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Why do people skip OS X revisions???

*le shrug*

Everyone's entitled to a rant thread. You certainly have made less than teh Gary! ;)

But I think this is nonsensical. I don't care what version of what OS other people use as long as I'm zero impacted. If they want my help, I need to use their computer, or I have to interact with their files, I expect they use a relatively recent OS. But my definition is just that it be capable of running most new software -- in Windows, I consider Win2k and XP both to be reasonably recent. In OS X, Panther and Tiger. Because, granted, if people are using Jaguar, there are many things that can't be done. But also I have never used Jaguar, and so I just don't know how to solve their problems anyway, if their solutions are not the same as they are in Panther and Tiger.

What I'm curious is... if you're doing art design for video games, how much of a competitive advantage does a new OS revision really give you? Changes in hardware (having a good tablet, etc), are clearly huge. Good screen real-estate. The latest versions of your rendering, modeling, illustrating software, etc. But the OS? Like, OMG!!!11111 I'm going to make teh best r0XX3Rz video game art because I have Tiger instead of Panther? :rolleyes: I don't get that. Even if you were actually developing engines / coding, I could see needing the latest OS because it's tied to the APIs available in the latest XCode. But for a graphic artist?
 
DavidLeblond said:
Tiger has fantastic new features that Panther lacks. But are those features worth $130? Not hardly. Panther had Expose which is an important addition for me usability wise. I could take or leave spotlight and Dashboard... and lets be honest, thats all Tiger really gave us.
Click to expand...

*takes off sysadmin hat (a fedora naturally), puts on programmer and end-user hats (a deerstalker with a trilby on top*

I see Panther-to-Tiger as a massive change... but 90% of it is under the surface. The kernel interfaces were finally frozen, ending years of fun low-level breakage with each release. Really nice technologies such as the Core frameworks emerged (CoreData and Cocoa Bindings are really quite cool). Tiger itself delivered only a handful of must-have toys for the user to play with. However, it brought a host of technologies that allowed developers to make cool applications - some of which either weren't possible under Panther, or were rather complex to implement under Panther.

An OS really has to succeed in two ways: give the user cool things to use and give developers the facilities they need to create great applications. You can have the most innovative OS available, but if the underlying interfaces are stupidly complex or incomplete, your applications are going to suffer. OS X, despite having a good heritage in BSD and NEXTSTEP, is a rather young OS. It's only relatively recently that the growing pains have subsided.
 
I still have 10.3. I couldnt afford to upgrade to the new one £89 though it is.
On a larger scale, think of the VW Golf. Over the period of many years there have been about 5 different 'updates' I think...or something like that. ANYWAY, each one looked nicer and newer and had better fuel but the chances are if you upgraded you would not have upgraded like this:

v1, v2, v3, v4, v5.

probably like this

v1, (it still works ill skip v2), v3, (it still works ill skip v4) v5.

Cheaper and even then not entirely necessary. OS 9-10 i believe was a bigger upgrade than 10.3-10.5 will be for me, even if 10.5 has all the tiger features and more.

You Sir, are a poo.
 
I dont know if this has been mentioned but with tiger you can boot back into OS9 which many people still need to do, If "classic" doesnt work well enough. I know a few people that havnt upgraded because of that,
 
displaced said:
So, if I were suddenly to find myself in the role of Blue Velvet's sysadmin...
Click to expand...


We'd be plying you with choccie biscuits, a range of delicious hot drinks and every lunchtime would be spent down at the pub. Oh happy day. :D

But I may have some questions for you later in the year... :eek:
 
As one who ran Panther until the release of 10.4.8, I can only answer for myself. The first two (workability and software) are part of the reasoning that would be understood by the pragmatic Mac user who wasn't/isn't enamored with the latest and greatest need for widgets and who is still satisfied typing Command+F, among other things. Live and let compute.
 
Cosmo modo said:
Do you still drive a car that was build in World war 2?
Click to expand...
You just caught yourself.

Because when my car came out, you know what the current operating system was?

OS 7.

Is your car a 2007? Last year did you have a 2006? Next year will you have a 2008? Well why the hell not?!?!?!
 
I use panther and will not upgrade my laptop because it works purrffectly well on panther. Whats with all the big cats anyway? I'm waiting for OSX Penguin.
 
Cosmo: Will you be buying the latest iLife? and the latest iWork? If we're supposed to be staying on the cutting edge, ALWAYS, then we're spending a lot more that $120 a year (which is still a lot - some of us are students!).

Look at it this way: it's not about cost, it's about worth. Is $120 a lot of money for a brand-new convertible? Of course not, becuase the value is tremendous! Is it a lot to pay for Spotlight and Dashboard? For me, no way- I'd pay $300 for spotlight alone, it saves my life. But for others, it might be useless!
 
OK, no one has mentioned School Districts...

We happen to own over 1500 mac's district wide.

Sure we get EDU prices and what not, but its still a hefty price tag.

Then what about the software that no longer will work with tiger from panther.

Alot of the smaller software companies have a small mac market and never seem to be in a hurry to support the next OS, and sometimes they don't even support it and will wait till there is a new version of there software to support the next OS, that we would be required to pay for.
 
I've always upgraded to the latest OS.

Here's my reasons:

1. Loads of improvements!
2. Better compatibility with 3rd party Apps (and some Apple Apps)
3. You're sure run the latest software
4. OS X Updates usually make your Mac faster and more efficient.
5. It can be refreshing to try something new.
6. It may actually make your life easier (Spotlight, Smart Folders, Automator)
7. Cause everyone else is doing it.

Although, every time I upgrade to a new OS, I complain about the following:

1. Some incompatibility issues for early adopters of the new OS because of slow developers
2. Sometimes a little buggy at first, gotta wait for .1 releases
3. Sometimes new interfaces annoys me at first (I eventually like it!)
4. Like anything new, there's gonna be some glitches, that you just have to live with until a fix is available

But, I think for the most part... new OS updates are always a welcome change and I think change is good. I can look past the small glitches at first cause I know that in the end, the Mac OS is going to be better than anything else.
 
I got Tiger and it ran utterly dreadfully on my iBook G4 of the time. Wish I'd stuck with Panther. Tiger was also dreadfully unstable and frankly unfinished until 10.4.3.

On my MacBook it's different, it runs brilliantly, but for those on slower hardware Panther is a much better option.
 
Yeah, sometimes it is a matter of weather or not your computer can handle all the new (usually graphically intensive) features of the new OS. I think it is smart for people on a G3 iMac (for example) to not spend their mnoey on software that their hardware cant handle. People don't go around putting 800 horsepower V-12 engines in their Honda Civic, it's simply a better idea not to.
 
macpro2000 said:
then why ever buy a new car?
Click to expand...

You don't have to. I see many, many 1983 honda civics on the road. Buying a new car isn't a must-do decision in many cases. People get bored. Why do you think everyone these days is in debt?

If your old car dies, then sure- get a new one. If it's perfectly fine...why?

I only upgrade to the latest software when I have to. If you look at some of my participated in threads, I was using 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2 for a very long time. It surfed the net, I could listen to iTunes...eveything was ok for me.
 
for me, it's quite simple why i still user panther (although i've seen Tiger in use and it looks great):

panther does what i want it too
i'm not a 'power' user of the os itself. i use the other apps. so, i've never really used the os features as in-depth, making me bored of it.
by the time i thought of upgrading, they talked about releasing leopard so i'll wait for it. (and hopefully, i'll be able to buy a new machine at the point, thus avoiding the additional expenditure :)

Cheers,
Keebler
 
Having been a developer and part of someone's IT staff, I would confirm that there isn't a general need to upgrade constantly. It's money not well spent.

At many work places, employees need e-mail, word processing, and the corporate calendar. That doesn't require a lot of power or the latest, greatest features in an operating system. Most could be using a 5 year old system, as long as the server has been upgraded. If the business does database development or graphics work, more recent machines might be needed but still, the latest operating system isn't required. $129 per seat is a lot for unused features.

Tiger hasn't really done anything for me that Panther didn't do. I don't use widgets and I don't use Exposé. As of 10.4.8, it's reasonably stable but not as stable as 10.3.9 seemed to be. If it weren't for certain applications requiring an upgrade, I probably wouldn't be using Tiger. I can't say that I'd go back to Jaguar but it wasn't awful though the performance wasn't very good.

Why buy what you don't use?
 
For the same reason why some PC owners don't upgrade every year and a half to a new PC.

And what about cars? I own a 1984 Nissan Sentra station wagon and still use it.
Also a couple years before I bought my iBook G4 (right after OS 10.4 came out, my first new Mac) I used (and still own) several computers with OS 6, 7, 8 and 9.
 
Cosmo modo said:
Do you still drive a car that was build in World war 2?
Do you still use OS 7? And so on.....

I come from a competitive art background (games) in my industry the newer software you have the more and better features you have, so that's keeps you ahead of the competition.

I probably have a complete different view on these things......

System administrators are lazy.... upgrading computers... that's a lot of work.... yeah and it's what you are geting paid for :)

Yep, a conversation at my company.
Click to expand...


I think the reason you don't understand why not everybody would upgrade is that your business is to sell the latest and greatest version of games. So naturally it makes perfect sense to you that everybody should buy the latest version of each game.

Not everybody sees the marginal improvements in software as worth the price of the upgrade. IE: Vista....

Mike
 
Why should people upgrade? If it works, that's all that matters. Tiger and Panther are not that much different anyway. I for one was not very impressed when I upgraded to Tiger on my iMac. I actually find Panther to be more stable.
 
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