30 ms·

To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware. OS X has kinda gone the way of Chrome, with most users on the newest versi

To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware. OS X has kinda gone the way of Chrome, with most users on the newest version.

toong 12y ago
They are now. I remember buying upgrades ?
JustSomeNobody 12y ago
To be even more fair, there's been a number of issues with Yosemite that make some of us want to stick with Mavericks. Just because something is free doesn't make it better.
- gabeio 12y ago
  Just because it's paid doesn't make it better either.
- thebouv 12y ago
  I'm with you on this; I can't leave Mavericks just yet. Every colleague I have that's moved on has had numerous issues with their machine. And now this crap. Ugh.
  - EC1 12y ago
    What kind of issues? I've literally noticed no differences besides UI.
    - bdcravens 12y ago
      Random bugginess. When I came into office, plugged my machine into TB display (have one at home, so should be no issue), I got nothing but black. Could get a login prompt, and even closing lid kept backlight on. Only solution was a hard reboot.
      - EC1 12y ago
        Oh true. I just realized I have the same issue. I connect my macbook to my hengedock which has 3 monitors attached. If I disconnect my macbook and hook up my tv via hdmi, I plug it into my hengedock and my 3rd monitor is just black while plugged into that hdmi port. I always restart it after watching tv and then plugging my monitors to get it to work.
    - PopsiclePete 12y ago
      FWIW, 10.10.0 for me was perfect. 10.10.1 broke my wifi. Anytime the computer woke up from sleep, I'd have to reset the wifi card so it could find my access point. After 10.10.2 came out, I got my second-ever full computer lock-up. I've had the same OS image since 10.5 (migrated and upgraded multiple time, obviously) and this was the second time my computer required a hard reboot. And this was while watching a video in the Steam client. I was in awe. A video forcing me to do a full reboot? Brought back memories of Windows ME. While "upgrading" to 10.10.3, my computer failed to reboot itself. It just sat there, black screen, with a little spinner, for about 2 hours. Hard reboot, everything is back to normal. For now. I fully expect 10.10.4 to actually destroy my hard drive at this point, as well as cause my monitor to spontaneously get 30-40 dead pixels. Sucky part is, I feel I have no alternative. Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer. And don't get me started on getting a half-decent dev environment going. Ugh. Linux is almost there. It's a crap shoot for me, unless it's running in a VM. I never know which kernel update will fix my trackpad/break my sound/wifi and which will fix the wifi, break suspend, fix sound, but break xrandr or some other archaic XWindows-related technology. So, OS X it is, for the time being.
      - com2kid 12y ago
        > Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer. Microsoft Signature PCs solve this problem. :) http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signature-Edition-Computers/categoryID.69916600 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...
        PopsiclePete 12y ago
        Don't know how many of these are at, say, Costco. Which is where many people shop. I'm never buying a Windows laptop, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm still the resident "family IT specialist". And I know, I just know I'm going to be asked lots of questions I don't have the patience for, as these poor bastards wonder why their computers are slow, all because the shitty OEM wanted to make a few cents off pre-installed shitware. It doesn't affect me directly, I don't touch Windows laptops unless I'm wearing gloves, but the principle of the thing pisses me off. You're being treated without respect, basically. It's like a car manufacturer selling you a car with a "feature" that takes away 50 HP to play a jingle every time you turn on your headlights, all because the got paid $7.34 by the jingle manufacturer.
    - xenophonf 12y ago
      I have all kinds of problems with Bluetooth, specifically with pairing or connecting devices. Hibernation is all kinds of wonky, too. If it's been asleep for a few hours, it will hibernate when I plug it into AC power without resuming it first. (I really wish there was a way to tell it to hibernate if it's been suspended for some user-settable amount of time like I can with Windows, but that's not a problem specific to Mac OS X 10.10.)
    - thebouv 12y ago
      Generally much slower response, Final Cut breaking, trouble with hanging apps needing force quits, and it goes on. Minor by themselves; scary when it all seemed to happen after each person upgraded. Maybe I've waited long enough before moving. Especially now that this vuln is known about.
    - wiredfool 12y ago
      My wife and I have identical 2013 13" MBAs. Mine is on Mavericks. Hers, which was bought a little later, is on Yosemite. So, as close as possible, we've got identical HW with different software. - My battery lasts longer, maybe 2-3 hours more per charge. I nearly never see < 50%, she's hitting 10% at the end of the day. (Note that both are good enough, but they're way different) - Mail search sucks on Yosemite. Today, we were searching for subjects that I know are there because I'm looking right at them, and nothing is coming up. - Safari does something funky with process per tab that manages to orphan process that take a bunch of cpu/memory. - Time machine is really touchy about backing up to the server over wifi. The last few times, it's had to make a new backup on the Yosemite machine. Mine misses a backup every day or so, but that's just an hourly miss, not a full rebuild. We're considering blowing away her machine and pushing it back to mavericks with Time Machine/fresh install.
- enlightenedfool 12y ago
  My 2009 imac took 3 sec to respond to each click with Yosemite. Got frustrated and installed Mint and it works great!
- wwweston 12y ago
  Yep. JWZ used to say that Linux is only free if you don't value your time. OS X has many merits on this front, but since 10.3 I've found that the first few dot releases of OS X have the same caveats often enough (both in terms of bugs/hazards and in terms of gratuitous UI "progress") that it usually seems better to wait past .x.4/5. Now there's this, of course. Since the problem showed up in 2011, maybe I should go back to Snow Leopard; I can't think of a single valuable change to OS X since then...
  - sls 12y ago
    > JWZ used to say that Linux is only free if you don't value your time. My reply to that has always been that Windows is only $300 if you don't value your time. (Preserving archaic cost of Windows to match JWZ quote.) The implication that the one system is free and time-consuming and the other moderately in price but not time-consuming is entirely false. At the time, for many requirements, configuring and administering a Windows machine would have been more time-consuming than for Linux. It's also glossing over the fact that you can't horizontally scale your $-per-cpu/server solution once you do have the configuration worked out, without going back to the well for more money. This amusing and glib quote also deliberately glosses over the "freedom" part of free software, which is essential. For example, I wonder if Google would exist today if not for a free unix workalike.
    - minot 12y ago
      Same thing when people say if you're not the customer, you're the product. That is a logical fallacy because you are still a product even if you pay for the software.
    - obituary_latte 12y ago
      here we see - in their natural habitat - the elusive yet ever present ARGUMENTUS SELFICUS EXEMPLITICUS. A rare treat, indeed.
    - Retric 12y ago
      The point is when you include your time your comparing ~10k products and there purchase price is a rounding error, not that Linux is inferior because it's free.
- marssaxman 12y ago
  I miss 10.6.8.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    That's why I Carbon Copy Cloner'd my Snow Leopard partition to a USB HDD! Pity I can't actually boot it on my 2012 i7 (kernel panics ahoy). If anyone knows how to get around this, I would appreciate it as it would be truly marvellous to be able to test software that I've written under it.
osxrand 12y ago
Indeed, I'm running 10.10 on a 2006 Mac Pro, and it's running really really well (boot.efi replaced to get it working, not supported:). I was surprised just how well it's working tbh.
sbarre 12y ago
Maybe most personal users but those of us in larger IT-managed organizations don't always have the luxury of updating on day one (point: I am on 10.9.5 right now).
greedo 12y ago
I'm currently running 10.10.3 on a Mac Pro 1,1, at almost 9 years of use. Of course 10.10 isn't supported by Apple, but it works just fine, and with the combination of an SSD and cheap RAM, I imagine I can get another 3-4 years out of this desktop barring a hardware failure that pushes me to a new system.
- hyc_symas 12y ago
  ... and now that you've posted that, I fully expect a mysterious hardware failure to suddenly manifest....
  - greedo 12y ago
    The good thing is that eBay is flooded with cheap old Mac Pros, so parts won't be hard to come by.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      Such beautiful cases too!
tomswartz07 12y ago
The OS update might be free, but that's not the only reason that a number of large deployments might stay at a single version. For us IT Shops, its almost exclusively about ensuring support for the hundreds of other software programs. I see a lot of folks arguing otherwise, and I'm not sure they realize this. Sure, it works fine for the 'isolated single user', but it's totally different in a large deployment model.
tjr 12y ago
I have a lot of music production software on my Mac, which doesn't all necessarily get updated to work with the latest OS X right away. Upgrading the operating system tends to be a maze of determining what works and what doesn't, possibly including paying for updates of software besides the OS. I generally put off doing a major Mac OS update for as long as possible.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  It's even worse that every update makes you wonder if your FireWire interface and control software will ever work or run again, even though you're running on THE SAME HARDWARE as before; the OS update typically breaks it.
rcthompson 12y ago
"Most users on the newest version"? Of the seven or eight Macs at my workplace, my personal Macbook is the only one running the latest OSX.
- azinman2 12y ago
  Ya the stats I've seen indicate that a considerable chunk are still on 10.6, for example. I forget where but I'm sure a Google search will yield it.
oxide 12y ago
sounds like macs are only in homes from your perspective.
dsjoerg 12y ago
[citation needed]
- matt4077 12y ago
  80% on 10.9 or 10.10: http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-statistics-1-in-5-macs-still-unsupported/ http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-st... Only 50% on Windows 7 or 8: https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov Oh, wait, Windows 7 is from 2009. Only 10% use a Windows younger than two years.
  - barrkel 12y ago
    A large chunk of this is due to business use of Windows. Microsoft would not be able to get away with the shenanigans that Apple are pulling here.
    - s_q_b 12y ago
      Don't worry, my company uses plenty of Macs, and they're plenty upset. As does the U.S. government. I wouldn't count on this "oh, we're just not going to backport the update" sticking around. Unless they want to loose all of their government and commercial sales.
      - Alupis 12y ago
        > As does the U.S. government. The government is largely Windows PC's (mostly XP and Win7).
      - xenophonf 12y ago
        Alupis, I support federal government scientists (biologists, chemists, entomologists, etc.), and many of them use Macs. Naturally, there are more Windows PCs than there are Macs, but there are plenty of Macs in our labs.
Alupis 12y ago
> To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware Unless your hardware has been made "incompatible" by Apple (not for any technical reason, but simply because they wish you'd buy new hardware).
- wtallis 12y ago
  What hardware have they dropped support for without a technical reason? To my knowledge, the only Intel Macs they've dropped support for are ones with 32-bit processors, 32-bit firmware (requiring a 32-bit kernel and drivers even if the processor is 64-bit), or really old GPUs that can't support recent versions of OpenGL.
  - cmurf 12y ago
    To my knowledge no Linux distro packages install media supporting 32-bit firmware and 64-bit kernel+CPU, but it's definitely possible to built a 32-bit GRUB EFI binary and have it load and execute a 64-bit kernel on a 64-bit CPU. I've done it on such a Mac. And there are a number of tablets built this way also (unfortunately).
    - wtallis 12y ago
      Intel only contributed the code for that a year ago, so while we now know it can be done, there's no particular reason to believe that it's easy to get working properly. The messy mix of EFI 1.x and UEFI 2.x that Apple uses could make things even trickier.
  - xserve2009 12y ago
    Early 2009 X-Serve? It has a quad-core Xeon processor. [update] I am wrong. It is the late 2008 X-Serve that won't upgrade ... Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US Supported H/W: iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Xserve (Early 2009) from https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/ https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/
vacri 12y ago
usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware At my last office we had older macs, a mix of laptops and desktops. They all ran slow, with one user's mac pro using all 4GB RAM on a fresh boot with nothing loaded. These folks were normal users, not power users. When a new OSX release would come out, a few people would upgrade, have a ton of problems, and warn everyone else. I ran linux myself, and was occasionally called over to help with an OSX problem, and I could never understand how my colleagues could stand to work on such slow computers. In my experience, older macs do not usually run well on newer OSX.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I recall the same pain with Vista - booting to an empty desktop saw insane RAM usage.
dguaraglia 12y ago
<citation needed> on the "run well even on 5+ years old hardware" bit. Sure, the OS will boot and work, but that doesn't mean things will work well. My late 2011 13-in MacBook Pro became unbearably slow after doing a clean upgrade to Mavericks. Only upgrading the memory to 8GB (which was not supported by Apple for that model) fixed the issue. Yosemite works, but looks like crap on anything without a retina display. Newer versions of iOS have a habit of making older phones become sluggish when compared with the same phone model running an older version of iOS. I'm not expecting Microsoft-level backwards compatibility, but as someone that has a somewhat complex development environment having to get everything to work on a new version of the OS can take up to a week of tweaking.
- MBCook 12y ago
  I'm currently running the latest version of Yosemite. I have a 2010 MacBook Pro 15 inch with eight gigs of RAM and an SSD. I've had little bugs and fiddly bugs with Safari and a few other things, but I really thinks it has worked fine for years and years on the machine. It noticeably improved when they added RAM compression (was that Mavericks?). I don't find the graphics a problem at all, although they do look better on my Retina iMac. I got used to them pretty quickly. I've been happy with most OS updates as they sped Safari up or fixed small bugs in it. Photos for OS X is a MASSIVE speed improvement over iPhoto. I know some people run into pretty catastrophic bugs from time to time, I haven't had that experience personally. The idea that the OS doesn't run well on five-year-old hardware is bunk. I have no need to replace my MacBook Pro, The only thing it's not good at is 3D (and it was never very good at that). If you have enough RAM and replace the spinning disk old Macs feel fantastic with a if you have enough RAM and replace the spinning hard drive old Mac still feel fantastic with a recent OS. If you're on a 5400rpm drive with 2GB I'm sure it's painful. But I know even 4GB machines fair very well. SSDs just make an insanely big difference.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    Did you upgrade to an SSD? I have a 2012 MBP non-retina with a slow Toshiba drive in it (it seems it is entirely coincidental whether you'll get a Toshiba or Samsung in your new MacBook!) and I am considering upgrading to an SSD. I use BootCamp (periodic Windows gaming) and have a bunch of large VMs within OSX, so I would be interested in how the upgrade went and where to look, how to clone my disk etc. etc.

To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware. OS X has kinda gone the way of Chrome, with most users on the newest version.

toong 12y ago

They are now. I remember buying upgrades ?

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

To be even more fair, there's been a number of issues with Yosemite that make some of us want to stick with Mavericks. Just because something is free doesn't make it better.

gabeio 12y ago
Just because it's paid doesn't make it better either.
thebouv 12y ago
I'm with you on this; I can't leave Mavericks just yet. Every colleague I have that's moved on has had numerous issues with their machine. And now this crap. Ugh.
- EC1 12y ago
  What kind of issues? I've literally noticed no differences besides UI.
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    Random bugginess. When I came into office, plugged my machine into TB display (have one at home, so should be no issue), I got nothing but black. Could get a login prompt, and even closing lid kept backlight on. Only solution was a hard reboot.
    - EC1 12y ago
      Oh true. I just realized I have the same issue. I connect my macbook to my hengedock which has 3 monitors attached. If I disconnect my macbook and hook up my tv via hdmi, I plug it into my hengedock and my 3rd monitor is just black while plugged into that hdmi port. I always restart it after watching tv and then plugging my monitors to get it to work.
  - PopsiclePete 12y ago
    FWIW, 10.10.0 for me was perfect. 10.10.1 broke my wifi. Anytime the computer woke up from sleep, I'd have to reset the wifi card so it could find my access point. After 10.10.2 came out, I got my second-ever full computer lock-up. I've had the same OS image since 10.5 (migrated and upgraded multiple time, obviously) and this was the second time my computer required a hard reboot. And this was while watching a video in the Steam client. I was in awe. A video forcing me to do a full reboot? Brought back memories of Windows ME. While "upgrading" to 10.10.3, my computer failed to reboot itself. It just sat there, black screen, with a little spinner, for about 2 hours. Hard reboot, everything is back to normal. For now. I fully expect 10.10.4 to actually destroy my hard drive at this point, as well as cause my monitor to spontaneously get 30-40 dead pixels. Sucky part is, I feel I have no alternative. Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer. And don't get me started on getting a half-decent dev environment going. Ugh. Linux is almost there. It's a crap shoot for me, unless it's running in a VM. I never know which kernel update will fix my trackpad/break my sound/wifi and which will fix the wifi, break suspend, fix sound, but break xrandr or some other archaic XWindows-related technology. So, OS X it is, for the time being.
    - com2kid 12y ago
      > Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer. Microsoft Signature PCs solve this problem. :) http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signature-Edition-Computers/categoryID.69916600 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...
      - PopsiclePete 12y ago
        Don't know how many of these are at, say, Costco. Which is where many people shop. I'm never buying a Windows laptop, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm still the resident "family IT specialist". And I know, I just know I'm going to be asked lots of questions I don't have the patience for, as these poor bastards wonder why their computers are slow, all because the shitty OEM wanted to make a few cents off pre-installed shitware. It doesn't affect me directly, I don't touch Windows laptops unless I'm wearing gloves, but the principle of the thing pisses me off. You're being treated without respect, basically. It's like a car manufacturer selling you a car with a "feature" that takes away 50 HP to play a jingle every time you turn on your headlights, all because the got paid $7.34 by the jingle manufacturer.
  - xenophonf 12y ago
    I have all kinds of problems with Bluetooth, specifically with pairing or connecting devices. Hibernation is all kinds of wonky, too. If it's been asleep for a few hours, it will hibernate when I plug it into AC power without resuming it first. (I really wish there was a way to tell it to hibernate if it's been suspended for some user-settable amount of time like I can with Windows, but that's not a problem specific to Mac OS X 10.10.)
  - thebouv 12y ago
    Generally much slower response, Final Cut breaking, trouble with hanging apps needing force quits, and it goes on. Minor by themselves; scary when it all seemed to happen after each person upgraded. Maybe I've waited long enough before moving. Especially now that this vuln is known about.
  - wiredfool 12y ago
    My wife and I have identical 2013 13" MBAs. Mine is on Mavericks. Hers, which was bought a little later, is on Yosemite. So, as close as possible, we've got identical HW with different software. - My battery lasts longer, maybe 2-3 hours more per charge. I nearly never see < 50%, she's hitting 10% at the end of the day. (Note that both are good enough, but they're way different) - Mail search sucks on Yosemite. Today, we were searching for subjects that I know are there because I'm looking right at them, and nothing is coming up. - Safari does something funky with process per tab that manages to orphan process that take a bunch of cpu/memory. - Time machine is really touchy about backing up to the server over wifi. The last few times, it's had to make a new backup on the Yosemite machine. Mine misses a backup every day or so, but that's just an hourly miss, not a full rebuild. We're considering blowing away her machine and pushing it back to mavericks with Time Machine/fresh install.
enlightenedfool 12y ago
My 2009 imac took 3 sec to respond to each click with Yosemite. Got frustrated and installed Mint and it works great!
wwweston 12y ago
Yep. JWZ used to say that Linux is only free if you don't value your time. OS X has many merits on this front, but since 10.3 I've found that the first few dot releases of OS X have the same caveats often enough (both in terms of bugs/hazards and in terms of gratuitous UI "progress") that it usually seems better to wait past .x.4/5. Now there's this, of course. Since the problem showed up in 2011, maybe I should go back to Snow Leopard; I can't think of a single valuable change to OS X since then...
- sls 12y ago
  > JWZ used to say that Linux is only free if you don't value your time. My reply to that has always been that Windows is only $300 if you don't value your time. (Preserving archaic cost of Windows to match JWZ quote.) The implication that the one system is free and time-consuming and the other moderately in price but not time-consuming is entirely false. At the time, for many requirements, configuring and administering a Windows machine would have been more time-consuming than for Linux. It's also glossing over the fact that you can't horizontally scale your $-per-cpu/server solution once you do have the configuration worked out, without going back to the well for more money. This amusing and glib quote also deliberately glosses over the "freedom" part of free software, which is essential. For example, I wonder if Google would exist today if not for a free unix workalike.
  - minot 12y ago
    Same thing when people say if you're not the customer, you're the product. That is a logical fallacy because you are still a product even if you pay for the software.
  - obituary_latte 12y ago
    here we see - in their natural habitat - the elusive yet ever present ARGUMENTUS SELFICUS EXEMPLITICUS. A rare treat, indeed.
  - Retric 12y ago
    The point is when you include your time your comparing ~10k products and there purchase price is a rounding error, not that Linux is inferior because it's free.
marssaxman 12y ago
I miss 10.6.8.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  That's why I Carbon Copy Cloner'd my Snow Leopard partition to a USB HDD! Pity I can't actually boot it on my 2012 i7 (kernel panics ahoy). If anyone knows how to get around this, I would appreciate it as it would be truly marvellous to be able to test software that I've written under it.

osxrand 12y ago

Indeed, I'm running 10.10 on a 2006 Mac Pro, and it's running really really well (boot.efi replaced to get it working, not supported:). I was surprised just how well it's working tbh.

sbarre 12y ago

Maybe most personal users but those of us in larger IT-managed organizations don't always have the luxury of updating on day one (point: I am on 10.9.5 right now).

greedo 12y ago

I'm currently running 10.10.3 on a Mac Pro 1,1, at almost 9 years of use. Of course 10.10 isn't supported by Apple, but it works just fine, and with the combination of an SSD and cheap RAM, I imagine I can get another 3-4 years out of this desktop barring a hardware failure that pushes me to a new system.

hyc_symas 12y ago
... and now that you've posted that, I fully expect a mysterious hardware failure to suddenly manifest....
- greedo 12y ago
  The good thing is that eBay is flooded with cheap old Mac Pros, so parts won't be hard to come by.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    Such beautiful cases too!

tomswartz07 12y ago

The OS update might be free, but that's not the only reason that a number of large deployments might stay at a single version. For us IT Shops, its almost exclusively about ensuring support for the hundreds of other software programs. I see a lot of folks arguing otherwise, and I'm not sure they realize this. Sure, it works fine for the 'isolated single user', but it's totally different in a large deployment model.

tjr 12y ago

I have a lot of music production software on my Mac, which doesn't all necessarily get updated to work with the latest OS X right away. Upgrading the operating system tends to be a maze of determining what works and what doesn't, possibly including paying for updates of software besides the OS. I generally put off doing a major Mac OS update for as long as possible.

72deluxe 12y ago
It's even worse that every update makes you wonder if your FireWire interface and control software will ever work or run again, even though you're running on THE SAME HARDWARE as before; the OS update typically breaks it.

rcthompson 12y ago

"Most users on the newest version"? Of the seven or eight Macs at my workplace, my personal Macbook is the only one running the latest OSX.

azinman2 12y ago
Ya the stats I've seen indicate that a considerable chunk are still on 10.6, for example. I forget where but I'm sure a Google search will yield it.

oxide 12y ago

sounds like macs are only in homes from your perspective.

dsjoerg 12y ago

[citation needed]

matt4077 12y ago
80% on 10.9 or 10.10: http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-statistics-1-in-5-macs-still-unsupported/ http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-st... Only 50% on Windows 7 or 8: https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov Oh, wait, Windows 7 is from 2009. Only 10% use a Windows younger than two years.
- barrkel 12y ago
  A large chunk of this is due to business use of Windows. Microsoft would not be able to get away with the shenanigans that Apple are pulling here.
  - s_q_b 12y ago
    Don't worry, my company uses plenty of Macs, and they're plenty upset. As does the U.S. government. I wouldn't count on this "oh, we're just not going to backport the update" sticking around. Unless they want to loose all of their government and commercial sales.
    - Alupis 12y ago
      > As does the U.S. government. The government is largely Windows PC's (mostly XP and Win7).
    - xenophonf 12y ago
      Alupis, I support federal government scientists (biologists, chemists, entomologists, etc.), and many of them use Macs. Naturally, there are more Windows PCs than there are Macs, but there are plenty of Macs in our labs.

Alupis 12y ago

> To be fair, OS X updates are free and usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware Unless your hardware has been made "incompatible" by Apple (not for any technical reason, but simply because they wish you'd buy new hardware).

wtallis 12y ago
What hardware have they dropped support for without a technical reason? To my knowledge, the only Intel Macs they've dropped support for are ones with 32-bit processors, 32-bit firmware (requiring a 32-bit kernel and drivers even if the processor is 64-bit), or really old GPUs that can't support recent versions of OpenGL.
- cmurf 12y ago
  To my knowledge no Linux distro packages install media supporting 32-bit firmware and 64-bit kernel+CPU, but it's definitely possible to built a 32-bit GRUB EFI binary and have it load and execute a 64-bit kernel on a 64-bit CPU. I've done it on such a Mac. And there are a number of tablets built this way also (unfortunately).
  - wtallis 12y ago
    Intel only contributed the code for that a year ago, so while we now know it can be done, there's no particular reason to believe that it's easy to get working properly. The messy mix of EFI 1.x and UEFI 2.x that Apple uses could make things even trickier.
- xserve2009 12y ago
  Early 2009 X-Serve? It has a quad-core Xeon processor. [update] I am wrong. It is the late 2008 X-Serve that won't upgrade ... Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US Supported H/W: iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Xserve (Early 2009) from https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/ https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

vacri 12y ago

usually run well even on 5+ years old hardware At my last office we had older macs, a mix of laptops and desktops. They all ran slow, with one user's mac pro using all 4GB RAM on a fresh boot with nothing loaded. These folks were normal users, not power users. When a new OSX release would come out, a few people would upgrade, have a ton of problems, and warn everyone else. I ran linux myself, and was occasionally called over to help with an OSX problem, and I could never understand how my colleagues could stand to work on such slow computers. In my experience, older macs do not usually run well on newer OSX.

72deluxe 12y ago
I recall the same pain with Vista - booting to an empty desktop saw insane RAM usage.

dguaraglia 12y ago

<citation needed> on the "run well even on 5+ years old hardware" bit. Sure, the OS will boot and work, but that doesn't mean things will work well. My late 2011 13-in MacBook Pro became unbearably slow after doing a clean upgrade to Mavericks. Only upgrading the memory to 8GB (which was not supported by Apple for that model) fixed the issue. Yosemite works, but looks like crap on anything without a retina display. Newer versions of iOS have a habit of making older phones become sluggish when compared with the same phone model running an older version of iOS. I'm not expecting Microsoft-level backwards compatibility, but as someone that has a somewhat complex development environment having to get everything to work on a new version of the OS can take up to a week of tweaking.

MBCook 12y ago
I'm currently running the latest version of Yosemite. I have a 2010 MacBook Pro 15 inch with eight gigs of RAM and an SSD. I've had little bugs and fiddly bugs with Safari and a few other things, but I really thinks it has worked fine for years and years on the machine. It noticeably improved when they added RAM compression (was that Mavericks?). I don't find the graphics a problem at all, although they do look better on my Retina iMac. I got used to them pretty quickly. I've been happy with most OS updates as they sped Safari up or fixed small bugs in it. Photos for OS X is a MASSIVE speed improvement over iPhoto. I know some people run into pretty catastrophic bugs from time to time, I haven't had that experience personally. The idea that the OS doesn't run well on five-year-old hardware is bunk. I have no need to replace my MacBook Pro, The only thing it's not good at is 3D (and it was never very good at that). If you have enough RAM and replace the spinning disk old Macs feel fantastic with a if you have enough RAM and replace the spinning hard drive old Mac still feel fantastic with a recent OS. If you're on a 5400rpm drive with 2GB I'm sure it's painful. But I know even 4GB machines fair very well. SSDs just make an insanely big difference.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Did you upgrade to an SSD? I have a 2012 MBP non-retina with a slow Toshiba drive in it (it seems it is entirely coincidental whether you'll get a Toshiba or Samsung in your new MacBook!) and I am considering upgrading to an SSD. I use BootCamp (periodic Windows gaming) and have a bunch of large VMs within OSX, so I would be interested in how the upgrade went and where to look, how to clone my disk etc. etc.