02-19-2012, 08:31 PM

Originally Posted by dtravis7

I would hope it's not as the Lion fix was mentioned here many times. Once by me. It's not fair to disable a machine that works 100% when people out there are so broke. No piracy is involved. Only one line in a file. If what I posted is wrong, I will just take off as I feel this is robbery to make poor people buy a new Mac every 2 years to run the new features and probably iCloud that will be changed and not run on older macs. Windows 7 runs great on some quite old PC hardware.

For an example I Just installed 7 for a friend on an old Pentium D Dell Dimension E510 which is very old. Works GREAT and quite fast.


Actually the Leopard patch for non supported G4s has been posted here many times along with a url to the App to make it run.

Hey, I could be wrong. I get my info from the internet and haven't tried an install on "unsupported" hardware in a while. I'm sure it's still just fine and I'm just not very rigorous in my research. No offense intended.

02-19-2012, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by XJ-linux

Hey, I could be wrong. I get my info from the internet and haven't tried an install on "unsupported" hardware in a while. I'm sure it's still just fine and I'm just not very rigorous in my research. No offense intended.

I doubt you are. Was just pointing out we have discussed the same thing but with Lion, so I am sure it's fine. If not, Windows 7 here I come!

02-19-2012, 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by dtravis7

It's not fair to disable a machine that works 100% when people out there are so broke. No piracy is involved. Only one line in a file. If what I posted is wrong, I will just take off as I feel this is robbery to make poor people buy a new Mac every 2 years to run the new features and probably iCloud that will be changed and not run on older macs.

This does give the unfortunate appearance of profiteering on the part of Apple; however, I am - for now - going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it is a performance issue (not that limiting people's options because they want to maintain the image of Macs never running slow is entirely fair itself; as you say, Windows 7 will work in some way on anything you care to install it on, no matter how poorly it may actually run on really old hardware).

I think the real acid test for Apple's motivations will, ironically, be the release of Windows 8. That OS will - in principle - be able to run on any Intel Mac, just like Windows 7 can; if Apple restricts the Windows 8 Bootcamp drivers to only working on newer Macs we'll know that something malicious is afoot, but I don't actually see that happening.

I think the most important thing to bear in mind is that Apple are never going to send a kill signal to shut-down the older versions of OS X (if they did the board of directors would be immediately arrested for gross misconduct and the company would be in forced receivership within a matter of hours!), I doubt they could legally stop iCloud working on older Macs (or older PCs that it currently works on) either, as that would basically amount to holding people's own data to ransom.

The bottom line is: If your machine can't run anything post-Lion, run Lion; if you need PowerPC apps, run Snow Leopard; if you need the functions of Lion and PowerPC apps either dual-boot on two separate HDDs or run Snow Leopard in a VM.

While, yes, the support will drop-off as time goes-on, 10.6 & 10.7 will be strong, stable, secure OSs for a long while yet. Look at the longevity of Windows XP, an OS now officially classed as "legacy software" (indeed, the local library service I used to work for still runs all their PCs on Windows 2000 an officially unsupported OS)!

By the time Snow Leopard and Lion become too outdated to keep-on using most of the Macs they're still installed on will be old enough themselves to make it a worthwhile investment replacing them, and enough new x86 Mac software should have been developed to completely replace the catalogue of PPC software lost with the removal of Rosetta.

02-20-2012, 06:19 AM

Looks cool maybe I will buy my MBA next summer.

02-20-2012, 10:16 PM

Originally Posted by Ctrl-Opt-Del;1371926Look at the longevity of Windows XP, an OS now officially classed as "legacy software" (indeed, the local library service I used to work for [I

still[/I] runs all their PCs on Windows 2000 an officially unsupported OS)!

By the time Snow Leopard and Lion become too outdated to keep-on using most of the Macs they're still installed on will be old enough themselves to make it a worthwhile investment replacing them, and enough new x86 Mac software should have been developed to completely replace the catalogue of PPC software lost with the removal of Rosetta.

Heck, our blood machines and x-ray developer/viewer at work both run XP. And our Macs are all 2006 era Core Duo iMacs running Leopard. If it gets the job done and you don't need the APIs of the newest OS, then you don't need to worry about it.

02-21-2012, 06:49 AM

Originally Posted by Stretch

If it gets the job done and you don't need the APIs of the newest OS, then you don't need to worry about it.

Precisely.

02-21-2012, 04:01 PM

It all depends on what you want. If you want to be sure you can run the App store and other modern things, those older OS's are not going to cut it. For general computing Leopard still is fine though. Also as Apple makes more and more new DEVICES like iPhones, iPods and iPads. those will only run and update on the latest so the user could not get a new device without updating the OS.

Windows XP runs on almost anything and still gets the job done. Very different than OSX in that way.

02-21-2012, 11:34 PM

Well it looks like there are two factors at play: elimination of support for 32-bit EFI and lack of 64-bit drivers for Intel's crappy GPUs. A possible 3rd factor is dropping of support for GPUs that don't support the full feature set of OpenGL 3.2.

What's keeping Mountain Lion off of some 64-bit Macs? Ars investigates

02-22-2012, 08:45 AM

After reading through some impressions, does anyone else think Apple withholding certain APIs from use by apps not on the Mac App store is kind of scummy? If they go through with this, it officially makes a number of new features they might unveil in the future fairly useless in practice.

02-22-2012, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by Discerptor

After reading through some impressions, does anyone else think Apple withholding certain APIs from use by apps not on the Mac App store is kind of scummy? If they go through with this, it officially makes a number of new features they might unveil in the future fairly useless in practice.

Its nothing new. They do that on iOS also. No sure on the reason, as I'm not a developer, but they still give developers plenty of new APIs.

02-22-2012, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Discerptor

After reading through some impressions, does anyone else think Apple withholding certain APIs from use by apps not on the Mac App store is kind of scummy? If they go through with this, it officially makes a number of new features they might unveil in the future fairly useless in practice.

It does seem pretty annoying. On the flip side, can they really stop anyone from using them? I'm sure they could with services like iCloud, and to a degree I can understand that much. Apple provides 5 GB space free on iCloud, so it's understandable that they'd want to recoup costs by limiting it to apps they get a cut off of.

Is there a complete list of what is being limited? To an extent, DropBox can quite handily replace iCloud functionality. I'd almost prefer it to be honest. What I don't like is developers who are "settling" on Apple's restrictions just to go through the App Store. Worse… those who distribute there and externally, and have differing functionality between the two distributions (Postbox and Transmit, e.g.). I just hope that those developers who went all-in like AgileBits for 1Password don't come to regret it as Apple keeps changing the rules.

02-22-2012, 10:52 PM

Originally Posted by lifeisabeach

It does seem pretty annoying. On the flip side, can they really stop anyone from using them? I'm sure they could with services like iCloud, and to a degree I can understand that much. Apple provides 5 GB space free on iCloud, so it's understandable that they'd want to recoup costs by limiting it to apps they get a cut off of.

No, but if the developer is going to release on the App Store, then they better not be using restricted APIs. Otherwise it will never get approved. And on the flip side, if they aren't on the App Store, but using restricted APIs, and Apple removes or changes the API, then there is going to be a very broken app and many unhappy customers, especially if the app proceeds to screw up their computer.

02-23-2012, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by Stretch

No, but if the developer is going to release on the App Store, then they better not be using restricted APIs. Otherwise it will never get approved. And on the flip side, if they aren't on the App Store, but using restricted APIs, and Apple removes or changes the API, then there is going to be a very broken app and many unhappy customers, especially if the app proceeds to screw up their computer.

And on the 3rd side of the 2-sided coin here… as part of the sandboxing rules, there are APIs that App Store apps are restricted from using, but can and are used by non-App Store apps.

02-23-2012, 03:50 AM

Originally Posted by Spellbinder

Much of Mountain Lion seems to be related to your iPad and/or iPhone and syncing. Well, I have no iPhone and have no need for one really. I love my Android and have no intention on switching. I'd love an iPad, but I can't afford one at the moment and it'll be a while before i ever get one.

Seems an upgrade to Mountain Lion won't really necessary for someone like me.

Its worth it!! XD I have it and it's running smoothly on my iMac 21.5 inch late '09.

02-23-2012, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by Stretch

Its nothing new. They do that on iOS also. No sure on the reason, as I'm not a developer, but they still give developers plenty of new APIs.

It is new for Mac OS X, though. The last thing I want is for OS X to become a walled garden like iOS.