osx installation

[Gokhan]

hi

i ran in to a problems when trying to reinstall panther on my powerbook which had tiger on it and my friends ibook which had panther ! i try boot up from the install disk and on both machines i get a red circle with a diagonal line in it what is this ?

i did ask a apple tech while in for a repair and he said it is something to do with boot firmwares and how if a machine came with 10.2 i could not install any earlier versions of osx because the firmware is not right ??

so i cant just zero my drive and install panther cause my pb came with tiger ?

if true that sucks ):

 

[MisterMe]

hi

i ran in to a problems when trying to reinstall panther on my powerbook which had tiger on it and my friends ibook which had panther ! i try boot up from the install disk and on both machines i get a red circle with a diagonal line in it what is this ?

i did ask a apple tech while in for a repair and he said it is something to do with boot firmwares and how if a machine came with 10.2 i could not install any earlier versions of osx because the firmware is not right ??

so i cant just zero my drive and install panther cause my pb came with tiger ?

if true that sucks ):

No. This has been standard Mac practice since forever.

 

[Gokhan]

k

so i cant install panther on a machine that came with tiger even though i would erase the drive

 

[Blackheart]

so i cant install panther on a machine that came with tiger even though i would erase the drive

Apple computers need drivers that are only available in versions >= the version it ships with. No drivers = no dice.

 

[Gokhan]

k

that sucks i should be able to install what i want but thats apple for you they let u upgrade but no downgrade

 

[janey]

if you're using your friend's iBook disks, it might not work.

Plus, if your powerbook came with tiger, why can't you install tiger on it?

 

[Blackheart]

that sucks i should be able to install what i want but thats apple for you they let u upgrade but no downgrade

I don't think you understand what's going on.

Let's say your new Powerbook requires a change to the driver that allows the computer to access the optical drive (for whatever reason, possibly an upgrade, change in manufacturers, etc.). Because of this change in drivers, it's only possible to use the optical drive using the newest version of the OS (because it actually has the drivers on it). If they let people install older versions of the OS on their computers (versions w/o the specific driver) then Apple would be flooded with phone calls from people saying "ZOMG WTF my cd drive is br0ke!!!!!111one".

 

[Gokhan]

k

they should include drivers for all this stuff on all versions of osx

 

[mkrishnan]

If they let people install older versions of the OS on their computers (versions w/o the specific driver) then Apple would be flooded with phone calls from people saying "ZOMG WTF my cd drive is br0ke!!!!!111one".

I understand, and partially agree with, your point, but to be honest, this is something that makes Apple difficult / impossible to deal with for its few managed installation customers.

Think about this scenario: Apple released Tiger, and certain applications were not compatible. Some of these took a relatively long time (not for justifiable reasons, just b/c of poor vendor support) to update. As a home user, you could suck it up and upgrade anyway, if you wanted to. If you're managing an installation, though, and this app is critical for your business flow, you CANNOT upgrade. Which is fine, in and of itself, except that with Apple, you also cannot buy any new computers, because they can only run the new OS, which is not yet compatible.

If MS did this with Windows, it would be a BIG issue for IT managers... I'm not an IT manager, but don't the people on MR who are agree? This practice reduces hardware / OS compatibility nightmares in comparison to the Windows world, but if I were an IT manager, I would expect that the computer work at least on the one immediately preceding OS generation in most cases, and that Apple release an extra dot upgrade or patch or whatever to accommodate this.

 

[MisterMe]

they should include drivers for all this stuff on all versions of osx

How can you include a driver on a CD that was pressed before the driver was written? The only alternative is for Apple to continue to develop System 6, System 7, MacOS 8, MacOS 9, MacOS X 10.0 MacOS X 10.1, MacOS X 10.2, and MacOS X 10.3.

mkrishnan, I really don't understand your point. MacOS X software has an incredible shelf life. Among my apps are such System 7 stalwarts as Canvas 3.5.6, FileMaker 2.0.1, True BASIC Pro 4.0.6, WriteNow 4.0, MacWrite Pro 1.5, and numerous others running just find with the Classic environment. Heck, even DiskDoubler still works. Things are not quite as nice on the hardware side. In my experience, software compatibilities issues due almost exclusively to developers who refused follow Apple guidelines. Even the this case, often there were free downloadable patches to fix the problems that many users never bothered to download and apply. Apple's way provides incentive for developers to do it right.

 

[mkrishnan]

mkrishnan, I really don't understand your point. MacOS X software has an incredible shelf life.

In general, this is very true. But there were a handful of applications that didn't get along with Tiger, for instance, that were working under Panther. SPSS was a big example for the academic / scientific world. It took something like five or six months for this to get fixed. Granted that was the developer's fault. But if my department's installation had been Apple instead of Windows, it would've frozen them, in terms of new hardware, because not being able to run SPSS would've absolutely been unacceptable. In corporate / managed settings, it's often this kind of software from smaller, specialty, slow developers that is crucial.

The problem isn't that managed installations don't upgrade, or that most OS X apps don't continue to work on new OS versions. It's that managed installations aren't ready to transition to a new Apple OS revision the very day Apple releases it, but their system of not supporting previous OS revs on new hardware essentially forces them to do so, because they are always experiencing churn of buying new units and discontinuing old ones.

 

[Blackheart]

they should include drivers for all this stuff on all versions of osx

You should try building a car with a motor that isn't invented yet.