Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.9 to Bring iCloud Support?

[dal20402]

Apple should do something "radical". They should install an update to OS 9.2.X and OS 10.3.X and OS 10.4.X and OS 5.x to bring them ALL into 2012 to prove once and for all Apple hardware does not get obsolete and all computer users should switch immediately to Mac. This will not benefit them immediately, because some users with multiple machines for multiple personal purposes, do not need future media.

Even if there were possibly a business justification for wasting time on all those old OSes, most hardware that is limited to those OSes is old enough to be seriously unreliable, and not capable of dealing with modern storage, bandwidth, or processing requirements.

I guarantee a Power Mac 7100/66 running OS 9.2 or a B&W G3 running 10.3.8 is not going to handle iCloud well, even if you wrote an OS update.

Computers can be expected to last about five years, in both hardware and software. Once everyone accepts that as a fact of life, they will be much happier, and can more properly direct their ire at certain cheapo vendors (*coughHP*) who sell systems so underspec'd that a five-year lifespan is unrealistic.

*Note: I know many systems last longer, but that is a bonus, and we shouldn't count on it. I personally still have an eight-year-old PowerBook G4 in primary use. But I'm not upset that iCloud will obsolete it for good.

 

[Eric S.]

What about having a PPC Mac and an iPhone 5? Would that make the universe implode?

(not my case though, I'm just another moron making a joke, as such I aim for a 0 rating!)

Well, taking your question seriously, I assume that would be fine as long as you planned to sync manually rather than via iCloud.

 

[gramirez2012]

I hope OS 7.6 will be supported, I just upgraded the RAM in my Power Mac 7200/120 to 32 MB.

 

[^^BIGMac]

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.9 to Bring iCloud Support?

I'm for it.

 

[mabaker]

PPC users left in the dust again. Shiny new toys re being produced right this very moment and we have to buy them. N o w.

 

[FogCityMac]

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


Apple appears to be preparing a 10.6.9 update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard in order to provide compatibility with the company's upcoming iCloud service. The following notice appeared in one developer's .Mac preference pane in Tiger after he had upgraded his MobileMe account to iCloud.

Image


According to the notice, users will have to upgrade to a minimum of an as-yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.6.9 in order to sync select content via iCloud.Apple so far has only been testing iCloud for OS X Lion with developers, regularly pushing out new builds of OS X 10.7.2, iCloud software and Photo Stream-enabled iPhoto 9.2 as it moves toward a public launch of iCloud.

Apple has been quiet about absolute minimum system requirements for iCloud, although it notes on its promotional pages that some features will require OS X Lion.Apple has already confirmed that syncing of Mac Dashboard widgets, keychains, Dock items, and System Preferences are not making the transition from MobileMe to iCloud for any users, but if the alert notice being delivered to iCloud users on Mac OS X Tiger is correct, it seems that at least minimal iCloud functionality may be coming to Mac OS X Snow Leopard in the form of a full maintenance release.

Article Link: Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.9 to Bring iCloud Support?

".Mac Member"... are they dropping .me? Are they converting .me?

 

[FoxyKaye]

Watch...10.6.9. will break Wi-Fi, but give you iCloud which you cannot connect to. Yeah, I'm bitter still.

No, you're not bitter - I'd be happy if 10.6.9 fixed this mess:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/18577/pre_lion_os_x_10_6_8_update_kills_airport_networks

iCloud I can do without, Airport I can't.

 

[Rocketman]

iCloud I can do without, Airport I can't.

Shut up. One or the other.

 

[Rocketman]

Windows Vista

So you can have an older PC than you can a Mac.

 

[Hyper-X]

Never got a chance to try out iCloud before however at least on the surface it seems to me that most of what appears to be offered by iCloud seem to be stuff already offered by Google that's been in use for almost a year now.

So the question is what makes iCloud different from what Google already offers? Because at the moment it just seems like Apple's late to the party.

 

[314631]

Any word on iCloud support on Apple II machines?

 

[Akula971]

Lion?

From reading these posts, and the fact that they are making the cloud available to SL users, then perhaps Lion has not been as successful as they'd hoped?

 

[Winni]

Let's be honest: by the time MobileMe is discontinued, all but a tiny handful of PPC machines (the last month's worth of G5 towers) will be over six years old. The Intel announcement will be nearly seven years old.

You can reasonably expect a brand-new Mac to run the current OS for three years, and to be supported for another two or so years after that when the last OS it can run is one release old. This is how Apple has worked since OS X came out. There is no reason you would expect them to spend time coding and testing features for an architecture that has been discontinued for six years.

That's interesting, you've just described the main reason why enterprises don't buy Apple. By the time that the support for Windows XP officially ends, the Microsoft operating system will be 14 years old. And you can still install Windows 7 on machines that are older than six years. I wonder which of the two companies - Apple and Microsoft - is more dependable and professional...

 

[OllyW]

".Mac Member"... are they dropping .me? Are they converting .me?

It's a preference pane from Tiger. Apple stopped updating that OS months before MobileMe replaced .Mac so it still shows the older information.

From reading these posts, and the fact that they are making the cloud available to SL users, then perhaps Lion has not been as successful as they'd hoped?

It makes sense when the majority of Mac users are still running Snow Leopard.

 

[Hyper-X]

I still feel it's conjecture to associate iCloud to the demographic of SL users compared to Lion, although the evidence would appear to fit the facts, it still doesn't mean that's the true reason behind offering iCloud for SL users. Lion is still new, SL has been on the market for years, even Windows 7 has only recently surpassed the 50% mark demographically versus it's older brother XP.

The problem with Apple IMHO at a professional level has to do with communication with their partners, developers and end users. Apple's known for being very hush-hush about a lot of things and it doesn't convince businesses to feel confident with them because of it. For example when Microsoft's aware of an issue, there's usually a KB (knowledge base) article by MS acknowledging the problem and if possible, a solution, workaround or status is made available (such as a clue to when a fix is going to be made available through a Service Pack rather than a mere Hotfix).

Apple on the other hand is reliant on their community of users. There's hardly any official articles to address common and/or uncommon issues with their products and most of the solutions are provided by end users of this or Apple Discussions forums, which is IMHO not the best way to do things, at a professional level.

 

[Eric S.]

From reading these posts, and the fact that they are making the cloud available to SL users, then perhaps Lion has not been as successful as they'd hoped?

No, it just means that Apple wants iCloud to be a big success when it's announced. If iCloud were restricted to the customer base that has upgraded to Lion it would leave a lot of customers out in the cold, and that would not be a good image for iCloud.

 

[mrxak]

Lack of Keychain support is what will keep me hesitant to try iCloud, but looking at my keychain now, the amount of stuff I have in there that's outdated, unused, and just plain pointless is staggering. It's only in there because of years of synching through all the various iterations of iTools. If I were to start fresh, enter passwords new again on a new computer without synching, I expect only a handful would make it over, probably less than a quarter.

I can probably live without keychain support, then, but I do disagree that it's only for Macs. Certainly wifi and internet passwords have a place on iOS. Usernames and passwords for services like skype and AIM as well.

By all means, drop dock and system preferences. Every computer I own is set up differently in that regard, and it is not the kind of thing that's hard to do once and forget.

 

[cjmillsnun]

I want TRIM for any SSD. I am not moving to Lion until it has Rosetta.

That would be never then...

 

[dal20402]

That's interesting, you've just described the main reason why enterprises don't buy Apple. By the time that the support for Windows XP officially ends, the Microsoft operating system will be 14 years old.

And Microsoft management would happily tell you that extending support for XP that long was a huge mistake that has hurt Windows 7. They won't do that again.

And you can still install Windows 7 on machines that are older than six years.

Very few machines of 2005 or earlier vintage will run Windows 7 well, especially without significant upgrades that are probably not worth it.

My girlfriend has a 2006-vintage Dell laptop with a 1.83 GHz Core Duo. We upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM (cast off from a MBP I upgraded to 6 GB) and a relatively modern hard drive (again cast off). It runs Windows 7 tolerably, but only tolerably. I'd expect that on an older single-core machine it wouldn't meet modern standards, just like Leopard doesn't feel modern on my PB G4, despite 2 GB of RAM.

 

[Eric S.]

And Microsoft management would happily tell you that extending support for XP that long was a huge mistake that has hurt Windows 7. They won't do that again.

Do you have a source for that? I'd believe that extending support for XP cut into Vista sales, but that was mainly because of the bad reputation Vista got out of the gate.

Very few machines of 2005 or earlier vintage will run Windows 7 well, especially without significant upgrades that are probably not worth it.

I guess its not too surprising that people are sticking with XP on those systems then, and they probably would be whether or not XP is officially supported.

My girlfriend has a 2006-vintage Dell laptop with a 1.83 GHz Core Duo. We upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM (cast off from a MBP I upgraded to 6 GB) and a relatively modern hard drive (again cast off). It runs Windows 7 tolerably, but only tolerably. I'd expect that on an older single-core machine it wouldn't meet modern standards, just like Leopard doesn't feel modern on my PB G4, despite 2 GB of RAM.

My PB G4 ran Leopard just fine with 1.3GB RAM and an upgraded 1GHz CPU. I had also added a faster after-market graphics card and a SATA controller and drives. Those were things that Apple used to make easy to upgrade, part of a philosophy of keeping their HW relevant for a long time.

But that was then. Now if you want to run the latest OS, you want iCloud's services, you have to be running fairly recent Apple HW, regardless of the fact that your old system may have been perfectly capable. And it's not just PPC systems being dropped now; Intel systems too are starting to be thrown under the bus.

 

[pjhamill]

Why in the world aren't Preferences, Widgets, Dock, and Keychains being synced?? These are some of the most fundamental features associated with keeping computers in sync, and in meeting the true intent of iCloud - that any computer you have is a "device", equivalent to any other device you own, and that they stay in sync with each other rather than you needed to spend all your time managing your devices and their content.

This is a step away from that vision. What would it take for Apple to change? Or at least offer those services as paid premium options?

Mark

There will be, have patience.

 

[Hyper-X]

And Microsoft management would happily tell you that extending support for XP that long was a huge mistake that has hurt Windows 7. They won't do that again.

Not sure where you got that from but Microsoft has been saying just the opposite. In fact last quarter at one of MS's major development conferences, they've stated about how content they are with having a product that people can use on older machines.

Very few machines of 2005 or earlier vintage will run Windows 7 well, especially without significant upgrades that are probably not worth it.

Part of that has to do with hardware limitations on the machine itself. For example we have a few businesses with very light requirements that are still using the Intel 440BX chipset which doesn't support much beyond 768-1GB PC100 SDRAM that hasn't failed yet. Moving the OS to Win7, even if it was possible would make little sense mostly due to the fact that the older machine can't really make use of most of the new content of Win7 anyhow, so it'd be a better value to upgrade the machine along with the OS for the user.

My girlfriend has a 2006-vintage Dell laptop with a 1.83 GHz Core Duo. We upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM (cast off from a MBP I upgraded to 6 GB) and a relatively modern hard drive (again cast off). It runs Windows 7 tolerably, but only tolerably. I'd expect that on an older single-core machine it wouldn't meet modern standards, just like Leopard doesn't feel modern on my PB G4, despite 2 GB of RAM.

Not all machines of that era are made equally nor are they on-par on the same level of performance. I have a IBM Thinkpad of 2005 with 2GB RAM and a standard 7200 HDD and it runs 32bit Win7 no problem and is very snappy in its response. 40 sec boot time, 10 sec shutdown time, with full Aero working.

 

[milo]

From reading these posts, and the fact that they are making the cloud available to SL users, then perhaps Lion has not been as successful as they'd hoped?

Nah, there are just too many machines out there that aren't even supported on Lion and are stuck with 10.7. They want iCloud to be a hit, and that's more likely with it available on more machines.

 

[heisetax]

You bet bet your bottom dooar

So I upgraded for nothing! jk

Lion & iCloud are all about downgrading not upgrading. You may have read the small print but missed the large print.

----------

From reading these posts, and the fact that they are making the cloud available to SL users, then perhaps Lion has not been as successful as they'd hoped?

I got tired of the loss of some features & haven't done any more testing for about a week now. I'm sure that I will in the future but then many things can happen. But they may not involve iCloud though.

Written on a 5 years old Intel Mac Pro that should run for another 5 years at least. It still seems new.

 

[Morod]

I'm running SL. I like it; it works for me.
As I don't have any iDevices, syncing is not important to me.
I currently use MobileMe for email, Gallery and iDisk. Since iDisk and Gallery won't be part of iCloud (yet, anyway) email is my main use for iCloud and keeping my @mac.com address.
I really hope iCloud works with SL and rolls out fairly smoothly.