4 ms·

Here's my dilemma with iTunes: I have about 50GB of music on my computer, an early 2007 iMac. If I want to upgrade my iPhone to iOS9, I need to update iTunes to

Here's my dilemma with iTunes: I have about 50GB of music on my computer, an early 2007 iMac. If I want to upgrade my iPhone to iOS9, I need to update iTunes to the latest version. But the latest version doesn't run on Mac OSX 10.6... and my computer is too old to upgrade to 10.7 or higher. So if I want to have ios9 and sync music to my phone, I need to buy a new computer? Pretty upset about that.

corin_ 11y ago
I wonder what data Apple have on who will be affected by things like this, how many will upgrade their PC, how many will put off buying a phone, how many will leave Apple behind, and how those things balance out to impact their profits. I imagine they'd think a lot about it and made the decision that it's more profitable to not care about your use case, but would be interested to know how they approach it.
- epmatsw 11y ago
  From a data point of one, when my grandma's old Mac Mini stopped being able to sync to or update her iPad, we ended up just caving and buying her a new Mac Mini. For the life of a computer, it really just wasn't worth the hassle.
projct 11y ago
iTunes Match is an option that is cheaper than buying a new mac.
- jordanlev 11y ago
  I looked into this but iTunes Match appears to only work for official albums it "knows". I am really into live music and have a ton of concert recordings (legal -- bands that allow audience taping), and also a lot of recordings of my own music I've made with various bands. Thanks for the suggestion though, I appreciate it.
rawTruthHurts 11y ago
Well, it shouldn't come as a surprise, that's Apple's policy towards their products.
- josefresco 11y ago
  I had the same reaction. I've owned older Macs and always found them- for one reason or another locked into the OS that it shipped with. My advice to family considering buying Apple hardware comes with a caveat about running older hardware/software and how Apple's approach to that, is to simply buy new hardware.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    It doesn't look that way to me at all. The latest Mac OS X runs on computers as old as 2007. Apple hasn't dropped any hardware support for the last two OS revisions. I agree that it's pretty dumb that you can't locally sync music on a new iPhone without newer hardware. It connects over USB, so make it available as a USB mass storage device and be done with it! But that's separate from supporting newer OSes on older hardware, which Apple is pretty decent at.
    - saidajigumi 11y ago
      It would need to be a virtual filesystem presented as a USB mass storage device, though. I've thought about this for years, but don't know whether anyone's actually done it yet. Early iPods, etc. were definitely not powerful enough to handle this, but this should be cake for even modest smartphone hardware. Basically the VFS would present an interface to the music library, protect the library against mid-sync disconnects, etc. Likewise, the "host" computer wouldn't be able to screw up the device filesystem (or even know what the read FS type is), access non-music user data, or have low-level access to device storage.
      - mook 11y ago
        It's not USB mass storage, but what you're describing sounds like MTP. It's the protocol used in a bunch of old (first-iPhone-era) media players, and I think the default for Android 5+ or so. Used to write software to interact with it on the computer side with the Microsoft Windows Media Player SDKs. It did have the whole VFS and send the data over then commit thing.
gambiting 11y ago
If you are looking for an actual solution - I guess you could start Windows 10 in a VM(MS provides free images for testing purposes), install latest iTunes on it so you could upgrade your phone to iOS 9, then continue using your mac and its version of iTunes. By the way - El Capitan supports mid-2007 iMacs: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-older-mac/ http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-o...
- carlob 11y ago
  For the love of god don't update an old computer that works perfectly fine on 10.6 on anything starting from Lion. All you'll get is bugs and confusing UXes.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    Meh, I'm running my mid-2009 MacBook Pro on ElCapitan and everything works fine. I put an SSD in so it's actually quite usable,no complaints really.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      "ElCapitan and everything works fine" Finder went from broke in Yosemite to really broke in El Capitan. I'm getting sick of filing bugs (like Finder not saving place in folder when going up / down hierarchy). El Capitan's Finder now crashes if you have a window showing a lot of files and execute a mv of some of those files in a Terminal. Its getting worse and worse. They need to pull a Snow Leopard again.
    - carlob 11y ago
      I feel you haven't even read my comment. OSX has been getting buggier and buggier after Snow Leopard, I never once said it was more resource hungry.
- jordanlev 11y ago
  Thanks for the info. Unfortunately my iMac is "early 2007" so I missed the El Cap (and Mavericks/Yosemite) cutoff by a few months. As for the VPC, that is a fantastic idea. Might even just wipe the whole thing and install Windows as the primary OS (then copy back my music from an external drive backup). Surely a windows license is cheaper than a new machine (or is it? Been a while since I've bought windows or PC's).
simonh 11y ago
Can't you do an Over The Air upgrade on the phone?
- untog 11y ago
  I'm not sure the phone would then sync with iTunes any more.

corin_ 11y ago

I wonder what data Apple have on who will be affected by things like this, how many will upgrade their PC, how many will put off buying a phone, how many will leave Apple behind, and how those things balance out to impact their profits. I imagine they'd think a lot about it and made the decision that it's more profitable to not care about your use case, but would be interested to know how they approach it.

epmatsw 11y ago
From a data point of one, when my grandma's old Mac Mini stopped being able to sync to or update her iPad, we ended up just caving and buying her a new Mac Mini. For the life of a computer, it really just wasn't worth the hassle.

projct 11y ago

iTunes Match is an option that is cheaper than buying a new mac.

jordanlev 11y ago
I looked into this but iTunes Match appears to only work for official albums it "knows". I am really into live music and have a ton of concert recordings (legal -- bands that allow audience taping), and also a lot of recordings of my own music I've made with various bands. Thanks for the suggestion though, I appreciate it.

rawTruthHurts 11y ago

Well, it shouldn't come as a surprise, that's Apple's policy towards their products.

josefresco 11y ago
I had the same reaction. I've owned older Macs and always found them- for one reason or another locked into the OS that it shipped with. My advice to family considering buying Apple hardware comes with a caveat about running older hardware/software and how Apple's approach to that, is to simply buy new hardware.
- mikeash 11y ago
  It doesn't look that way to me at all. The latest Mac OS X runs on computers as old as 2007. Apple hasn't dropped any hardware support for the last two OS revisions. I agree that it's pretty dumb that you can't locally sync music on a new iPhone without newer hardware. It connects over USB, so make it available as a USB mass storage device and be done with it! But that's separate from supporting newer OSes on older hardware, which Apple is pretty decent at.
  - saidajigumi 11y ago
    It would need to be a virtual filesystem presented as a USB mass storage device, though. I've thought about this for years, but don't know whether anyone's actually done it yet. Early iPods, etc. were definitely not powerful enough to handle this, but this should be cake for even modest smartphone hardware. Basically the VFS would present an interface to the music library, protect the library against mid-sync disconnects, etc. Likewise, the "host" computer wouldn't be able to screw up the device filesystem (or even know what the read FS type is), access non-music user data, or have low-level access to device storage.
    - mook 11y ago
      It's not USB mass storage, but what you're describing sounds like MTP. It's the protocol used in a bunch of old (first-iPhone-era) media players, and I think the default for Android 5+ or so. Used to write software to interact with it on the computer side with the Microsoft Windows Media Player SDKs. It did have the whole VFS and send the data over then commit thing.

gambiting 11y ago

If you are looking for an actual solution - I guess you could start Windows 10 in a VM(MS provides free images for testing purposes), install latest iTunes on it so you could upgrade your phone to iOS 9, then continue using your mac and its version of iTunes. By the way - El Capitan supports mid-2007 iMacs: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-older-mac/ http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-o...

carlob 11y ago
For the love of god don't update an old computer that works perfectly fine on 10.6 on anything starting from Lion. All you'll get is bugs and confusing UXes.
- gambiting 11y ago
  Meh, I'm running my mid-2009 MacBook Pro on ElCapitan and everything works fine. I put an SSD in so it's actually quite usable,no complaints really.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    "ElCapitan and everything works fine" Finder went from broke in Yosemite to really broke in El Capitan. I'm getting sick of filing bugs (like Finder not saving place in folder when going up / down hierarchy). El Capitan's Finder now crashes if you have a window showing a lot of files and execute a mv of some of those files in a Terminal. Its getting worse and worse. They need to pull a Snow Leopard again.
  - carlob 11y ago
    I feel you haven't even read my comment. OSX has been getting buggier and buggier after Snow Leopard, I never once said it was more resource hungry.
jordanlev 11y ago
Thanks for the info. Unfortunately my iMac is "early 2007" so I missed the El Cap (and Mavericks/Yosemite) cutoff by a few months. As for the VPC, that is a fantastic idea. Might even just wipe the whole thing and install Windows as the primary OS (then copy back my music from an external drive backup). Surely a windows license is cheaper than a new machine (or is it? Been a while since I've bought windows or PC's).

simonh 11y ago

Can't you do an Over The Air upgrade on the phone?

untog 11y ago
I'm not sure the phone would then sync with iTunes any more.