6 ms·

Chrome no longer supports Mac OS X 10.5

28 points by pizza 14y ago

reustle 14y ago
"In addition, you’ll be unable to install Chrome on any Mac still running 10.5" This kind of stuff needs to stop. Chrome in particular has the whole fancy installer thing. What if I have an old machine sitting around that I simply need chrome on (even an older version)? Don't support it, that is fine, but don't prevent me from doing something that used to be possible.
- binarycrusader 14y ago
  What? This is not a case where the simply flipped a magic flag in the installer to prevent you from using software "just because". The belief is that they are doing this because they're requiring a new version of the OS -- they're using newer APIs that aren't available in 10.5.
  - bonaldi 14y ago
    They mean you will not be able to install existing versions. The ones that presently work.
    - binarycrusader 14y ago
      Even if the installer could handle older versions, Google has chosen to not even archive older versions of Chrome and only makes the latest version available. Third-party sources such as filehippo and others have archived every version of Google Chrome produced since 2009(?) and that's the only option. Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions.
      - jonknee 14y ago
        It would be bizarre if Google provided old versions of Chrome. Chrome tries hard to make you not even notice what version you're running, running a version that is not the latest is against Chrome's ethos. They would have to be special builds too because the first thing it would do is upgrade you to the latest (if your system is supported of course). That would be amusing, but useless. > Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions. It's actually extremely popular with web developers because almost everyone is on the current version. It's awesome.
    - pkamb 14y ago
      You will be able to install a working version, provided you can find a link to it. The only "real" download of Chrome is the current version, so installing that file won't work. But if you find an older version via a 3rd-party archive, it will still install.
    - eli 14y ago
      Unlike some types of software, browsers actually do suffer bit rot. Running an old, unsupported browser is dangerous. If Google isn't going to support (i.e. provide security fixes) for the branch that supports older versions of OS X, it would be irresponsible to let people continue to install it.
      - minikites 14y ago
        I'm doing pretty okay with Safari 4.1 on my PowerBook running 10.4. What exactly is "bit rot", are the magnetic particles on my disk going to grow mold?
        runn1ng 14y ago
        Security issues, most likely. Plus new HTML features, but they are secondary.
        eli 14y ago
        But isn't Safari 4.1 still supported by Apple? The issue isn't the age of the codebase -- it's whether anyone is still bothering to patch known security issues!
        minikites 14y ago
        From Wikipedia: Safari 4.1.3 is the final version for Tiger as of 18 November 2010.[9] Despite not having received security updates since then, Tiger remains popular with Power Mac users...
        eli 14y ago
        Yikes. Surely there have been security bugs discovered since then, no? I wouldn't use that browser.
        batista 14y ago
        Sort of. Cosmic rays, for one. And bad sectors. But, half-joking aside, it's dangerous to run old browsers with no security updates. It might not have bitten you, and it might never bit you (like how you can run off a red light lots of times and you might not crash into anyone). That doesn't make it less dangerous than running a browser WITH security updates.
  - reustle 14y ago
    For example, downloading Chrome v10 may work on 10.5 now, but downloading Chrome v10 will not work in the future. That's not how software versioning works. I could be wrong (and I hope I am) but I remember fighting with this a few years ago on a windows machine.
    - binarycrusader 14y ago
      I fail to see how software versioning is related here. Google simply doesn't archive older versions of Chrome and doesn't offer them for download. This is covered in their support FAQ. They only support and offer the latest version.
mhurron 14y ago
Well neither does Apple. That's still kind of irritating for those that have a PPC Mac though.
- Jyaif 14y ago
  Chrome has never worked on PPC Macs.
  - mhurron 14y ago
    Wow really? This is even less of a story then. Snow Leopard worked head and shoulders better on Intel Macs then Leopard did.
cancelbubble 14y ago
Goes hand-in-hand with Apple’s own lack of support for Safari updates in Snow Leopard (~ 3 year old OS, I think): http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/safari-6/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/safari-6/
sidcool 14y ago
Isn't that news a bit old?
Timmy_C 14y ago
What surprises me is that Chrome is still supported on Windows XP. I'm further surprised that you can run Chrome on a Pentium 3 if you're running Linux. The first Pentium 3 computers were introduced in 1999.
- jrajav 14y ago
  Microsoft still supports Windows XP. Apple does not still support 10.5.
denzil_correa 14y ago
Isn't this at odds against the Chrome OS motivation/aim?
- ionforce 14y ago
  Not if the market share for 10.5 is super small or the cost of maintaining older APIs is too high.
- alanh 14y ago
  Perhaps in theory, but 10.5 is a small slice of OS X users (and three versions behind, now, which means more than it does in the Windows world.)
dos1 14y ago
Apple's incessant need to obsolete their old operating systems is surprising to me. I would think this would hurt their overall adoption rates (especially long term) as people get sick of constantly upgrading their OS and dealing with any fallout that results. I for one will never run OSX again due to the constant need for upgrades. I have one of the original Intel MacBooks (with the Core Duo) and after upgrading to 10.6 my wireless card quit working. Rolling back to 10.5 fixed it. Although, with their popularity skyrocketing, maybe I'm the only one who has issues with new OSX versions.
- ionforce 14y ago
  Yes. You got it. You are the only one. Next. Maybe Apple's "incessant need to obsolete" is part of their secret sauce. They're doing pretty well for themselves these days. Look at Microsoft, Captain "Never Break Anything". How are they doing?
  - RegEx 14y ago
    You're not clever, you're just rude.
- alanh 14y ago
  I love updating my Mac. Each new version makes it better, and problems seem to be minor and rare. It’s worlds different from the Windows upgrade <del>rat-race</del> <ins>process</ins>. That said, yes, the hardware seems to have a shorter shelf-life than would be ideal. Your computer is, what, 2005 vintage? Seven years is too short, but still an old age in the world of technology, and longer than most competitors’ hardware lasts.
  - pkamb 14y ago
    > Each new version makes it better Since 10.6 that has definitely not been true.
    - alanh 14y ago
      Thanks for the objective fact, dear sir. While that may be true w.r.t. stability, the functionality, graphics, and polish have only gotten better. Security, too: consider FileVault 2. That’s what I like.
jonknee 14y ago
So you don't have to look it up like I did, 10.5 Leopard came out five years ago. I'm sure they know the usage numbers better than me, but the number of people who haven't upgraded in five years and who use an alternate browser has to be quite small. And FWIW, Apple requires 10.7.4 for Safari. Update: in a by no means statistically valid way, I pulled the stats from Google Analytics for my website over the last 30 days... 186,883 Mac visits (if it shows where things are going, iOS had 814,201 visits!), with 33,934 using Intel 10.5.X. This is higher than I was predicting (18.16% of total Mac visits). It's actually about 3 times higher than the number of people on 10.8. However, most of these people are using Safari and just 2,040 were Chrome users( 1.09% of total Mac visits). If anyone with a more Mac heavy site has numbers, I'd be curious.
- se85 14y ago
  The stats across a number of large Australia media entertainment sites I was involved with earlier this year were between 1.5% to 2.0% mac chrome users from january to march. Uniques over this period were between 2-3 million. I'm part of that small percentage although I'm trying to change to Safari!
  - jonknee 14y ago
    Mac Chrome users as a percentage of total users or as a percentage of Mac users? My traffic breaks down as Macs making up 7.46% total visits and Chrome is used by 7.91% of those Mac users (the percentages are oddly close, but unrelated). Safari makes up the vast majority of Mac browser share, 76.30% for me. But it's an even smaller slice when looking at who's using 10.5. Fraction of a fraction of a fraction of users (Mac > Chrome > 10.5).
    - se85 14y ago
      Percentage of total users which are using mac with chrome across the entire percentage of total users. The total percentage of Mac+iOS across the total uniques was quite high at around 25% and like your figures, a huge portion of this was from iOS users, not Mac users. Never thought to do a run down by OSX version but I agree that the numbers would be very small.
jakejake 14y ago
I don't really like seeing things phased out that still work perfectly well. But, selfishly I'm glad Chrome is doing this because our main software product is becoming impossible to continue supporting 10.5 as well. We already planned to phase out 10.5 support at the end of the year, but I think with large vendors like google this will hopefully make people realize that we sometimes need to upgrade in order to keep up with modern features that everybody expects.
justincormack 14y ago
The only reason to run 10.5 is for a ppc Mac and chrome never supported that...

28 points by pizza 14y ago

"In addition, you’ll be unable to install Chrome on any Mac still running 10.5" This kind of stuff needs to stop. Chrome in particular has the whole fancy installer thing. What if I have an old machine sitting around that I simply need chrome on (even an older version)? Don't support it, that is fine, but don't prevent me from doing something that used to be possible.

binarycrusader 14y ago
What? This is not a case where the simply flipped a magic flag in the installer to prevent you from using software "just because". The belief is that they are doing this because they're requiring a new version of the OS -- they're using newer APIs that aren't available in 10.5.
- bonaldi 14y ago
  They mean you will not be able to install existing versions. The ones that presently work.
  - binarycrusader 14y ago
    Even if the installer could handle older versions, Google has chosen to not even archive older versions of Chrome and only makes the latest version available. Third-party sources such as filehippo and others have archived every version of Google Chrome produced since 2009(?) and that's the only option. Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions.
    - jonknee 14y ago
      It would be bizarre if Google provided old versions of Chrome. Chrome tries hard to make you not even notice what version you're running, running a version that is not the latest is against Chrome's ethos. They would have to be special builds too because the first thing it would do is upgrade you to the latest (if your system is supported of course). That would be amusing, but useless. > Google's stance is that they only support the latest version. Needless to say, this policy hasn't been popular with web developers who need to test older versions. It's actually extremely popular with web developers because almost everyone is on the current version. It's awesome.
  - pkamb 14y ago
    You will be able to install a working version, provided you can find a link to it. The only "real" download of Chrome is the current version, so installing that file won't work. But if you find an older version via a 3rd-party archive, it will still install.
  - eli 14y ago
    Unlike some types of software, browsers actually do suffer bit rot. Running an old, unsupported browser is dangerous. If Google isn't going to support (i.e. provide security fixes) for the branch that supports older versions of OS X, it would be irresponsible to let people continue to install it.
    - minikites 14y ago
      I'm doing pretty okay with Safari 4.1 on my PowerBook running 10.4. What exactly is "bit rot", are the magnetic particles on my disk going to grow mold?
      - runn1ng 14y ago
        Security issues, most likely. Plus new HTML features, but they are secondary.
      - eli 14y ago
        But isn't Safari 4.1 still supported by Apple? The issue isn't the age of the codebase -- it's whether anyone is still bothering to patch known security issues!
        minikites 14y ago
        From Wikipedia: Safari 4.1.3 is the final version for Tiger as of 18 November 2010.[9] Despite not having received security updates since then, Tiger remains popular with Power Mac users...
        eli 14y ago
        Yikes. Surely there have been security bugs discovered since then, no? I wouldn't use that browser.
      - batista 14y ago
        Sort of. Cosmic rays, for one. And bad sectors. But, half-joking aside, it's dangerous to run old browsers with no security updates. It might not have bitten you, and it might never bit you (like how you can run off a red light lots of times and you might not crash into anyone). That doesn't make it less dangerous than running a browser WITH security updates.
- reustle 14y ago
  For example, downloading Chrome v10 may work on 10.5 now, but downloading Chrome v10 will not work in the future. That's not how software versioning works. I could be wrong (and I hope I am) but I remember fighting with this a few years ago on a windows machine.
  - binarycrusader 14y ago
    I fail to see how software versioning is related here. Google simply doesn't archive older versions of Chrome and doesn't offer them for download. This is covered in their support FAQ. They only support and offer the latest version.

mhurron 14y ago

Well neither does Apple. That's still kind of irritating for those that have a PPC Mac though.

Jyaif 14y ago
Chrome has never worked on PPC Macs.
- mhurron 14y ago
  Wow really? This is even less of a story then. Snow Leopard worked head and shoulders better on Intel Macs then Leopard did.

cancelbubble 14y ago

Goes hand-in-hand with Apple’s own lack of support for Safari updates in Snow Leopard (~ 3 year old OS, I think): http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/safari-6/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/safari-6/

sidcool 14y ago

Isn't that news a bit old?

Timmy_C 14y ago

What surprises me is that Chrome is still supported on Windows XP. I'm further surprised that you can run Chrome on a Pentium 3 if you're running Linux. The first Pentium 3 computers were introduced in 1999.

jrajav 14y ago
Microsoft still supports Windows XP. Apple does not still support 10.5.

denzil_correa 14y ago

Isn't this at odds against the Chrome OS motivation/aim?

ionforce 14y ago
Not if the market share for 10.5 is super small or the cost of maintaining older APIs is too high.
alanh 14y ago
Perhaps in theory, but 10.5 is a small slice of OS X users (and three versions behind, now, which means more than it does in the Windows world.)

dos1 14y ago

Apple's incessant need to obsolete their old operating systems is surprising to me. I would think this would hurt their overall adoption rates (especially long term) as people get sick of constantly upgrading their OS and dealing with any fallout that results. I for one will never run OSX again due to the constant need for upgrades. I have one of the original Intel MacBooks (with the Core Duo) and after upgrading to 10.6 my wireless card quit working. Rolling back to 10.5 fixed it. Although, with their popularity skyrocketing, maybe I'm the only one who has issues with new OSX versions.

ionforce 14y ago
Yes. You got it. You are the only one. Next. Maybe Apple's "incessant need to obsolete" is part of their secret sauce. They're doing pretty well for themselves these days. Look at Microsoft, Captain "Never Break Anything". How are they doing?
- RegEx 14y ago
  You're not clever, you're just rude.
alanh 14y ago
I love updating my Mac. Each new version makes it better, and problems seem to be minor and rare. It’s worlds different from the Windows upgrade <del>rat-race</del> <ins>process</ins>. That said, yes, the hardware seems to have a shorter shelf-life than would be ideal. Your computer is, what, 2005 vintage? Seven years is too short, but still an old age in the world of technology, and longer than most competitors’ hardware lasts.
- pkamb 14y ago
  > Each new version makes it better Since 10.6 that has definitely not been true.
  - alanh 14y ago
    Thanks for the objective fact, dear sir. While that may be true w.r.t. stability, the functionality, graphics, and polish have only gotten better. Security, too: consider FileVault 2. That’s what I like.

jonknee 14y ago

So you don't have to look it up like I did, 10.5 Leopard came out five years ago. I'm sure they know the usage numbers better than me, but the number of people who haven't upgraded in five years and who use an alternate browser has to be quite small. And FWIW, Apple requires 10.7.4 for Safari. Update: in a by no means statistically valid way, I pulled the stats from Google Analytics for my website over the last 30 days... 186,883 Mac visits (if it shows where things are going, iOS had 814,201 visits!), with 33,934 using Intel 10.5.X. This is higher than I was predicting (18.16% of total Mac visits). It's actually about 3 times higher than the number of people on 10.8. However, most of these people are using Safari and just 2,040 were Chrome users( 1.09% of total Mac visits). If anyone with a more Mac heavy site has numbers, I'd be curious.

se85 14y ago
The stats across a number of large Australia media entertainment sites I was involved with earlier this year were between 1.5% to 2.0% mac chrome users from january to march. Uniques over this period were between 2-3 million. I'm part of that small percentage although I'm trying to change to Safari!
- jonknee 14y ago
  Mac Chrome users as a percentage of total users or as a percentage of Mac users? My traffic breaks down as Macs making up 7.46% total visits and Chrome is used by 7.91% of those Mac users (the percentages are oddly close, but unrelated). Safari makes up the vast majority of Mac browser share, 76.30% for me. But it's an even smaller slice when looking at who's using 10.5. Fraction of a fraction of a fraction of users (Mac > Chrome > 10.5).
  - se85 14y ago
    Percentage of total users which are using mac with chrome across the entire percentage of total users. The total percentage of Mac+iOS across the total uniques was quite high at around 25% and like your figures, a huge portion of this was from iOS users, not Mac users. Never thought to do a run down by OSX version but I agree that the numbers would be very small.

jakejake 14y ago

I don't really like seeing things phased out that still work perfectly well. But, selfishly I'm glad Chrome is doing this because our main software product is becoming impossible to continue supporting 10.5 as well. We already planned to phase out 10.5 support at the end of the year, but I think with large vendors like google this will hopefully make people realize that we sometimes need to upgrade in order to keep up with modern features that everybody expects.

justincormack 14y ago

The only reason to run 10.5 is for a ppc Mac and chrome never supported that...