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

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 26, 2005, at 21:43, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> Thanks for all the responses w.r.t. upgrading Mac OSX.  My bad 
> experience
> was when migrating from 9->X on an older iMac.  It couldn't have been 
> more
> than a few weeks after buying 10.1 that 10.2 came out.  It just never 
> dawned
> on me at the time to do any sort of investigation of OSX release 
> schedules.

The general rule is that as soon as you buy an Apple product, something 
better will come out before you'd like it to and you'll wish you had 
waited a few weeks.. unless of course you buy something as soon as its 
available for order, in which case you'll have to wait more than you'd 
like to receive it.

> It is heartening to know that the release interval is lengthening as 
> the
> system stabilizes and that there should be better 10.3->10.4 
> compatibility.
> I haven't paid any attention to the temporal timing of OSX releases and
> wouldn't have any idea how to find info if I was so inclined to do so.

Compatibility -> In -> This -> Direction -> Was -> Never ->  A -> 
Problem!

> Someone suggested I was complaining about having to pay for upgrades.
> That's not really it at all.  I'm happy to pay Apple their due.  They 
> have
> an excellent product.  I was miffed that I paid my $99 (or whatever it 
> was)
> literally weeks before 10.2 came out.  I think it would have been wise 
> for
> Apple to include a coupon for a free or discounted upgrade to 10.2.  
> They
> clearly knew its release was imminent.

Obviously they're not going to repackage boxes when they're about to 
clear them off the shelves.  I think Apple *did* have a contingency for 
users that had very recently purchased the prior release.  Did you ask 
them at the time?

> Bob mentioned:
>
>     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.
>
> In fact I just upgraded to iTunes 4.7.1 on my 10.2 system this 
> evening, so I
> know it's possible for Apple to continue support of applications on 
> "old"
> versions of the OS.  I haven't seen a functional upgrade of Safari on 
> that
> OS in quite awhile though.  I suspect it has something to do with the 
> fact
> that iTunes represents a very lucrative revenue stream for Apple, while
> Safari doesn't.

Safari was a bad example, but I wouldn't expect any functional updates 
to 10.2 from here on out.  It's very close to missing the mark for 
"current release version minus one", given that 10.4 is promised for 
the first half of this year.  It wouldn't be the worst thing in the 
world to buy 10.3 now, because 10.4 is definitely more than a few weeks 
away, but you certainly wouldn't be getting "full value" from it 
because it's 15 months old (Oct 24 2003) already.

-bob