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MyMac1976

macrumors 6502a
Apr 14, 2013
511
1
Consumers want constant updates and improvements. Business customers want stability and longevity. Hence why consumer products have a constant and fast upgrade cycle. Business have a much slower cycle, and Microsoft is expected to keep long term legacy support.

You want constant updates and improvements. I want stability, familiarity, and compatibility.
 

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
Honestly, this is probably the LEAST of the issues making Mac gaming lacklustre!

Hence why I said it was one of many problem causes for OS X gaming. Might not be a massively important factor, but lack of backwards compatibility reduces the amount of hardware and software the game is playable on.

I don't blame Aspyr though. If Apple actually supported their OSs for more than a couple of years, the tale would probably be different.
 

ibbz

macrumors newbie
Jun 12, 2005
3
0
East London
This is disgraceful, and Apple are to blame for this.
They themselves are quick to cut all support and haven't piped up about this.

Any chance of Apple actually supporting loyal users rather than only ones who buy the latest?
Any chance of Apple addressing this issue which has been a rather thorn in the side?
 

opeter

macrumors 68030
Aug 5, 2007
2,677
1,596
Slovenia
This is disgraceful, and Apple are to blame for this.
They themselves are quick to cut all support and haven't piped up about this.

You are absolutely right.

Any chance of Apple actually supporting loyal users rather than only ones who buy the latest?
Any chance of Apple addressing this issue which has been a rather thorn in the side?

In a parallel world, maybe. In ours, sadly, no ...
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
I'm a software developer and most of my customers are on 10.8 but a sizable number are still on 10.6, so I can't ditch it any time soon. It's about 60% 10.8, 20% 10.6 and 20% 10.7.

You'd have to check the numbers for new customers, that's the really interesting ones. The ones who _can't_ upgrade are those with a 32 bit processor. That's very, very few and they are not going to buy your software. Then there are the ones who _chose_ not to upgrade because of the cost. Frankly, they are not going to buy your software. So how many others are on 10.6?

10.7 is a major jump for developers. You get guaranteed 64 bit, you can use ARC and the modern Objective-C runtime. Together that's a huge advantage. Every hour spent on supporting 10.6 is an hour not spent on supporting other customers. Obviously, it is your decision.
 

OneMike

macrumors 603
Oct 19, 2005
5,813
1,795
That sucks. I don't really game on computers at all. When I do though, it's always been through bootcamp.
 

saturnotaku

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2013
1,978
97
Just curious how you gage that with some degree of accuracy? I'm not doubting you, but we see two different percentages above. While that discrepancy could quite possibly be correct, I still wonder how you arrive at those percentages.

The key word you seem to be missing from the MR post is the word its. Aspyr is saying that only 8% of its customer base is using Snow Leopard. It is not indicative of anything else.
 

WMD

macrumors regular
Jun 12, 2013
175
7
Florida, USA
This does make sense for Aspyr to do, but only because Apple couples the video and OpenGL drivers to the OS version. If they were separate, this wouldn't be a problem.

3D graphics performance has gotten much better since Snow Leopard.
 

Dustman

macrumors 65816
Apr 17, 2007
1,381
238
Lol and they say Microsoft is suck on legacy software.

Even XP has been being supported for 12 years and run most modern apps just fine

Who has bigger balls now :D

Or Microsoft sucks at getting users to update which forces them to provide decades of legacy support.
 

lxngtnguy

macrumors newbie
Aug 12, 2009
15
1
Which blows because in the end, no one has to be forced into buying a new computer every 4 years. After all, these are no $199 iPhones, these are $1000 machines that should last 10 years...

:confused::eek: 10yrs!!!! Really???? With the rate at which technology changes and advances you actually expect hardware & software vendors to support a machine for that long? If you break your "1K" machine down that's only spending $100/yr...how would you ever expect companies to have any $ to do R&D & to make any kind of profit if everyone only spent that little toward the technology? And your "$199 iPhone" is more like $600+ the only reason you get it for that price is because your carrier subsidizes it, which they recoup in your service contract. Even those devices are only supported for a couple of releases of iOS before they're obsolete. By your suggestion it's "ok" to drop $200+ on a phone every year but not make an investment into a computer every 5yrs or so...which is an oxymoron because you'll spend that same 1k in 5yrs on phones but not on a computer? If all of us/most followed your upgrade thought on computers we'd just now have provided Apple/Intel/IBM/AMD/Nvidia/etc with the financial resources to have us at the tech level of a PPC G4/Pentium, & you could forget that nice iPhone or iPad you have. I totally agree with the "forced" upgrade cycles it keeps us all moving forward. Like it or not it's the way it is and the way it's going to be, so just plan for the future & on selling off your old computer every few years and save a $100/or so per yr(which really is so easy everyone has some "crap"{a subscription/junk food/habit/etc} they could/should cut out of their life) and buy a new machine...if you're only spending 1k then it can't be much more than a Mac mini & that's low end tech compared to what's available when you buy it. Which when you buy it you know is going to be obsolete in a short time & actually already is compared to what's being worked on and designed in the pipeline by Intel. It's the price of progress that we have to pay if you wanna play! ;)

Yes I'm listed as a "newbie" because I never post only read & enjoy...but I just couldn't resist on this one!
 
Last edited:

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
Consumers want constant updates and improvements. Business customers want stability and longevity. Hence why consumer products have a constant and fast upgrade cycle. Business have a much slower cycle, and Microsoft is expected to keep long term legacy support.

Constant updates and improvements does not mean consumers want support for their product to be dropped and that is what Apple does quite regularly. Given their insanely high capital levels, this amounts to nothing more than greed on their part.
 

spyguy10709

macrumors 65816
Apr 5, 2010
1,005
644
One Infinite Loop, Cupertino CA
I had a retina MacBook 15 for a bit and, while the defects physically in the machine were my reason for returning it, I noticed more issues with the ML than I did with SL. Not horrible things, just more overall slowdowns, lockups in certain apps, and app crashes. Also, even on my 5 year old aluminum MacBook, SL seems to run/animate/perform quicker than ML did on my retina for the time that I had it. Plus I just prefer SL by a long shot. It's clean, it's unobtrusive, the gesture support/way things were set up is more conducive to working than ML is (I'd rather have a swipe be 'clear desktop' than 'launchpad' like it is in ML any day of the week), and it's just an overall better environment if you ask me. The Rosetta support is just an added bonus.
It is (the gesture I mean) - a four/five finger pinch out shows a clear desktop. More logical than anything from the snow leopard days. I used to be really attached to snow leopard but I've just moved on. ML is just as fast and stable - and the new gestures are a bit of work to get used to but in the long run make a lot more sense.
 

vkd

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2012
969
345
Virtualization

Far from a pressing need to upgrade, Snow Leopard users - and users of any other version for that matter - can simply install Vmware Fusion and run games built for Windows in the virtual sandbox environment like I do; virtually no difference in quality in any respect and far simpler and cheaper. What benefits over and above the iOS eye-candy frills really come with 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9?
 

cmwade77

macrumors 65816
Nov 18, 2008
1,071
1,200
With the way Apple has treated Omni Group and paid upgrades one could argue that 10.7 to 10.8 to 10.9 have all been upgrades. By Apple's strict defintion of upgrades Mavericks should be free ;) That would help adoption of 10.9.
I like your thinking!

----------

Far from a pressing need to upgrade, Snow Leopard users - and users of any other version for that matter - can simply install Vmware Fusion and run games built for Windows in the virtual sandbox environment like I do; virtually no difference in quality in any respect and far simpler and cheaper. What benefits over and above the iOS eye-candy frills really come with 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9?
Speed and stability (although, I don't know that about 10.9 yet), honestly Mountain Lion has made our systems faster and more stable than earlier versions. So, that's what the benefits are.

With Mavericks, improved Full Screen abilities are worth it alone to me.
 

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
:confused::eek: 10yrs!!!! Really???? With the rate at which technology changes and advances you actually expect hardware & software vendors to support a machine for that long? If you break your "1K" machine down that's only spending $100/yr...how would you ever expect companies to have any $ to do R&D & to make any kind of profit if everyone only spent that little toward the technology? And your "$199 iPhone" is more like $600+ the only reason you get it for that price is because your carrier subsidizes it, which they recoup in your service contract. Even those devices are only supported for a couple of releases of iOS before they're obsolete. By your suggestion it's "ok" to drop $200+ on a phone every year but not make an investment into a computer every 5yrs or so...which is an oxymoron because you'll spend that same 1k in 5yrs on phones but not on a computer? If all of us/most followed your upgrade thought on computers we'd just now have provided Apple/Intel/IBM/AMD/Nvidia/etc with the financial resources to have us at the tech level of a PPC G4/Pentium, & you could forget that nice iPhone or iPad you have. I totally agree with the "forced" upgrade cycles it keeps us all moving forward. Like it or not it's the way it is and the way it's going to be, so just plan for the future & on selling off your old computer every few years and save a $100/or so per yr(which really is so easy everyone has some "crap"{a subscription/junk food/habit/etc} they could/should cut out of their life) and buy a new machine...if you're only spending 1k then it can't be much more than a Mac mini & that's low end tech compared to what's available when you buy it. Which when you buy it you know is going to be obsolete in a short time & actually already is compared to what's being worked on and designed in the pipeline by Intel. It's the price of progress that we have to pay if you wanna play! ;)

Yes I'm listed as a "newbie" because I never post only read & enjoy...but I just couldn't resist on this one!

Wall of text + tl;dr
 

macs4nw

macrumors 601
The key word you seem to be missing from the MR post is the word its. Aspyr is saying that only 8% of its customer base is using Snow Leopard. It is not indicative of anything else.

Just curious how you gage that with some degree of accuracy? I'm not doubting you, but we see two different percentages above. While that discrepancy could quite possibly be correct, I still wonder how you arrive at those percentages.

As you can see from my original post, I wasn't questioning the difference in percentages --even acknowledging the fact they could be correct--, but rather the method used to arrive at those figures.
 

mrxak

macrumors 68000
While I, as a power user, would personally switch to Mountain Lion in almost every scenario I can envision, your assumptions that Snow Leopard is inherently inferior or faulty - or that every user who remains on Snow Leopard does so because they have no choice - are fallacious.

Snow Leopard is among the most stable and polished operating systems released to date and a user who chooses to remain with proven technology over new versions with dubious benefits could likely make a good case for their reasons for doing so.

Absolutely. Still running 10.6.8 on my main computer. I've got 10.8.4 running on my laptop and I like it well enough, certainly better than 10.7.x, but I see no reason whatsoever to give up on 10.6.8 on my desktop.

Eventually, I know, I'll have to get a new Mac, which means 10.9, and I'm okay with that, even if I'm not thrilled with the direction OS X has been going in, generally. I could upgrade to 10.9 right now on my desktop today, if I so wished, but the benefits don't outweigh what I'd be giving up.
 

Alex72

macrumors member
Jul 19, 2002
70
2
Los Angeles
A Macintosh IIci, released in 1989 was still a viable content-creation tool AND could still do alright on the internet in 1999. My G5/2.0DP from 2003 still handles most Websites I tend to visit, though it IS starting to show its age...

While ten years may be a tad long to expect NOW, we should still be able to get at least half that, as far as useful and "powerful enough" goes. Longer product cycles, at least on the "heavy lift" machines, would also keep the Web from getting overdeveloped and junky, as developers would have more time to hone and perfect, instead of having to come up with new things for sake of novelty.






:confused::eek: 10yrs!!!! Really???? With the rate at which technology changes and advances you actually expect hardware & software vendors to support a machine for that long? If you break your "1K" machine down that's only spending $100/yr...how would you ever expect companies to have any $ to do R&D & to make any kind of profit if everyone only spent that little toward the technology? And your "$199 iPhone" is more like $600+ the only reason you get it for that price is because your carrier subsidizes it, which they recoup in your service contract. Even those devices are only supported for a couple of releases of iOS before they're obsolete. By your suggestion it's "ok" to drop $200+ on a phone every year but not make an investment into a computer every 5yrs or so...which is an oxymoron because you'll spend that same 1k in 5yrs on phones but not on a computer? If all of us/most followed your upgrade thought on computers we'd just now have provided Apple/Intel/IBM/AMD/Nvidia/etc with the financial resources to have us at the tech level of a PPC G4/Pentium, & you could forget that nice iPhone or iPad you have. I totally agree with the "forced" upgrade cycles it keeps us all moving forward. Like it or not it's the way it is and the way it's going to be, so just plan for the future & on selling off your old computer every few years and save a $100/or so per yr(which really is so easy everyone has some "crap"{a subscription/junk food/habit/etc} they could/should cut out of their life) and buy a new machine...if you're only spending 1k then it can't be much more than a Mac mini & that's low end tech compared to what's available when you buy it. Which when you buy it you know is going to be obsolete in a short time & actually already is compared to what's being worked on and designed in the pipeline by Intel. It's the price of progress that we have to pay if you wanna play! ;)

Yes I'm listed as a "newbie" because I never post only read & enjoy...but I just couldn't resist on this one!
 

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
Far from a pressing need to upgrade, Snow Leopard users - and users of any other version for that matter - can simply install Vmware Fusion and run games built for Windows in the virtual sandbox environment like I do; virtually no difference in quality in any respect and far simpler and cheaper. What benefits over and above the iOS eye-candy frills really come with 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9?

What pressing advantages came with Snow Leopard over Leopard, above some code reduction (namely removing PPC support) and the addition of some stuff that no one uses (i.e. OpenCL) ???

Seriously, your argument could apply to Leopard over Tiger for that matter. While there were some improvements like Spaces, they were pretty much candy-coated fluff while Leopard was considerably slower than Tiger (not a great trade-off, IMO).

The point is that if you're going to use "it works fine as it is" argument for every single upgrade in existence, you will NEVER EVER upgrade and instead just whine about being forced to upgrade at some point at which point the cycle will continue.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one to want be be forced to upgrade either, but having finally upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on my Macbook Pro from 2008 after getting a new Mac Mini that already had it on it (which convinced me the upgrade wasn't going to be so horrible after all), I can say that other than losing Rosetta, there was no reason NOT to upgrade (other than a few bucks to do it). It runs just as well/stable as Snow Leopard did and my software is all at the same level again with my desktop.

As for Mountain Lion improvements, I have to say after using Mission Control, I actually vastly prefer it to Spaces since it's basically Spaces and Expose combined and therefore saves me bother since one mouse movement does both. On the newer computer (Mini), I can echo my desktop out to any AppleTV in the house (requires support of GPU; my MBP won't do it). File sharing is simpler with supported hardware as well with AirDrop. "Messages" support is far more useful than I imagined it would be. LaunchPad can even be useful (if organized into folders) to find categories of applications faster than the Apps folder like games, web cam utilities, etc. Yeah, you could organize actual folders like that if you wanted, but this doesn't disturb the main Applications folder at all. It's basically a lot of "fluff" that you don't "need" but some are nice improvements to the GUI (slow evolutionary ones rather than night and day). Otherwise, I hardly notice much difference in day-to-day operations at all. The one thing I DO notice is that software all seems to support Mountain Lion while that support is drying up for Snow Leopard. And THAT is the main reason I upgraded (e.g. if I want to run the latest "Logic" software, I need Mountain Lion whether I like it or not).
 

fat jez

macrumors 68020
Jun 24, 2010
2,083
614
Glasgow, UK
Or Microsoft sucks at getting users to update which forces them to provide decades of legacy support.

More that in the case of business, many had written internal apps that could only run on IE6, thus locking the business into not upgrading as they were loath to spend the money to upgrade the OS and their legacy applications.
 
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