Could we get some kind of combined section for "'Early Intel" OS X?

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm primarily interested in—and here to discuss—Mac OS X 10.6 – 10.9. I use Mavericks myself, and I don't particularly like the newer versions.

MacRumors is home to a decent amount of discussion about these old versions, but it's all split across five different forum sections! Some people use the PowerPC section (even though these versions quite literally don't run on PPC), while others use the dedicated sections for SL, Lion, ML, and Mavericks.

There's no single good place to post about how to get around https issues in old releases with a proxy, or parrotgeek1's backports of Firefox, or the SpiderWeb browser. And when people post questions I could potentially help with, I always seem to miss the threads because they're so scattered!

I'm hesitant to suggest that the solution for too many forum sections is yet another section (xkcd anyone?), but the current setup isn't working. Perhaps the active threads in the Snow Leopard / Lion / Mountain Lion / Mavericks sections could get moved to this new combined section, and then those individual sections could be archived?

 

[TheShortTimer]

I'd love to see this happen.

 

[bobesch]

Me too! 👍
I'd like to see all the pre-retina intels share a single "Early-intel and Very-Early-intel" subforum.
(They have in common: decent prices; expandable; no more macOS-upgrades and support has ended; Apples Trade-in offer is limited to "recycling for free", mentioning them conjures a chorus of "buy a new Mac" comments)

 

[macsound1]

Me too
As someone who loves mac hardware, I have enough C2D and non-retina macs that won't get upgraded because they're stable and I like them that way, but completely agree with Wow, it's hard to find info about older but not ancient mac software.
At some point I'm hoping to move into a bigger house where I can buy a couple older mac pros and have space where my gf won't be annoyed by them, and am going to need that search power of OSes that properly run on them

 

[retta283]

I'd like to see this as well. It's a distinct era of machines and operating systems that most users in the current iMac/MBP/etc boards have little to no experience with, so it would be best to create a new one based around these machines. I have tried a few times in the last two years to post early Intel content in the current Mac boards and no responses were forthcoming.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Some people over in the PowerPC subforum were expressing concern that it wouldn't be clear what belongs in a hypothetical Early Intel section, as opposed to the other subforums. Since a lot of early-ish Intel machines can still run relatively modern versions of macOS (particularly with unofficial patches), I take their point.

So, let me clarify that I see this as a place to discuss 10.6 Snow Leopard through 10.9 Mavericks, and any hardware which is currently running those OS's, irrespective of what that hardware could run! On the newer end, Mavericks and Yosemite feel like they belong to distinctly different eras in OS X's history, and on the older end, Leopard and below are already well covered in the PPC forum!

 

[JustAnExpat]

Me too! 👍
I'd like to see all the pre-retina intels share a single "Early-intel and Very-Early-intel" subforum.
(They have in common: decent prices; expandable; no more macOS-upgrades and support has ended; Apples Trade-in offer is limited to "recycling for free", mentioning them conjures a chorus of "buy a new Mac" comments)

But what would be the cutoff for the "Early Intel and Very Early Intel" though? If such a group is made, I think it should only be for the Core 2 Duo and Core (All Intel machines made between 2006 to 2010?).

 

[Wowfunhappy]

But what would be the cutoff for the "Early Intel and Very Early Intel" though? If such a group is made, I think it should only be for the Core 2 Duo and Core (All Intel machines made between 2006 to 2010?).

This is why I'm focused on the operating system you're running. A section for "Intel computers with Aqua icons" (aka anything pre-Yosemite) is very clearly delineated from the other subforums.

From my perspective, the primary goal here is to combine a bunch of existing subforums for older versions of OS X, which don't get enough activity individually but would if they were combined. That's not to say hardware would be excluded ofc—software and hardware go together in Apple land!

 

[retta283]

It's worth noting that the OS X Panther 10.3 board is still open, even that only 2 posts have been made in it since 2005, 1 of which was a bot. Not really related to the main point, but wanted to point that out.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

There are many more topics related to Panther in the PPC section though! The individual OS sections are just too split up.

 

[yurc]

Subscribed to this post.

As MacOS OSX aficionados, I keen to had discussion regarding Aqua based UI, brushed metal finder. Still fond of 10.3~10.6!! I prefer it had running functional, just sans internet access for security.

It's joy using Adobe CS2 on my Quad G5, fully functional, extracting Stuffit Expander archive, etc. Vey nostalgic memories.

The most modern OSX I had is Mojave for now, honestly the newest full iOS-fication of newer MacOS totally isn't cup of my tea anymore.

 

[2984839]

100% agree, and I'll chime in here with my own thoughts.

The Intel Mac forums are nearly useless for any real discussion of older Macs. It's to the point where people asking about them are coming into the PowerPC forum because the regulars there will actually answer them. There is such a wide gulf between a 2006 MBP and a 2020 that the people using them share little in common. A lot of the threads in there are the usual "Should I wait or buy now" nonsense that belongs in the buying advice forum. A lot of questions about getting old Macs are met with "Just buy a new one". The mindset of the person asking about an old Mac is just irreconcilably different to the majority of the people who frequent those Intel forums. It's much closer to the PowerPC forum users, which is why we see so many threads about them. Don't get me wrong; I have no problem with people asking about old Intel in PowerPC. But it's sort of ridiculous that people are being driven to do that because the Intel sections are so unhelpful.

I think we really need some sort of reorganization to make MR useful to those folks. As to a cutoff, there are a few options here. A combined subforum for all "obsolete" Macs according to Apple's definition would be one option. That would include some fairly modern machines, but should group together threads with similar problems (parts replacements, unsupported software, etc).

Instead of obsolete Macs, maybe make the cutoff Core 2 Duo and older. That seems to be currently the group that is served most poorly by the current forum structure.

You could also keep the PowerPC forum separate and just make one for obsolete Intel Macs. That would keep the PowerPC stuff together, which is useful because many problems we run into on that platform are unique to the architecture and would not exist on Intel. As more and more Intel stuff gets dropped by Apple, the obsolete Intel forum would eventually grow into essentially what we have now, but I think the userbase would be of a different mindset and would be more receptive to answering questions.

You could also combine discussions about the obsolete OS X versions with the obsolete Macs subforums. This would reduce the number of subforums and would reflect how people already use them. Nobody asking about really old OS X versions is going to those OS X subforums; they're asking in PowerPC.

 

[B S Magnet]

[This comment more or less overlaps a comment I posted on a related PowerPC discussion.]

Background

There is a growing gap between MacRumors forum users who focus broadly on upcoming, new, and/or supported Apple products, and MacRumors forums users who strive to eke the very most out of now-unsupported hardware and OSes. This latter group is growing as more legacy hardware is staying functional and in use longer.

At this time, this latter bloc, not generally considered to be the target core of all MR forum users, must move across major forum hierarchy trees to seek out how to run OS X-related (software) features on their vintage (hardware) Mac. This also means they must navigate across different communities of users whose silos of knowledge are less as likely to dovetail together.

At present, Apple-unsupported OS X major versions are kept to a completely separate area from Apple-unsupported products.

Many of those unsupported OS X versions and products are the focus of the well-integrated PowerPC community, which often discusses both within the same sub-forum (witness the Panther, Tiger, and Leopard threads on the PowerPC forum, which serve as a redundant function to existing Panther, Tiger, and Leopard sub-forums). Many of PowerPC forum community’s active members use PPC and early Intel set-ups as daily-drivers, running everything from Tiger to Snow Leopard and up, as well as various other PPC-compatible OSes (like Linux and MorphOS).


Proposal

What I proposed on the other thread is a plan bring together these interrelated sub-forums under a tree of unsupported Apple products (here, described as “Legacy Apple”. Many of these sub-forums exist already and have for quite some time. In some cases, they are well-maintained by members and moderators, while in others, they are broadly neglected.

Bringing together these sub-forums would also bring together communities which don’t overlap with one another as regularly as they could. Bringing them together would be a net plus of brain trust for all these communities.

As a proposal to the MacRumors forum mods, I submit a hierarchy tree to accomplish some of the above.

Most noticeably, existing sub-forums dedicated to legacy OS X versions would decrease from nine at present to just three, grouped together by eras of principal architecture (that is, a PPC-exclusive era, a PPC-Intel handover era (including Rosetta), and an Intel-exclusive era):

LEGACY APPLE <— proposed top-level category

OS X <— proposed secondary-level category​

10.0–10.3 (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther)​

10.4–10.6 (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard)​

10.7–10.11 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan)​

Macs <— proposed secondary-level category​

PowerPC Macs​

Early Intel Macs (2006–2012)​

Enterprise Macs (Xserve 2002–2011)​

Accessories <— proposed secondary-level category​

iPods (Classic, Mini, Shuffle, Nano, 2001–2017)​

Peripherals […]​

​

​

With bolded red, I’ve highlighted and linked to existing sub-forums which for now are not kept close together for users of unsupported Apple products.


Outcome

By bringing these together, a new user landing on the MR forums for the first time can more quickly find what they need. New product owners will find most of the forums at their disposal, and the user who inherited an old Mac or bought one on Craigslist can find the legacy Apple section quickly.

Non-bolded, non-linked sub-forums in this hierarchy tree support include adding an Early Intel Macs sub-forum (per @Wowfunhappy’s thread/proposal). For the most part, though, no new forums would need to be added to the MacRumors forums at this time.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

^ I'm also somewhat repeating myself from the other thread, but I really don't like splitting the OS's between Snow Leopard and Lion. Lion isn't such a huge departure from previous versions compared to releases like Leopard and Yosemite. If we were to create an entire "legacy Apple" sub-forum, I would recommend grouping 10.0 – 10.4 and 10.5 – 10.9 together, primarily for software compatibility reasons.

But, I don't think we need to do that. All I'm asking is that we combine these subforums:

• Snow Leopard
• Lion
• Mountain Lion
• Mavericks

..into a single section. I'm not entirely sure what to call it, but "Early Intel OS's" would be okay.

We could then archive the sections for 10.3–10.5. Anyone who posts in those sections instead of the much-more-active "PowerPC Macs" section (or in a theoretical "Early Intel" section) is doing themselves a major disservice.

I'm not opposed to a larger restructuring either (provided 10.6 and 10.7/8 are in the same section), I just don't think such a big change is necessarily needed.

 

[bobesch]

I'd rather leave the older OSX/macOS subforums, where they are now.
"Watching" single subforums may keep you in touch with the (rare) postings ...

The "Power PCC" forum could become a subforum of a new "Legacy Macs" forum together with a new "Early intel-Macs (2006-2012)" subforum.
Most problems related to old system software is related to old hardware so for sure people will find their way to the legacy-intel section ...

 

[B S Magnet]

^ I'm also somewhat repeating myself from the other thread, but I really don't like splitting the OS's between Snow Leopard and Lion. Lion isn't such a huge departure from previous versions compared to releases like Leopard and Yosemite. If we were to create an entire "legacy Apple" sub-forum, I would recommend grouping 10.0 – 10.4 and 10.5 – 10.9 together, primarily for software compatibility reasons.

Not to split hairs (ok, I’ll split hairs), but Lion is a completely different beast from Snow Leopard from the ground up — from the iOS UI/UX inclusions; to the Intel-only code (yes, SL had elements of PPC code all the way through 10.6.8, in addition to Rosetta); to how the boot volume was completely re-worked to have a hidden recovery partition; to a higher, even compulsory dependency on the App Store; and so on.

Snow Leopard, meanwhile, was a specific refinement of Leopard, which built on the modernization built into Tiger (which is the earliest OS X build still supported by Macports and TFF and so on).

But anyway.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

If (and only if!) we decide to create separate forums for legacy hardware and legacy software, I think the legacy software section should be split into 10.0 – 10.4 and 10.5 – 10.9. Leopard and Snow Leopard should absolutely be kept together, they're super similar and have a set of broadly compatible apps.

Leopard was a massive turning point in OS X's development, which removed support for Classic, and added Time Machine, QuickLook, Spaces, Photobooth, app Sandboxing, etc etc. Most of the default apps and a multitude of UI elements saw significant redesigns under Leopard; the Dock, for instance, works in a completely different way, with "Stacks" for interacting with folders and launching applications.

From the perspective of building a community, Leopard would be mostly familiar to anyone who is familiar with 10.7 – 10.9, so users would be able to discuss similar applications and workflows. Tiger is a very different beast (in a good way—I like Tiger a lot!)

Again, all of this is only if we decided to both introduce separate sections for legacy software and hardware, as you suggested, and didn't want to keep all old OS's together. The reason I initially suggested 10.6 – 10.9 was because I assumed we were keeping the existing PPC forum as-is, and I didn't want to step on its toes!

 

[B S Magnet]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

Yes, you were very clear the first two times.

As someone who’s always worked within the Apple ecosystem (i.e., I didn’t hackintosh along the way), we aren’t going to reach accord on this.