Backwards compatibility? Ha.

Posted on:February 10 2010

I've heard when you have a Mac, you have to pay for everything, even for updates. But all I want is a WebGL enabled web browser:

Message:'You cannot use this application with this version of Mac OS X'

Even FireFox/MineField refuses to start (doesn't even have the mercy to tell you why). Safari starts but disables WebGL. Hmpf.

Comments:

Judging by the skin I'd say you're running a PowerPC version of OS X; check your downloading the right apps - people tend not to use universal binaries (i.e. PPC and Intel) any more as PPC is slowly (or already) being phased out.

Chris

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2010-02-10 09:53:00

No, it's a normal intel mac, but running tiger. Going to get leopard, I guess.

niko

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2010-02-10 10:06:00

Ah; Tiger would be 10.4? I'm sure I read the other day that lots of companies are dropping support for it - especially the nightly builds of FireFox (which would be the ones including WebGL?).

I've only ever seen Tiger on PPCs macs; When I got my Intel Macbook they'd just switched to Leopard - I prefer the leopard skin to tiger anyway; All those Grey lines across the dialog boxes make my eyes go funny :-D.

Depending on the age of the mac might be an idea to get snow leopard - although I've not gotten around to trying it yet; Not sure whether they ironed out all the bugs yet...

Chris

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2010-02-10 10:28:00

OMG! An OS fail that doesn't involve Microsoft! :O What has the world come to?

bug-a-lot

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2010-02-10 11:26:00

OS X 10.4 support for most new software is fading fast, 10.5 is a common minimum now. I still build Ogre with 10.4 support but I have to explicitly ask for it, XCode defaults to 10.5+.

And at least Apple have the decency to charge a reasonable fee for an upgrade - Snow Leopard cost me £30. Oh, and there's only one version which has everything, no 4-6 edition minefield where the stupid entry-level versions are missing things.

Steve

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2010-02-10 11:31:00

In my opinion/experience Apple & MS really differ here.

MS does a lot of work to maintain binary backwards compatibility even in some form. Apple seems to do everything it can to kill off support for old versions, ultimately forcing all Apple users to a quicker upgrade cycle.

There good and bad sides to both approaches.

tonic

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2010-02-10 13:26:00

ye apple sux

moo

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2010-02-10 18:32:00

I've come around to work with a Mac sometimes (e.g. because of better profiling support with the gcc), and apart from the fact that I don't like it's GUI (call me Windowsed, but I'm simply used to it), some people in my company have a lot of work because of the updates from 10.5 to 10.6. Some things seem to have changed and backwards compatability is dropped.

Brainsaw

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2010-02-11 07:22:00