titles like Diablo 3 perfectly.
Maybe you won't be able to run the OS, but it'll still be a long time before apps require 10.8.
That wasn't true for the upgrades from 10.2 through 10.5, it was always a very short time before apps required the new revision. I haven't touched base with Apple in some time because though I was turned into a Newt once I got better, so I have to ask, have things actually changed since, or are you just making things up?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My Xbox '07 just stopped working (dvd-rom drive failed). Not every single xbox 360 was/is defective.
and that's not even permanent! you can still replace the optical drive, and it's not horribly difficult nor does it require exotic tools, although a cheap (sub-$5) case cracker tool DOES make it significantly easier. You can replace the drive for twenty or thirty bucks and maybe an hour's time if you have to do a PCB swap... I know, because I've done this. I have a very old 360 as well, which I bought used.
With that said, I bought a used unit on the premise that I would be less likely to encounter the RROD, and so far it seems to have paid off... But the average user probably wouldn't be able to replace the optical drive at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have an old Xbox from 2006, so old it doesn't even have an HDMI port. It doesn't have internal storage so I can't pre-load a game onto the harddrive
But uh, can't you just snap a hard disk onto the side/top of it like everyone else? And it's not like HDMI buys you any functionality, except being able to use an HDMI cable. You can still get the same quality of video into your TV, given the right cable and the right free ports.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can install pretty much anything that's available for *nix on my mac, and those things generally install with minimal hassle. And I get the OS X front end when I want it, and I can run most Windows-only things (including stuff that uses external data acq hardware) using Parallels. All in an easily carried and reasonably tough laptop. The optical drives do tend to die young though-- I think I've had to replace the optical drive in most of the powerbooks/macbooks that I've had over the years, as well as for a few other people.
10.7 dropped support my 1st gen $2000 MacBook Pro, which otherwise still runs perfectly (but with only 10.6).
For about ten years, I've told people to figure on spending $1K/yr on an Apple laptop. That's a good machine every 3 years with AppleCare.
Now that the machines can't be upgraded at all, you need to max them out when you buy them, but the prices have come down a little bit, so the pricepoint still holds. Considering price inflation, I guess it's a little bit cheaper now.
The nice thing about that model was you could usually unload your 3-year-old Macbook for at least 1/3 of what you bought it for. With these recent changes, they're probably less valuable.
Still, for many people that $1K per year is money well-spent, if it improves their productivty (and they feel they can support Apple as a corporation).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm saying, their baseline machines are kinda expensive in the first place, but when it comes to upgrading, they really, REALLY gouge you with gusto.
Circumcision is child abuse.
And his 6 year old computer could run both the OS it came with (would that be 10.4?) and the version of Mac OS X available when Windows 7 was released in 2009 (10.6, Snow Leopard).
Plus, it runs last year's OS X, 10.7, Lion.
In other words, it's roughly the same.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Because I'm sure that when Windows Vista and Windows 7 were released, Microsoft only said they changed 6 things. I hear in Windows 8 they only changed three things.
In fact, I'm so sure I'm right I'm not going to waste my time looking it up.
It's marketing. If they changed anything, they claim it's an enhancement. We did the work, we might as well claim it, even if no one would every buy an OS because it now supports GRB pixel alignment as well as RGB and BGR.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Chrome supports 10.5(sidebar)
Firefox supports 10.5
Safari supports 10.5
I did read an article the other week that Chrome is thinking about dropping 10.5 support in a few months.
Is this a ppc Mac? I just looked it up, and that was announced 7 years ago. It looks like they were selling them until Aug 06 (6 years ago), but if you purchased one in that time you can't really expect newer software to work.
And if you're using it in a business environment, it should be fully depreciated by now.
Computer equipment depreciates over 5 years. In 2007, Intel was releasing dual and quad core processors--no 8 core processors. So there is NO WAY his machine is fully depreciated.
My university lecturer is still rocking a Titanium Powerbook. It's at most 12 years old.
'you're' btw motherfucker.
Jonathanjk.com
Since when is seven years later equal to "on a regular basis"?
I think he's referring to those 3-4 year old macs that are unsupported.
Apple keeps updating the OS aggressively during the first 3 mo after the new OS comes out and then more slowly for another 9+ months. They offer security patches well beyond that. I have an old 12" g4, running 10.4 which got a security patch in 2011.
That being said though, Apple offers the advantage of moving their platform aggressively. While Apple equipment will last, you won't be on the latest and greatest after your first year. Just like it was in the 80's and 90's when technology improved rapidly.
Just to support that. The people who bought PPC computers in 06 were doing so to run legacy software, not infrequently 10.4 with the classic box or to take advantage of the G5s (the switch to Intel really was a downgrade for desktops).
The GPUs are exactly the reason Apple isn't supporting these older machines. Apple has a new graphical subsystem in 10.8 designed for retinas which is increasing the complexity of CPU/GPU communication. The older GPUs can't run the new graphical subsystem. So no they can't handle it.
Why is it unacceptable. What do you want to do that you can't do with Lion?
MOOF!
FTFY
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I was running 10.6 until a month ago, because I didn't want to lose Rosetta and could live without 10.7. I'd say you are good for about 8 mo after a new OS and then things start to get slightly more painful. But it was never horrible or I wouldn't have ended up waiting. For example I wanted iCloud but iWork (iWorks syncing service built in, which might even have been better) still worked until I got my new machine.
Instead of buying new hardware, spend a few minutes in Terminal and run Mt Lion on your unsupported Mac anyways: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1325818
And Apple's working to change it back to the old system where people upgraded. Consider their latest: >200 ppi, all SSD running at 450mb/sec, 16g ram, quad core (and fast)... The days of lagging hardware are coming to an end in the Apple world. And BTW Windows 8 is trying to bring that to the Microsoft consumer community as well.
The equivalent is Microsoft. And yeah people bitched here when Microsoft forced upgrades. They just haven't done it much in the last decade.
Get new PC. Install Windows 7. It works.
Where in this process are you having configuration issues?
if you're not very bright, Windows.
Smug attitude, Check.
Calling users dumb for spending less than a grand on each iteration of hardware, check.
What a great example of OSX fanboyism, someone archive parents comment.
That's not quire fair. With Apple you have to be careful with upgrades and check. Sometimes they are quire reasonable, sometimes they are super expensive.
What do you mean worse than Microsoft? Microsoft is excellent on supporting old software and hardware. Apple has always been an aggressive upgrader of systems. There is no change in attitude here.
I agree with you and am upgrading to 10.8.0... new rMBP and I really want the graphics. I'll let you know how it goes.
so a simple GPU check, if it can handle it do it if not dont (you know, like Aero)
yeah I know, slashdot, M$ evil apple god, but seriously, when MS can handle the different GPUS yet apple cant (wont) thats a problem. To put it another way, would you have been ok with windows XP ONLY working on flat screen LCD screens? Would you be ok with windows 7 ONLY working on 1080P screens? so why limit the os based on the screen?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Apple got to put the squeeze on their supplier and Nvidia has to pay for each one of these swap outs, so Apple will keep doing it until Nvidia terminates their agreement. They got caught lying so they are responsible. In very few other cases would Apple ever offer free out-of-warranty motherboard replacement. It's usually rather expensive.
I understand your frustration, but at the same time? If you would resell your used Apple Mac gear every 2-3 years, you'd find that it fetches incredibly good resale value compared to most PC hardware.... Since I both prefer Mac systems/OS X *and* don't want to get stuck with systems unable to run their latest OS offerings, I try to regularly rotate out my systems. I typically get back as much as 2/3rds. of what I paid for them, new, and then it's really not that big an expense to pay the difference to always have something current.
2013 they are doing a major update of the MacPro. You can hold out a year on 10.7.
There's two problems with a Dell running Windows 8 -- Dell and Windows 8.
While i agree with your general sentiment, browsers are a poor example. Five years ago we had nowhere near as much javascript abuse and other shenanigans that websites do that browsers have to handle these days, so the job really has changed and is more demanding than it was.
Leasing is a terrible deal too unless you are filthy rich and do not care about money.
BS. Leasing is quite often a great deal. It depends on the residual on the lease. Cars that have a strong used market frequently have very high residuals because the finance company can make a profit. The finance company is basically buying the car for much less than dealer cost and washing some of that time through the first buyer. That's how Avis, Hertz, National used to make their money by buying new cars well below normal cost, putting some milage on the and then selling them at a high used price. As a buyer of a lease you are doing great:
Heads some of that high residual strong used market washes back to you when you turn the car in.
Tails, the used market has dryed up. So even better you have an option of taking your cut of the residual but because the the finance company is going to get creamed you can buy your own car back for a fraction of the residual.
so a simple GPU check, if it can handle it do it if not dont (you know, like Aero)
Which is pretty much what they are doing. They just announced in advance what GPUs can handle it.
when MS can handle the different GPUS yet apple cant (wont) thats a problem.
Not really. MS is excellent with legacy hardware and software support. Apple has always been terrible. The expectations are different. And frankly I buy Apple because I like the advantages of the entire platform moving every 4 years and their aggressiveness. I get more rapid change, and in exchange I pay more.
To put it another way, would you have been ok with windows XP ONLY working on flat screen LCD screens? Would you be ok with windows 7 ONLY working on 1080P screens?
Yes the same way I'm applauding Microsoft targeting the new generation of touch screens on keyboard laptops with Windows 8.
Have a stable non-crappy operating system. Can't do that with Lion...
I kept my home systems on 10.6. I upgraded my work MacPro 1,1 to Lion. I wish I hadn't. It sounds like Mountain Lion fixes a lot of the stupidest annoyances of Lion: restores Exposé functionality, restore Spaces functionality, more save Save/Save As/Versions/Duplicate semantics and functionality, stability fixes, samba fixes, memory handling fixes, etc.
Wow, I've been called an Apple Fanboy on Slashdot before, but you're really taking things to new level. You even make ME hate Apple users (and I'm on a MBP, use a Mac Pro, have an iPhone and 2 iPads, etc).
There are critical bugs in XP that Microsoft said (years ago) they will never patch. It leaves the OS open to attack over the Internet. I don't call that proper support.
MS is also known to be a promoter of bloat, encouraging OEMs to load up systems with garbage and making people feel they have to have their systems constantly thrashing with anivirus scanning activity. Because of decades of piss-poor engineering, they allowed organized crime to gain a foothold and become very well financed and resourceful at a rate that was absolutely needless.
cant run the latest games? Im running D3 on a machine that I built in 2004! now it was top of the line in 04 around 3400$ and I built it up (amd machine ATI vid card) and the ony changes to it were replaced fans and replaced hard drive (expansion, not crash) in 2004, a machine from 2000 was unusable, but today, a good desktop should easily last, with good upkeep (change the sparkplugs) years.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Why didn't you just roll it back if you didn't like Lion?
Anyway, 10.8 mission control is pretty much the same. They aren't "fixing" that. As for Samba, I doubt it. But "sudo port install samba3" and you are off to the races with samba. Stability / memory I'm not sure what you mean.
I think you may be misunderstanding something. You were talking about how you shouldn't upgrade because the new MacPros aren't much better in 6 years (I actually think more like 3) and mentioned that in 2013 that won't be the situation. The OS issue isn't a problem for a year.
If that makes a fanboy so be it.
There are critical bugs in XP that Microsoft said (years ago) they will never patch. It leaves the OS open to attack over the Internet. I don't call that proper support.
That's the same level of support they've always given. Microsoft use to have errors in their trig formulas which were in Visual Studio. It took them a decade to fix. I'm not talking proper support, I'm saying maintaining support. If you want good support you don't buy Microsoft to begin with.
MS is also known to be a promoter of bloat, encouraging OEMs to load up systems with garbage and making people feel they have to have their systems constantly thrashing with anivirus scanning activity. Because of decades of piss-poor engineering, they allowed organized crime to gain a foothold and become very well financed and resourceful at a rate that was absolutely needless.
All true, and true of their new systems as much as their old.
This IS Slashdot. Just install Linux on it. This is what you've been waiting for. Remember, you bought it because it was UNIX -- with a shell -- and you can run X. Well, now that you're done trying out the OS that came with the computer, you can actually install the OS you wanted to be using all along.
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
fair enough, I guess I just am not in the same camp as you, Than again I have a first gen xbox that has c64 and atari games on it. I like being able to use my old software (or, old software), I dont like being locked out of something, when there is no technological reason for the lockout.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If there's just a GPU check, perhaps the Mac Pro 8-core with a GeForce 8800 GT would make the cut. The Early 2008 Mac Pro comes with that option, too and it made the cut. If there's just a GPU check, it would be conceivable that you could put a Radeon 5770 in a Mac Pro 1,1 and 10.8 would install.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
10.7 dropped support my 1st gen $2000 MacBook Pro, which otherwise still runs perfectly (but with only 10.6).
So what you are saying is that it still runs perfectly. No one is forcing you to update beyond 10.6.
There is actually a semi technical reason for the lockout. There are replacing the graphical subsystem and drastically increasing what's expected of the GPU. The reason for this is the shift to retina displays. They need to take load off the GPUs. In theory they could just offer the kernel with 2 graphical subsystems, which is what Microsoft would do but that's just not the culture on OSX. Developers have a more narrow target and it costs more.
I agree for someone who likes C64 games, and doesn't want to upgrade Apple is a terrible choice. But that's not a change. They've always been like that. They introduced a graphical subsystem in 10.0 started an almost complete overhaul in 10.2 finished the overhaul in 10.4 and then replaced it again in 10.6.
Why didn't you just roll it back if you didn't like Lion?
I don't believe you can restore from a Lion Time Machine backup to Snow Leopard. Do you know?
Anyway, 10.8 mission control is pretty much the same. They aren't "fixing" that.
Except for the ungroup application windows option! I'm glad this is one of the instances where Apple listened to a groundswell of disappointment over the removal of a feature. Spaces is also improved (ie, returned more to the way it was)?
As for Samba, I doubt it. But "sudo port install samba3" and you are off to the races with samba.
In terms of the built-in samba/smb integration. We have had some persistent browse / connection issues with multiple Lion workstations on our office network. I've read reports that Mountain Lion seems to work better in mixed environments.
Stability / memory I'm not sure what you mean.
If you read the forums where people are talking about their Mountain Lion experiences, even with the beta many people are reporting decreased memory usage and greater stability in ML than in Lion. With my one computer running Lion, I have had more freezes or situations where the system gets into a weird state (my computer got locked into Mission Control a week ago. In the miniature windows I could type, press buttons, etc, but Mission Control would not dismiss. Very bizarre. Had to hold down the power button) than any other OSX revision I've used. That's what I mean by stability and memory usage.
I have a 1999 G4 Mac that runs just fine (but only supported up to 10.3 or something). It's a freakin' 13 year old computer that runs better than most 5 year old commodity grade PCs running WinXP so I fail to see any "smack in the face".
*I* wasn't talking about anything. The post you just replied to was my first post in this thread.
I do, however, agree with the OP. My MacPro 1,1 is quite a snappy computer. I dare say it's faster than many of the 2-year-old iMacs or Mac Minis we have at our office for daily use. I think it's ludicrous that Apple isn't extending support. The Mac Pros have barely been upgraded in what -- 2-3 years? Saying "well, just wait another year" seems the epitome of the uncritical (indeed ANTI-criticism) Apple Boy.
Realistically, given the 3rd party solutions (that I will probably try) to get ML running on a MP1,1 Apple could have easily done the same. Apple could have bought out the project even. Instead they focus on twitter integration, facebook integration, gamecenter, and so forth. It's been a very good ~10 years of Apple computers. I'm afraid the software quality is on a downward spiral, however.
Dropping classic? No problem.
Dropping PPC? No problem.
Dropping support for perfectly good, fast, powerful hardware? Not good in my book.
I've always been baffled at people buying Mac, hardware to me it's a bit like console gaming, which also baffles me these days, as it's got all the hassles PC gaming has these days with none of the flexibility.
Even more baffling is your grammar and choice of punctuation.
What a great example of OSX fanboyism, someone archive parents comment.
Call me an OSX fanboy, but what in the hell does this sentence even mean?
It's unacceptable that a 3 year old mac could not run the latest Mac OS.
Most Mac users don't even care what version of OS they are using because the brand has been really good since about 10.3. Only geeks can tell the difference between 10.5 and 10.8 (I'm using the dev preview). Random Mac user tooling around with Leopard doesn't even know what they are missing in Mountain Lion, so it's NOT unacceptable to them in the least. This is not ripping on random Mac user -- it's just a realistic observation. I'd rather use OS X 10.4 over any version of WinXP, so complaining that my 12 year old G4 can't move beyond 10.5 (7.75 years later) is pretty dumb. Considering same 12 year old Mac has worked just fine for the past 4.75 years "stuck" on 10.5 and my 5 year old Compaq PC is worthless (even using the same OS it shipped with) says enough.
So, it's BDSM for you?
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But whips and chains excite me.
(seen on a car license plate frame, the personalized plate read "N2LTHR")
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You really should get something more modern, may I suggest an MGB?
I don't believe you can restore from a Lion Time Machine backup to Snow Leopard. Do you know?
You can't automatically Apple assumes you want the latest image. After you reinstall 10.6 as your OS though you can go to any of the older weekly files that were from 10.6 pull them down. You have a full history. Copy your backup drive using something that understands rsync structure. Delete the newer backup and use migration assistant.
Some of the Apple backup utilities allow you to do this as well. Just google there is planty of info on this.
In terms of the built-in samba/smb integration. We have had some persistent browse / connection issues with multiple Lion workstations on our office network. I've read reports that Mountain Lion seems to work better in mixed environments.
I don't know the answer. But I'd just use the MacPorts samba which is a clean samba and much newer than Apple's.
Negative, OS X 10.7 "Lion" dropped support for Core Duo Macs.
On the other hand, Windows 7 supports those same Macs just fine, and judging from the Windows 8 Release Preview, it works just fine too...
Would you be ok with windows 7 ONLY working on 1080P screens?
If it means the death of the crappy 1366x768 LCD panels, 1000 times YES!
Do you own one that you want to sell yourself? If you do, we can talk.
Yeah MS handles low end hardware well -- just look at how great those "Vista Capable" machines turned out....
http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/channel-programs/206905984/tracing-microsofts-vista-capable-debacle.htm
There's tenfour (fork of Firefox) if you want a newer browser on your ppc Mac. http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Could have sworn Apple said XCode 4.5 was a single binary that ran fine on both lion and mountain lion.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can still get the same quality of video into your TV, given the right cable and the right free ports.
Will Xbox actually let you play Full HD video over anything other than HDMI with HDCP? I'd be surprised...
As a software engineer that has to support legacy hardware day in and day out, and constantly have to think about upgrade and downgrade paths, I say this is a good move by Apple.
Doing this, if you can afford it, wins in many fronts.
1. You cut the scope of your projects because you don't have to design for something to work on every platform that you ever sold, this also make your project less complicated which hopefully will translate to faster time to market.
2. You save money and time. You either don't need to hire as many engineers or you can redirect the efforts towards new features. And you have less tests to run.
Obviously, the cons are you pissed off your old customers by not supporting their hardware anymore. But this crowd is pretty masochistic and comes back for more of your shiny expensive new things, which is made possible because of the same reasons above.
Compared to Microsoft and Windows, which waste tons of money and engineering hours making sure your Windows 8 can still run Lotus 1-2-3 and Broderbund Software.
Will Xbox actually let you play Full HD video over anything other than HDMI with HDCP? I'd be surprised...
It will certainly do 1080p output for games over any old connector. I haven't heard anything about Netflix requiring HDMI. Reading around I find assertions (from pretty much everyone) that you need HDCP for digital connections, but that component (or any other analog format) works fine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have to admit, after years of being an Apple fanboy the last few years have worn me down. I really don't like mountain lion. There is huge vender lock in. The prices!!
Mobile Me was the beginning of the end. What a crappy service. I used Yahoo! mail. It was, and still is, insanely better then Mobile Me. It's better then iCloud too. The hardware is nice, but it isn't nicer then any other quality hardware.
As for the best desktop OS, Mac hasn't been that since Windows '95. They're different. Neither has had a real advantage in years.
Sigh. Everyone disappoints.
Jeez, why would you stick with a company that would do that? Seriously dude just get a nice Windows laptop and make a Hackentosh out of it. Then you can have the nicer and cheaper hardware while still enjoying OSX if you want and a free Windows as a bonus, in case you run into something you want that doesn't have a Mac version.
Although I have to wonder, what with the slow updates and the hardware getting farther behind the curve, if Cook isn't gonna end up abandoning the Pro users, if not X86 altogether. It was Jobs that was into "Apple is the machine on which movies are made" whereas Cook just doesn't seem all that jazzed up, not that I can blame him. After all Apple had a damned good thing going with Nvidia that Intel took a giant dump on without even caring what Apple thought and if its one thing Apple likes is control.
So I could easily see Cook keeping just a couple of consumer models, since the consumer units are frankly more powerful than the average user is gonna care about anyway so they don't need refreshes as often, whereas the Pro users need the extra GPU power and more frequent refreshes that the consumers frankly just don't need. Its pretty obvious that Apple is making the majority of its money on consumer electronics so it really wouldn't hurt the bottom line and would probably make more money long term by cutting guys like you loose.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The thing I don't really get about this is that AFAIK the retina display Macbook Pros are functionally going to run at 1440 x 900 anyway; other than font rendering and videos it's not even clear to me what the extra pixels are for. Will you even be able to set your machine to let you individually address those pixels? So why not let older machines just run at their native res, and don't tax the GPU?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Yeah MS handles low end hardware well -- just look at how great those "Vista Capable" machines turned out....
They turned out exactly as the grandparent described: the "Vista Capable" computers were not powerful enough so Vista automatically switched off Aero. The OS still worked on the low end computers, but it would happily make use of the extra power provided by the more modern, high-end systems.
Please let me insist :-) Browsers are the best example: despite all the JavaScript added to every site (sometimes a dozen of scripts from a dozen of different sites) the JS interpreters of every browser got so much faster after the introduction of Chrome's V8 that they compensate the increase in complexity. That's why those sites can afford stuffing all that JavaScript in their pages and keep being usable and used. I know that I should back this sentiment with figures but it's early in the morning here (still yawning) and I feel that I can't be much wrong given that I keep browsing the modern web on this 6 years old laptop (HP nc8430) and pages load up quickly. Furthermore I see how slow a Firefox 3.6 runs in a WinXP VM on this computer compared to a FF 13 in another WinXP VM.
In the other windows I'm developing a Ruby on Rails application: I did that job 6 years ago and I'm still doing it on the same laptop. The complexity increased but the environment got faster and compensated it. Was it the interpreter, the database or the framework? Hard to tell here.
What could spell the demise of my laptop is memory. I maxed it up at 4 GB and still I can't open more than a couple of VMs. Not that I need to do it often but sometimes I need a server VM and a Windows VM to test with IE. I'm lucky that in most cases I can do without the server VM because servers are usually Linux and I develop on Linux, but in some cases I need a software environment that I can't easily replicate. I remember starting to take care of a very old application with compatibility issues with modern releases of Java and MySQL: I had to download a Debian 4 from the Debian archive. Eventually I'll need more than 4 GB and a new computer. Hopefully laptop screens will get larger again by then if the retina Mac will put pressure on PC manufacturers.
Ubuntu breathed new life into my old Macbook Pro, which I still use as a dev machine. It actually feels snappier than it did with OSX, though nothing apparently supports its funky-ass Radeon's 3D. Running an Apple was kind of nice for a while, kind of like Linux back when Loki was putting out games for it. I had enough of beating my head on their platform though. I'm currently running Windows 7 on my desktop for the games, but it seems that real life is getting to be more interesting. It probably won't be long before I'm back on Linux full time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's an update to Lion, not a new OS version, and if your processor doesn't start with 'i' (i5 i7 etc) then don't bother. Apple sells hardware too, what did you expect? You need to factor in a touch mouse or pad to get the best out of it. If you don't like it? Win 8 is just around the corner!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Actually, there is –one of the major features of the new OS was reduced footprint. That feature was predicated on not including 32 bit binaries of everything under the sun, hence, the reason to drop the older machines is that they stop the new features from working ;)
And then people complain about MS, which does still support old hardware, but then again, Apple is known for dropping support on 'older' hardware (and they call 2 years 'old' hardware)... Do you see Apple still supporting their 11 year old OS like MS does with Windows XP? Nope..
I have a 5yo Vaio that is perfectly capable of running Ubuntu with XP and Win7 VMs (for testing websites in IE7-9). My (web designer) colleague has a 5yo Mac that he can't even run any 2yo browsers on NATIVELY!?!
And when X Windows or Wayland requires OpenGL 3.x throughout the OS to run then we can talk. OS X 10.8 baseline profile for OpenGL is 3.2. That means system-wide Quartz Extreme is accelerated via that baseline profile. Seeing that GNOME and KDE latest are just now sucking hind tit with OpenGL ES 2.0 bits which is a subset of OpenGL 2.x it is rathers clear that older GPUs will be supported on those DEs. If they don't complain when KWin and GNOME's equivalent requires OpenGL 3.x accelerated GPUs tells me they'll have grown up.
Well I distinctly remember surfing the internet on my then new shiny p3 450 and everything being as fast as can be (plain text pages etc). Presently I'm on a four year old eeepc with 2gb of ram and it feels the pain with javascript/flash heavy sites.
No doubts it is becoming more efficient, but the added complexity of the task is not entirely free, the improvements only mitigate it not completely rule it out.
Scripting languages (it's what I tend to call dynamic weakly typed languages like python, ruby) have become far faster through the use of just-in-time compilation techniques etc. This performance increase was only available because of their lack of efficiency to begin with, strong, hard typed things have always in general compiled to far more efficient machine code.
Back in the day people avoided interpreted languages because of these performance penalties, now it's just becoming less of an issue with the combined software/hardware improvements making performance acceptable.
My netbook is an eeepc 901, the 20 GB SSD Linux edition. I upgraded it to 2 GB and to eeebuntu first and Ubuntu 12.04 when it was clear that the Aurora project was going nowhere (I checked right now, still no news). It's definitely slower than my T7200 laptop, it always was. Maybe Ubuntu is not the right OS for it but I needed some first hand experience with Unity before deciding it won't make it on my laptop because of the global menu, launcher, etc (lenses would be ok, hud maybe).
With eebuntu it was bearable as an emergency development environment when I have to travel light (but I was logging on tmpfs). Ubuntu is still a new relatively new install so I don't know how it performs.
The planned obsolescence of Apple products and other companies is making me sick. Planned obsolescence should be banned by law and by all (possible) customers.
There's a whole bunch of reasons, and while they vary from person to person, they're usually not directly related to hardware specifications or flexibility.
The product managers at MS were not even happy with the performance of Vista on low end machines and didn't want the "Vista Capable" crap, but we're overruled by the marketing guys.
sell it after 3 years. Pour $2000 MacBook Pro would almost certainly have fetched $16-1800
What kind of idiot saves 10% by buying a three year old laptop?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Man, they're total bastards for not wanting to support 6+ year old stuff on brand new software architectures!
I'm pretty sure you've gotten your money's worth, since most notebooks are obsolete and replaced within 4 years.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Not at all. I upgrade my equipment as much as possible because I generally like upgrades (Win and OSX). If his 6-year old computer "runs perfectly" with Snow Leopard, then what's the problem? It's not like Snow Leopard is obsolete, given it is still the most used version of OS X.
I have purchased three Windows PC in that time frame, only one of which can run anything beyond XP, thanks to cheap PC manufacturers using outdated RAM and CPUs and using minimal RAM slots (2 that max out at 2GB, for one example). I know, I know, I bought a cheap PC so I get what I deserve, but you'll see plenty of anecdotes in this thread making the ridiculous claim that $300 e-machines PCs still run Windows 7 great, six years on. Riiiiiight.
Who knows, but they do...
Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to sound so trollish, but Dell laptops were pretty crappy in 2006 compared to other offerings (and MacBook Pros). And since I'm coming from an all Dell Latitude (600 series) organization (worked there 2007-2011), I can tell you that Dell Latitudes from 2007-2010 (D610, 620 at least) could NOT run Windows Vista or Windows 7 well enough to meet the requirements of our contract. This kind of sucks when your contract requires your software to run on Vista (government hadn't switched to Win7 yet) and your organization uses nothing but a bunch of business grade crappy Dell laptops.
Hopefully I just untrolled my troll comment?
Well, my current PC running Win7 is actually really good (and it's a cheap, sub-$600 emachines), but the difference is that it less than 3 years old, so still within the very usable lifespan of a cheap PC. My anecdote was simply to state that my old-ass Mac that hasn't been upgradable for the past 5 years is still decent, but my 5 year old Compaq PC is crap. I expect the same thing in 5 years when I compare this 2008 Macbook with my 2010 emachines. Sorry you can't read my mind. I should have been more clear.
I'm using one right now. The OS is addressing those extra pixels. For example my wallpapers are 2880x1800. What the system does though is size things up that would otherwise be small by default. For things that are huge it runs them at their native resolution. So for example if I use a 1080p video stream full screen it runs has if the screen were 1920x1080 and the GPU makes complex adjustments. If on the other hand I use it in a box I get the 1920x1080 pixel by pixel with the rest of the screen wrapped. For example this is the standard rMBP setup for Final Cut Pro (http://www.blogcdn.com//media/2012/06/mza2289436121407075041.800x500-75.jpg ). The image (on a rMBP not in the graphic) you see is pixel for pixel perfect 1080p.
So no you address those pixels. OTOH the world is built around the 96 PPI standard so what the OS is doing is showing good judgement about when to double and when not to.
There are three issues here:
1) Apple's failure to overhaul the MacPro for years. That's a valid criticism. I think the MacPro is at this point a total ripoff. What used to be an excellent workstation just isn't anymore. If possible I think if one needed a MacPro now, buy used. Criticism is valid.
2) The fact that Apple isn't upgrading the older MacPros to 10.8. There are good technical reasons for that, and I think they are making the right call. Apple's willingness to demand the right hardware is one of the key reasons OSX is so pleasant to use, and the older MacPros while being very fast 32bit machines, are 32 bit machines.
3) Further I see no harm to the MacPro people in not being able to upgrade to 10.8. There aren't really any major MacPro 10.8 features. The logical upgrade path is to switch over to the 2013 machines when they become available. Because those are going to be excellent and likely will take advantage of 10.8 features. Just think about how much horsepower it is going to take to drive dual 30" retina displays. If the 2013 machines suck then Apple is simply out of the high end desktop market.
4) And your list is a perfectly good example of how personal it is. Dropping PPC kept me on 10.6 all last year. And there was no good reason Apple had to drop Rosetta they could have kept it for a decade. But I signed up for a fast moving platform, and I got bit on that one. OTOH when they dropped classic I was ready.
Yes it is for me. But that's way more fun than computer OSes :)
I have a Silver King vacuum (paid list price of 2800) with a 60 year warranty that I could pass on to one of the kids when I die. I do have to buy my filters from the manufacturer, but at $50 every other year, I'm not too concerned since that's a lot less than a $200 vacuum every two years.
I don't see anything in Mountain Lion that restores Expose and Spaces functionality? What exactly are you referring to?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Sweet huh? We make record breaking worldwide profits, but eh...we don't feel like spending a few hundred grand on revamping some video drivers so the computer you paid twice as much as you needed to 3 years ago can run the current OS?
Hmm, windows 7 runs on some ten+ year old platforms without anything special.
Great to see how much Apple likes to take care of their customers by essentially forcing them to upgrade their hardware if they want the new OS and all of the services that will soon be linked to that OS version. Just like they've been doing all along.
I have a short stack of Apple products that won't take a new OS for similar "We just didn't feel like making those old bits work, even though they will". My favorite was having to replace my wifes ipod because her old one wouldn't update to the new version of ios, which was required for some recipe program she used the ipod for in the kitchen. I'm sure a recipe program truly requires the newest OS and the latest hardware. Except for the fact that I ran a similar app on an IBM PC AT about 25 years ago. Five bucks says I could get windows 7 running on that box.
Which Slashdot are you talking about where Apple don't get any shit. Not this Slashdot where Apple are public enemy no 2, Besides which MS will get shit here because it is a convicted criminal organisation that has not been punished sufficiently.
4) And your list is a perfectly good example of how personal it is. Dropping PPC kept me on 10.6 all last year. And there was no good reason Apple had to drop Rosetta they could have kept it for a decade. But I signed up for a fast moving platform, and I got bit on that one. OTOH when they dropped classic I was ready.
Don't get me wrong, PPC is still a feature we use. In fact, I still have one computer at work running 10.4 (Dual g4 1.25ghz) for one server application that would require a $10,000 upgrade to run on Intel. We used Classic mode for years. What I meant with my statement was, I'm ok with Apple dropping PPC support roughly 7 years after a major hardware transition. It affected several programs we do use, so we had to phase them out on new purchases and keep older computers on older operating systems. Mostly iMacs. I don't think this is analogous.
Let me put my overall complaint like this. How hard would it be for Apple to code their own Chameleon equivalent? Or to buy Chameleon's technology? What kind of investment? 100k? 500k? A million? Pocket change for Apple, and they would have made a lot of Mac Pro owners (who are ALREADY not happy about upgrade paths) happy, and increased sales of Mountain Lion. Yes, this is amplified by the fact that I'm stuck on Lion unless I want to spend a lot of time migrating back to a prevision Snow Leopard install. This is the first OSX upgrade (Lion) that I felt has been a regression. There's not one feature I miss on my Snow Leopard computers. MacPro1,1's aren't going to be driving Retina displays, but neither are the earlier 64-bit macbooks and imacs that ARE supported. That's entirely a red herring.
Expose now has the option to "ungroup application windows". I had read somewhere of some spaces improvement, but I am not sure about this.
The Windows desktop my dad bought in 2004 still runs plenty of stuff quite happily. Define ANYTHING.
I get your point. Let me respond 2 ways:
Chameleon specifically: First off Parallels does exactly what you are asking for. So there is a well supported commercial version with Chameleon. However, Chameleon seems to have an encumbered license. Some people believe all the code is under the APSL some believe it is under the GPL. No way is Apple including GPL code tightly intermixed with stuff like their firmware. And no way are they going to try and license something with ambiguous licensing and ambiguous ownership. So buying it is out.
Something like Chameleon: Absolutely trivial. The problem isn't creating Chameleon it is supporting it. If they do what you suggest they have to support two entirely different graphical subsystems. Right now every developer who targets 10.8 gets to target one mode of display. Which makes testing easy, especially when looking for things like skips or lags. With a corrupted graphics system that is officially supported developers would have to target two subsystems. One of the advantages that Apple offers its developers is simpler hardware / OS features than Windows and Android. Doing what you want would go totally against the grain of Apple's whole development model.
It doesn't matter whether those other old devices are in fact supporting a retina display. It matters whether they are running a graphic subsystem used by the retinas. Developers under this model are getting a simple message, "build the next version of your app for retina". With two graphic subsystems the message becomes, "build for a range of devices".
I think you need to separate out your issue of not liking Lion from what 10.8 is for, which is to: ...
1) upgrade the security
2) integrate better with iOS including retina, the notification system, upgrade the integration with facebook
3) open the door to Apple TV.
You are an unusual case of someone who upgraded, didn't downgrade immediately, uses a MacPro (which is unusual), doesn't care about 10.8 features and doesn't want to get things like Samba from Macports. You are cutting against the grain too much.
If you consider requiring them to backport from natively 64 bit everything with ugly hax "artificial", I suppose.
"People lease cars for 3 years and move on to a new one, it's commonly accepted practice."
I preferred to pay off my houses. I still drive older vehicles but dry my tears with the deeds to my land.
You don't need to be well-off to have disposable income if you don't piss away what you have.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So what are the differences in the "graphics subsystems" that you're talking about?
Oh, to add to my laundry list -- The Preview.app in Lion is a useless slow, crashing, clusterfuck. I deleted it and copied Preview from a SL install. That actually made me enjoy Lion slightly more.
You are an unusual case of someone who upgraded, didn't downgrade immediately, uses a MacPro (which is unusual), doesn't care about 10.8 features and doesn't want to get things like Samba from Macports. You are cutting against the grain too much.
Yes, Mac Pro users are a minority of mac users. So what? Support effort would be minimal. We're not talking about supporting a parallel architecture or even outdated hardware! I didn't downgrade immediately--how many people actually downgrade when it's harder to do that? How many people make a snap decision in a day or even a week? I would hardly say that by NOT downgrading I am unusual! I have to support newer Macs, so I eat the dogfood, so to speak. Unfortunately in this case, the release was dogfood (imho of course). I'm not sure how getting samba from ports is supposed to solve Finder browse issues or Finder samba access problems on Lion workstations?
Basically, the only way I am cutting against the grain is by not faithfully upgrading my computer every 4 years. My MBP is almost the same age (and runs better than new thanks to memory and an SSD), yet it supports Mountain Lion? Its specs are inferior in every way to the vastly more expensive (and expandable and upgradeable) Mac Pro.
Look, you can justify this however you want. Apple will do the same. The bottom-line is, for a lot of users, it's a kick in the face, and yet another symptom of an Apple that increasingly cares about nothing but iOS and iOSification of OSX. It's sad for me.
They don't advertise their systems as being able to play all software released which is why they have system requirements where as a 360 does no have system requirements because it's expected that a 360 plays all 360 software. It would be like Apple labelling their software as Safari Mac 2007. Now what will MS do when they release a new model of the xbox?
Unless you're a hardcore gamer there is no good reason to use windows over pretty much any OS that has a reasonable fanbase. Unix based systems are just better.
I spent roughly £850 on my Macbook Pro which is, give or take £40 what I spend on my Thinkpad 5 years before so actually my Macbook Pro was cheaper than my Thinkpad.
Unless you use your laptop as a desktop and it rarely moves then you really don't do yourself any favours buying cheap. In fact I can't really see myself spending less than £700 for a laptop regardless of who makes it.
It entertains me when people are happy buying £300 laptops every couple of years. Well in 6 years that works out to be £900 which is actually more than I spent on my Thinkpad and my machine still looks almost like new. The hinges are in no way loose, the keys work fine. Hell the keys have no fading of the text other than a wee bit on the S key and that is after 6 years old solid use either programming or chatting on messages boards, IM, etc and tons of hours playing Quake, TF2 and numerous other games.
The only thing that went bad on it was the battery which I'm picking the new one up tomorrow. I can't complain about getting 5 years out of a battery. The last year it was bad but considering I did abuse the battery and didn't look after it properly that's still good.
Baring something like me dropping it I'm sure I can easily get another 2 years out of it. Probably more unless something changes where the processor is deemed to be too slow. I've just chucked a SSD in it the other week and over all the experience I have is better than when I bought it.
So no, it's not OS X fanboyism. It's just that I actually use my laptops and regardless of the brand (though there are some brands I just won't buy) I don't go cheap and my laptops last. Everyone I personally know that goes cheap always has more problems than me and i can't think of anyone that bought some cheap laptop that's lasted nearly as long as mine. So like I said if you really want to use a laptop as it is, going cheap just isn't going to work.
They don't advertise their systems as being able to play all software released which is why they have system requirements where as a 360 does no have system requirements because it's expected that a 360 plays all 360 software. It would be like Apple labelling their software as Safari Mac 2007. Now what will MS do when they release a new model of the xbox?
Exactly, maybe i should re-iterate my point for you (even though i wrote it twice in the original post just to be clear you still seemed to somehow miss it):
Again, not saying they should or would be expected to do that, just that this situation with the XBox is clearly not analogous.
If Apple chooses not to support my Mac Pro 8-core Xeon 3.0 GHz 16-GB-ram 2TB-hd machine, I am going to be unhappy.
It has
Nvidia graphics with HW DX9 support
1680x1050 display
dualcore CPU
was selling with vista at that time.
Stop talking shit of things you know nothing of, I didn't even mention the model name.
If you were on the inside let me ask you something. Of the 3 major enhancements for Longhorn:
1) Aero interface
2) Document security (Palladium)
3) Windows File System
What happened to #2 and #3. Why didn't Microsoft push ahead with Longhorn / Vista being a major step up from XP?
Look it up. It has to do with what video card / EFI the rest of the system far exceeds the spec.
I didn't have to be on the "inside" it came out in the lawsuit that product managers didn't want the Vista Capable mess and that they gave in to pressure from Intel.
So what are the differences in the "graphics subsystems" that you're talking about?
The graphics system on Lion allows for KEXTs (32 bit extensions) in drivers. There is an actual code wrapper that goes between the graphics card and the driver on Mountain Lion which is 64 bit hence no KEXT support.
We're not talking about supporting a parallel architecture or even outdated hardware!
That's exactly what you are talking about. Supporting 32 bit only hardware. If Apple had a 64 bit driver for your card it would run Mountain Lion. In fact it wouldn't shock me if a 64 bit Linux driver gets ported over and then ML does run.
I'm not sure how getting samba from ports is supposed to solve Finder browse issues or Finder samba access problems on Lion workstations?
Because you would be running the full featured samba and not the reduced functionality. Lion moved from Samba 2 to Apple's Samba clone. Ports has Samba 3.
Its specs are inferior in every way to the vastly more expensive (and expandable and upgradeable) Mac Pro.
No its specs in terms of driver support are not inferior and that's where you are getting snagged.
Why would Intel want people to be able to use cheaper hardware, i.e. cheaper CPUs? And why would Microsoft care what Intel marketing wanted?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/the-vista-capable-debacle-intel-pushes-microsoft-bends/
OK I read the email chain now. At least my read of the chain I don't agree with the Ars summary (linked above) that it was Intel. Rather it seems like Microsoft was soft on the issue that Vista would require more expensive hardware at the time, while they had never been soft about that with Longhorn. Once you fail to make that clear then the disruption becomes, from the OEM's standpoint pointless. In other words they had this problem because they were still considering Intel integrated graphics only systems as not being totally beyond the pale for Vista. Had it been clear to consumers that there would be years of Microsoft selling XP on lower end systems and Vista on higher end systems they wouldn't have experienced a disruption.... Vista can't be both "the new OS" and "the more demanding OS with cooler stuff" unless you are going to drive a universal price increase through the market.
But thank you for pointing out that email chain is now public.
Isn't this mainly just the dark side of Moore's Law? I'm right on the cusp now for Mountain Lion so I am not unfamiliar with the frustration that I will need a new MBP for future updates but I also know how much technology has progressed since I got my classic 15" MBP that runs so well. On the other hand Macs tend to hold their value so you should be able to sell your model to someone who doesn't need the latest update for a good price. Try that with a 5 year old Toshiba (or a 1 year old model).
The graphics system on Lion allows for KEXTs (32 bit extensions) in drivers. There is an actual code wrapper that goes between the graphics card and the driver on Mountain Lion which is 64 bit hence no KEXT support.
That's exactly what you are talking about. Supporting 32 bit only hardware. If Apple had a 64 bit driver for your card it would run Mountain Lion. In fact it wouldn't shock me if a 64 bit Linux driver gets ported over and then ML does run.
No, I don't think you're right about this. As you say, the ATI x1900xt (the card in my Mac Pro) has windows 64-bit drivers. I've run one under Vista 64! Secondly, if what you are claiming as a major graphics change would be true, I could swap in a $50 graphic card into my Mac Pro and be fine to install ML. But I can't...It's more arbitrary than that.
Because you would be running the full featured samba and not the reduced functionality. Lion moved from Samba 2 to Apple's Samba clone. Ports has Samba 3.
You're claiming installing the Mac Port replaces the builtin smb functionality?
No its specs in terms of driver support are not inferior and that's where you are getting snagged.
EXACTLY. The keyword from your reply is: "support." This is where Apple is not willing to put in the effort. The hardware itself is fine. Apple is just not willing to do the support. Again, this situation is very different from 68k to PPC, or PPC to Intel. Deprecating old architectures makes sense. Deprecating powerful workstations -- while supporting inferior laptops -- just because you don't want to port a 64-bit driver that already exists for every other OS does not make sense. Blocking ML on a computer even if it has a fully upgraded, brand spanking new 2012 graphics card does not make sense.
No, I don't think you're right about this. As you say, the ATI x1900xt (the card in my Mac Pro) has windows 64-bit drivers. I've run one under Vista 64! Secondly, if what you are claiming as a major graphics change would be true, I could swap in a $50 graphic card into my Mac Pro and be fine to install ML. But I can't...It's more arbitrary than that.
First off let me point they haven't written a Mac driver. NT kernel and the Xnu kernel are nothing like one another. So lets say it would take ATI a few man weeks to fix the driver problem. The ATI card change is the change in the graphic subsystem. You have one more problem. Because there is no KEXT support your EFI won't work. You need to reflash your firmware. But yes, you have me right:
a) A port of a driver and / or a $50 replacement
b) A new firmware
and your system runs Mountain Lion fine. That's what the people who are hacking the preview onto their older MacPros are doing. You've mentioned Chameleon so you are familiar with the community. So in other words:
a) Yes apple faced a real technical problem. This isn't arbitrary and they had good reason to make the shift they did in ML.
b) Yes it could have been fixed with a complex install but not with anything simple. Which is pretty much what's happening. The people who can handle the reflash and understand the issue can load ML but Apple doesn't have to support that complexity in the field. And they won't have to support it as times goes on, rather the open source community will. I guess I can see a position for the Apple store offering to do this for say $100 labor. You do have a point there, given that they haven't updated the MacPro they should probably throw you all a bone on this one.
You're claiming installing the Mac Port replaces the builtin smb functionality?
Why not? Here are instructions: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120401160655922
XNU is modular SMB is just a module you can replace it.
Why not? Here are instructions: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120401160655922 [macworld.com]
XNU is modular SMB is just a module you can replace it.
Nice, thanks for the link. Bit of a PITA to fix a lion deficiency, though. My experience with OSX upgrades is that every point release generally reverts these type of changes. Still might be worthwhile...
I guess I can see a position for the Apple store offering to do this for say $100 labor. You do have a point there, given that they haven't updated the MacPro they should probably throw you all a bone on this one.
It's frustrating. I will do the Chameleon thing and hope for the best. With years without updates, deprecated models, no more server OS (almost understandable) and no more Xserve--not to mention the debacle with the video tools--it's just really apparent that Apple is one of first old school computer companies to jump headfirst into the post-PC, post-Power User world. As a user who always liked that OSX was UNIX--and a really slick system--etc, it just seems a sad thing to me.
More cynical slashdotters would say I was fool for ever thinking Apple cared one cent about my ilk!
I don't think you are a fool at all. During the G3/G4 era one of the Apple's targets was the fact that the G3/G4s outperformed the Pentiums. The G5s were a point of pride. On laptops, phones and tablets they still sell performance. But everyone has dropped their high performance desktop lines. Take a look at how meager the offering are at Dell compared to when you bought your PowerMac. The last poweredge I bougtht had their 14 drive configuration (RAID 50) was upgradable to 196g of ram... I don't see anything like that now.
Hopefully Apple does wow people with their 2013 offering and has something to win over all of the remaining Workstation users from Windows. But in general I agree. Apple is moving away from server. Apple doesn't use OSX for iCloud servers.
But you shouldn't exaggerate, in terms of no more server OS they still have server, its just free / cheap and aimed squarely at small business: http://www.apple.com/osx/server/
As an aside if you like the old Workstation with lots of umph on the G5s have you ever consider the IBM pseries with the G7s? There you could get a real upgrade: 512g rom, 32 G7 processors each one 2-3x as fast (in terms of work) as what you have, overlapping memory so the CPUs aren't sitting around pulling NO-OPs... IBM at least still makes beefy Unix computation machines.
Most Mac users don't even care what version of OS they are using ... Random Mac user tooling around with Leopard doesn't even know what they are missing in Mountain Lion
Yet for some reason, the Apple fanbois don't seem to realize that this is exactly the case with older versions of Android. It does what the owner wanted it to do when they bought it.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
What do Apple fanbois have to do with old versions of Android?
And you are assuming that people picked Android because it did "everything they wanted it to do"? That seems odd. I bought my iOS device because it does the things I like better than the competition for similar prices. It certainly doesn't do "everything" I want it to do.