iPhone 3GS software compatibility problem

Hi All

I'll try not to make this an angry post, tho' I am quite angry at the minute.

I have an elderly MacBook Pro, running 10.4.11. It mainly gets used for email / as a browser and it's fine for what it does.

My wife got an iPhone 3GS six months ago (synced to the above) and, recently, it started freezing intermittently. She rang the phone network support people and they said to update the phone software to 4.3.3. She tried to do this thro' the MacBook but we couldn't get the update to work because it said the iTunes couldn't be updated.

So, I have a PC laptop which comes with my job. I installed iTunes on that and updated the phone, which has now stopped crashing. Fine.

But the phone will now not work as an iPod and will not sync to the MacBook because the version of iTunes (9.2.1) is too old and the phone no longer recognises it. iTunes can't be updated any further because the Mac is running 10.4.

The wife is not happy, given that she can no longer sync iCal, use her music library or update apps. I don't really want to load up the whole iTunes library on the PC because it doesn't belong to me. She can't use it for iCal anyway, as it doesn't live at home.

So, from a situation where we were updating the phone OS to get rid of a fault, it now looks like I'm forced to go and spend fifty pounds or more on 10.5 just so the phone can be used as intended. I feel more than a little aggrieved.

Is there a solution here that I'm missing? Is there any way to keep 4.3.3 on the iPhone and sync to the MacBook without buying another OS X?

Thanks

Richard

EDIT - just to add that, according to Wiki, I can't update my MacBook to 10.5 because the clock speed isn't high enough.

The thing that really gets me is that my PC laptop is running XP, which is slightly older than OS 10.4. So I can get current Apple software for my old PC, but not for my old Mac? How does that work?

Richard_L said:

Hi All

I'll try not to make this an angry post, tho' I am quite angry at the minute.

I have an elderly MacBook Pro, running 10.4.11. It mainly gets used for email / as a browser and it's fine for what it does.

My wife got an iPhone 3GS six months ago (synced to the above) and, recently, it started freezing intermittently. She rang the phone network support people and they said to update the phone software to 4.3.3. She tried to do this thro' the MacBook but we couldn't get the update to work because it said the iTunes couldn't be updated.

So, I have a PC laptop which comes with my job. I installed iTunes on that and updated the phone, which has now stopped crashing. Fine.

But the phone will now not work as an iPod and will not sync to the MacBook because the version of iTunes (9.2.1) is too old and the phone no longer recognises it. iTunes can't be updated any further because the Mac is running 10.4.

The wife is not happy, given that she can no longer sync iCal, use her music library or update apps. I don't really want to load up the whole iTunes library on the PC because it doesn't belong to me. She can't use it for iCal anyway, as it doesn't live at home.

So, from a situation where we were updating the phone OS to get rid of a fault, it now looks like I'm forced to go and spend fifty pounds or more on 10.5 just so the phone can be used as intended. I feel more than a little aggrieved.

Is there a solution here that I'm missing? Is there any way to keep 4.3.3 on the iPhone and sync to the MacBook without buying another OS X?

Thanks

Richard

Click to expand...

If you couldn't update the software without upgrading OS X, it certainly wasn't going to sync either. Upgrading to 10.5 at this point when 10.7 is just around the corner would be crazy. Jump to 10.6. You'd have to start on that anyway to get to 10.7 if you were so inclined and you are that much more future-proofed otherwise.

Richard_L said:

EDIT - just to add that, according to Wiki, I can't update my MacBook to 10.5 because the clock speed isn't high enough.

Click to expand...

Do you have a MacBook or a PowerBook? If it's a MacBook (Intel CPU) then it most certainly can run 10.5. And 10.6 for that matter. If a PowerBook, then that depends on which one you have.

The thing that really gets me is that my PC laptop is running XP, which is slightly older than OS 10.4. So I can get current Apple software for my old PC, but not for my old Mac? How does that work?

Click to expand...

*shrug* Planned obsolescence… it's something Apple has perfected.

Apple's support of XP has absolutely NOTHING to do with time and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that 60% of people on Windows are still on XP. Apple would drop XP in a second if that number would get down to 25% or less.

It's exactly the same reason why every Windows developer out there still supports -- but despises -- Windows XP.