[Pythonmac-SIG] [OT] To upgrade Mac OSX or not?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 25, 2005, at 10:53, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> This is probably a bit off-topic for this list, but is the only 
> Mac-specific
> mailing list I subscribe to, and Mac OSX versioning seems to affect
> MacPython and many apps built with it.  I was prompted to write after 
> seeing
> Brian Lenihan's post about PySol for Mac OSX.  Visiting the page I saw 
> "10.3
> only".  *sigh* Yet another app I can't run on my laptop.
>
> Here's the rub.  Apple seems to rather quickly drop support for what 
> appear
> (numerically) to be minor releases.  10.1 is long gone.  I have 10.3 
> on my
> G5 and 10.2 on my laptop.  I'm loathe to buy 10.3 at this point for my
> laptop because 10.4 is in beta (right?  Apple offered a preview 
> version of
> 10.4 to me for $500 recently).  I figure as soon as I buy 10.3, 10.4 
> final
> will be released.  10.3 will start to corrode and I'll be stuck again 
> with
> "old" software once again.  Only now I have two Macs, so the costs are
> double.

For Apple's own software (iTunes, Safari, etc.), they often support the 
current release version minus one.  Apple supports older operating 
systems by providing security updates, etc.

10.4 is indeed in beta, slated to release sometime the "first half" of 
this year.  Apple offered you an ADC select subscription for $500/yr 
which includes a seed key which will get you betas on DVD by mail (but 
also available for download).  The ADC subscription also includes 
access and license to use the release operating systems too, so it's 
not a bad deal if you're going to (profitably) develop software for the 
platform.

> It seems that Apple's upgrade policy almost forces me to buy new 
> versions as
> soon as they are released.  If I snooze when new releases come out I 
> quickly
> get left in the dust and wind up either skipping a version or upgrading
> right before the next release.  (This has happened to me in the past.) 
>  I
> really hate to say this, but in this respect backward compatibility in
> Windows seems to be much better.  Am I missing something?

What you're missing is that this has nothing to do with Apple, it is 
the third party software developers that are dropping support for 10.2. 
  For Python, the grass is a lot greener when using OS X 10.3.  Building 
10.2 compatible Python-based applications requires direct access to 
10.2 or a significant effort (which few people know how to do, and 
those that do aren't likely to go through the trouble for free 
software).   In the case of PySol, Use The Source Luke.  It should 
build just fine.

There should not be as much of a Python disconnect between 10.3 and 
10.4 though.  Unlike the difference between 10.2 and 10.3, there are no 
expected at-the-unix-level changes between Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 that 
will force incompatibility.  However, for applications, you're still at 
the mercy of third party developers.  If they choose to use 10.4 
specific features (CoreData, etc.) then you're out of luck with 10.3.  
Apple does not back-port OS features.

-bob