Why do mac users need 10.6 (4yrs old) while PCs can use winxp (11 yrs old) iTunes 11

Older OS' (10.5 and below) just aren't supported anymore.

Apple is a hardware company, they throw in the software to sell hardware.

MS a software company, that's their cash cow.

I think it's just Apple trying to be funny.

iTunes should've been able to support the older operating system as well, or at least Apple should at least try to make them compatible.

And of course, no powerpc macs can run iTunes 11. On the contrary, I'm surprised they were still updating iTunes for PowerPC Macs this long. lol

Seeing as I'm probably going to retire the last powerpc machines I have next year, I don't even care anymore. It was a good run.

iTunes likely has deeper integration with MacOS due to all coming from Apple.

In Windows, it's just an application sitting on top of everything else. There is nothing about it that would require 7. Many of Apple's customers, corporation workstations in particular are still on XP. Vista was largely skipped, so they are really only supporting 2 plaforms.

Funny, I brought this up when the 4 came out and no one seemed to care...

Actually, this probably highlights what a brilliant job Microsoft have done in terms of compatability with older operating systems

Have you considered that Apple looked at the market penetration of various operating systems and used this data to decide how much effort (ie $$) they would put in to backwards compatibility?

According to Wikipedia site statistics, there are twice as many XP systems touching their website as there are of OS X of any variant.

nickchallis92 said:

Actually, this probably highlights what a brilliant job Microsoft have done in terms of compatability with older operating systems

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Hmmmm...Brilliant and Microsoft in the same sentence? Seems like an oxymoron...like Jumbo Shrimp.

Because 10.6 was the first Mac os to run on intel chips, and there's no point in them designing software for PPC anymore.

There's no be a grand swapover like that in the PC world.

Because MS owns the desktop OS market.

sim667 said:

Because 10.6 was the first Mac os to run on intel chips, and there's no point in them designing software for PPC anymore.

There's no be a grand swapover like that in the PC world.

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Uhm...10.4 and .5 both ran on intel chips. 10.6 was the first os not support ppc.

It's really quite simple.

XP has a huge amount of people using it, it's about a third of all Windows users.
10.5? It doesn't have a third of all OS X users. It doesn't have a fifth. It might have a tenth, but even that is iffy.

OS X users update in larger numbers than Windows users.

ant the ninja said:

Uhm...10.4 and .5 both ran on intel chips. 10.6 was the first os not support ppc.

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True, but there was a transition to fully 64 bit on 10.6 from 10.5.

nickchallis92 said:

Actually, this probably highlights what a brilliant job Microsoft have done in terms of compatability with older operating systems

Click to expand...

Or... it could be that Windows 7/8 is still based on 11+ year old technology and so its no effort to write an app that works on both.

nickchallis92 said:

Actually, this probably highlights what a brilliant job Microsoft have done in terms of compatability with older operating systems

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Microsoft's obsession with backwards compatibility is what causes a lot of Windows' problems though. It's a two way street.

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MacBoobsPro said:

Or... it could be that Windows 7/8 is still based on 11+ year old technology and so its no effort to write an app that works on both.

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OS X is based on old technology too. BSD to be precise.

chrmjenkins said:

True, but there was a transition to fully 64 bit on 10.6 from 10.5.

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this is what im getting confused with

MacBoobsPro said:

Or... it could be that Windows 7/8 is still based on 11+ year old technology and so its no effort to write an app that works on both.

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This. I wouldn't be surprised if, somewhere under all the graphical layers, it's still DOS that's actually running everything.

Because microsoft's entire business model is built on backwards compatibility (hence, a compromised dual-UI tablet that runs legacy Windows apps - for example).

People generally tough it out using microsoft solutions because they play with existing software.

People use apple stuff because they want to, thus apple can afford to make more changes, at a faster rate. Which deprecates old software.

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Zerozal said:

This. I wouldn't be surprised if, somewhere under all the graphical layers, it's still DOS that's actually running everything.

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Nah, the NT kernel (lowest level) is pretty advanced.

Its the compatibility layers on top which are the problem.

The entire "Windows" UI is just a personality layer for the NT kernel.

"So if you have mac you have gotta have a minimum of OS 10.6 (4 years old) which it clearly states on the box, however if you have PC its A okay to have an 11 year old OS soon to be 12?"

Apple cares not for "backward compatibility", for them, it's "sell new stuff" !!

If your older version of the OS is outdated, well, "time to buy a new Mac, iPod, iPhone, whatever!"

BTW, I'm typing this on a PowerMac g4 that is going on nine years old, running OS 10.4.

You don't really "have to have" 10.6 ...

ant the ninja said:

Uhm...10.4 and .5 both ran on intel chips. 10.6 was the first os not support ppc.

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I think this is the real issue. There's a lot of new and updated software titles, which demand Snow Leopard or above, which is just another way of saying: "We did not think the dwindling number of PowerPC users are worth the hassle - so we coded it in Intel only."

In iTunes' case it just means Apple has fired its PowerPC programmers and the new pieces of iTunes are done non-universal.

mrbobb said:

Apple is a hardware company, they throw in the software to sell hardware.

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Partially that's true, but IMHO, quite shortsighted. One factor why Apple has been able to command a price premium has been, that Apple hardware usually has had quite a good resale value. Not supporting "old" hardware lessens that value. Considering the way in which both Lion and ML have quite artificially pruned the list of "apple-supported hardware", it overshadows any Apple-owner's right to expect resale value.


<RANT>
What makes this particularly egregious is that Apple's now systematically giving the finger to PowerPC-owners, those very same people who helped Apple and believed in Apple in the darkest of hours.

So why should you care? You don't have any PowerPC **** lying around.
Well guess what: as long as Apple finds new toys to sell to people and finds new schmucks to jump on the bandwagon, they'll keep treating long-time users like ****.

But hey, the business is good, the stock price's still above 500$, so why bother?

</RANT>

I don't find it to be a reasonable expectation for one to believe that they are entitled to the latest and greatest software with a computer that is almost a decade old. Especially considering how fast these technologies evolve. It simply isn't feasible.

Earlier versions of OS X were much less mature than XP. Many of the features in iTunes would be impossible to implement without months and months of work.