After Beta, Messages Will Be Exclusive to OS X Mountain Lion

[petsounds]

Damn you Apple. I love your products but unbelievable greed excretes form every pore of you. If it isn't bad enough that my 2007 blackbook won't run Mountain Lion you now are denying your faithful customers useful features. Listen i can't afford a nice shiny new Mac to have this feature, so how about you cut the little guy some slack and make this available to all.

I'm usually the first one to call out Apple on their practices, but look at it this way -- Messages is a feature of Mountain Lion. You might as well be saying, "Dammit Apple, give us the OS for free!"

Now, your issue with your 2007 Macbook not being supported by Mountain Lion is certainly valid, but them's the breaks. We all know Apple's MO is to sell hardware, and they won't sell nearly as many by giving new features to five year-old hardware. Don't worry about it man -- the beauty of Apple is you can sell your five year-old Mac and still get at least 30% of the hardware cost back, to apply towards a new Mac. Try and do that with a Windows box. Or stick with your current Mac/OS. It still works just as well as yesterday, no?

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Here you go. After it expires, a message will likely be displayed either saying:

1. The beta expired, click here to reinstall iChat.
2. The beta expired, but you can upgrade to ML
3. The beta expired, but you can buy it for .99 in the App Store


You also will probably have access to menu bar actions, so the same process will likely apply.

Thanks for the info.

 

[krzyglue]

They've never done it that way. When have major features and redesigned applications ever been released mid-cycle like that? Maybe in the 10.1 days but I don't really remember.

The 8 thing is just a happy coincidence, if anything. The perception that they are really trying to push is that the Mac is not a second class citizen at Apple. It will be updated in tandem with iOS from now on.

----------



What "principle" is being threatened by Apple's OS X pricing? How is it worse than how it was, paying $129 every couple years for a release? It now takes about 4 years to spend much on OS updates.

I would argue that the OS X releases of old were much more significant than they are now, even when combining them.

 

[froa]

Unreasonable, while it still has some possibilities to change.

 

[doelcm82]

You don't have to upgrade.

If you don't upgrade, you won't get any of the new ML features. But you don't have to upgrade.

My cousin has my old PowerBook G4. He hasn't upgraded in years (if ever). No officials have come to his door telling him he he has to upgrade. That's proof you don't have to upgrade.

My mother has my old iMac. I think it's running Leopard. No stormtroopers for her, either.

Not having to upgrade is not just a Mac feature. It's a universal feature.

Only upgrade if you want some or all of the new features.

 

[pubwvj]

And with Mountain Lion we see Apple drop support for older machines and for rural users who lack the bandwidth to do the downloads. Class warfare.

 

[charlituna]

A stupid, artificial bad move from Apple. Or at least make iChat able to send the iMessages, even if you cannot use whatever the latest whizzy feature is.

uh that is the 'latest whizzy feature'

----------

And with Mountain Lion we see Apple drop support for older machines and for rural users who lack the bandwidth to do the downloads. Class warfare.

That ISPs in Vermont are too lazy and cheap to give you decent access is not for Apple to fix. Go gripe at those ISPs and your local and state government. It is their problem to fix.

----------

They replaced iChat with Message Beta. They legally can't leave your machine broken and unsupported.

And did they tell you that this was the case before you downloaded it.

If so and you did it anyway without the intention of updating to Mountain Lion when it is released (or at least not certainty that you would), then you broke your machine not Apple.

----------

Wow, Apple sure has balls.

1. Show the world that it CAN be run on Lion.
2. Release Mountain Lion.
3. Inform that it will no longer run on Lion.

Actually it said no such thing, because we know from the beta that #3 isn't true.

It said that the BETA is done. We don't know if after that point there will be a Lion non beta version or not. Because as a Beta neither the coding or the language is finalized.

 

[linuxcooldude]

In more shocking news today it's rumored that Adobe Lightroom 4 will also be a paid upgrade once moved from public beta to final release. Microsoft, which will release its new version 8 OS as a public beta later this month, also will not be free upon final release. Leeches and self-entitled people everywhere are shocked at the corporate greed.


Poor analogy. If Microsoft made Windows Live Messenger stop working on every version of Windows except 8 once that ships, I expect the full support of most members of this forum.

A spot on analogy! Your analogy however, not so good. Windows Live Messanger is available now prior to Windows 8.

Messages is a feature to be full implemented in Mountain Lion. And you won't get any support from me.

 

[gikku]

Clever marketing.

not clever.
very short sighted.

 

[faroZ06]

Nope. Staying at Leopard. Who even cares about iMessage, there's already email and AIM for that purpose.

----------

[/COLOR]

And with Mountain Lion we see Apple drop support for older machines and for rural users who lack the bandwidth to do the downloads. Class warfare.

Yeah right, even with low bandwidth, you can download an OS. Just *gasp* leave it downloading all day.

----------

Just go to the Messages menu and click Uninstall Messages Beta and your machine will return iChat etc.. how it was. This will be required when the beta expires if you don't upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Beta expires? Betas NEVER expire in my world.

Just open the UNIX executable file and edit the expiration date. I already looked around and found something that gets a plist from Apple.com and sets the expiration date from it. Just mess with it.

Or change your date back.

 

[The Economist]

Maybe future OS X upgrades will be free, like they are on iOS.

 

[faroZ06]

They're encouraging piracy with this, really. No computer savvy person would put up with this enough to pay over 15 bucks for this update.

Just don't get the update if you don't want to pay for it, geez. If Apple wants to make their new standard less widely used, fine. I just use email instead of SMS or iMessage because it's BS-free.

The only bad move here is the beta expiring. That's just lame. Of course, it's easy to work around with a simple hack or by setting your date backwards.

 

[jab43]

Wow!

No one even knows Apples reason. Apple spoils the consumer too much. Makes a bunch of whining sissies out of us.

 

[macbook pro i5]

It wasn't that many years ago that an OS X upgrade cost over $100. Now you get it for a fraction of that and you can text people for free, something you used to happily pay your phone carrier for every month. But I suppose people have short memories.



What does 'artificially limiting' even mean? What's natural about a commercial business giving you something that you didn't have to pay for?



How much does a full version of Windows 7 cost again?



Seriously dude, look up the meaning of the word 'forcing' sometime. Here, I'll do it for you:

verb [ trans. ]
2 (often be forced) make (someone) do something against their will : she was forced into early retirement | [ trans. ] the universities were forced to cut staff.​

What Apple is giving you is a choice—spend the money and get the ML features (of which Messages is one), or don't spend the money and don't get them. You might not like the choice, but that's still what it is.

You sir just owned the internet

 

[Rodimus Prime]

And this is why Apple is getting called on doing pretty much BS software blocks in their stuff. It not anything hardware or any real software wise it is pretty much 100% pure greed on Apple's part.
This is also why until proven otherwise it is safe to assume Apple is doing pure software blocks on much of their stuff.

Par as normal Apple is going to make people pay for a service pack for the OS and drop a lot of support for lion.

 

[lilo777]

You don't have to upgrade.

You don't have to use Mac either. Windows is much better and is hassle free.

 

[sanford]

If Apple wants to make their new standard less widely used, fine.

That's the smartest comment in this thread. Limiting iMessage OS X to Mac owners who buy the upgrade to ML who must own Macs that are supported by ML limits the adoption of a new Apple standard I'm sure they'd like to reach far and wide. Seems like they'd even want a Windows version of iMessage.

For my limited uses for a Mac, considering I have an iPhone and iPad on iOS 5, it's getting really hard to justify the expense of upgrading the MacBook Air to a new Air, or any other model, for $1,200 to $1,500. Having iMessage for OS X isn't exactly going to push me to spending well over a grand on a new Mac. Nor will Reminders and Notes, or much else that's already in two different places, anyway.

 

[Zxxv]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

Why is windoze news on macrumours?

Oh it's apple upgrading operating systems every five minutes and making old users stuff obsolete.

**** when did apple become Microsoft?

I missed the memo

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Poor analogy. If Microsoft made Windows Live Messenger stop working on every version of Windows except 8 once that ships, I expect the full support of most members of this forum.

Last I checked Windows Live Messenger was a stand-alone product and a free one at that. Messages is a feature of OS X 10.8, not a stand-alone app, and 10.8 will not be free. So I think you best look in the mirror before accusing people of constructing poor analogies. Glass houses, my friend. Glass houses.

 

[faroZ06]

You don't have to use Mac either. Windows is much better and is hassle free.

I'm sure most of us here had the choice and decided to ditch Windows. It is most definitely not hassle-free (or better). For one, the Windows Security is so annoying... please, I'd rather have malware.

 

[seclusion]

Anyone know why iMessage isn't in the ML Beta?
Can't install iMessage beta in 10.8

 

[miles01110]

I'm sure most of us here had the choice and decided to ditch Windows. It is most definitely not hassle-free (or better). For one, the Windows Security is so annoying... please, I'd rather have malware.

I started using Windows 7 on a desktop this year and haven't found the above to be true at all. In a lot of ways W7 is preferable to OS X; not dumbed down, things are arranged in a logical way, and it's stable. W7's security has also not been obtrusive; I don't even have to deal with the stupid "You downloaded this application from the internet. Are you SURE you want to open it?" dialogue.

 

[ixodes]

Damn you Apple. I love your products but unbelievable greed excretes form every pore of you. If it isn't bad enough that my 2007 blackbook won't run Mountain Lion you now are denying your faithful customers useful features. Listen i can't afford a nice shiny new Mac to have this feature, so how about you cut the little guy some slack and make this available to all.

Thanks for this very well expressed opinion.

I'm with you completely.

 

[ixodes]

You don't have to use Mac either. Windows is much better and is hassle free.

While obviously not popular on this forum, you are quite right in your assessment of Windows 7, with just one exception. "much better" is a personal opinion, subject to the individual user.

Personally while I've used them both for years, and prefer Mac, the current rev of Windows 7 is excellent. Fast, crash free, and secure (when practicing safe computing) I'm very impressed with what Microsoft has accomplished.

 

[faroZ06]

I started using Windows 7 on a desktop this year and haven't found the above to be true at all. In a lot of ways W7 is preferable to OS X; not dumbed down, things are arranged in a logical way, and it's stable. W7's security has also not been obtrusive; I don't even have to deal with the stupid "You downloaded this application from the internet. Are you SURE you want to open it?" dialogue.

Must be my school. They're running Windows 7 Pro, and every time you move a file from a network drive to C, you get a message saying that the file might harm your computer. If you download anything from the internet, "it might harm your computer". If you paste something into a text field on a site, it asks if you want to allow the site to have your clipboard.

My cousin has Ultimate in a VM, and I've seen him using it. He didn't try opening things from the internet, but he did have a lot issues with drivers (particularly video drivers). If you've ever glanced at the system folders in Windows 7, they are not orderly at all. It's more like a random mess of stuff strewn about.

I've used XP a lot of course, and THAT is the most annoying thing ever. Still, since it uses a lot less RAM than the wasteful new versions of Windows and is just as compatible with new stuff, I still use it as my VirtualBox machine in case I need to run a Windows app that doesn't work in WINE.

----------

Thanks for this very well expressed opinion.

I'm with you completely.

Come on, Apple isn't expected to just give support for stuff to a 2006 device. What's stupid is that they're only preventing people from using their iMessage service.

Fine, forget their service. I'm sticking with AOL and email because it works on EVERYTHING.