Why do people update OS X? Just curious. If it works how you like, why update it? Security flaws are probably the main reason, but isn't there a way to get those without acquiescing to an OS redesign?
Because you have to: OSX doesn't have much of a culture of backwards compatibility, and every update tends to pressure developers into the latest greatest thing. Maintaining old software is just not a cultural value.
Once the developers move, the users pretty much have to. I have an iMac from 2009. I had two OS's on it. Windows 7? Everything still works there. Runs fast, new software is great, etc. OSX 10.6.8? DEAD. It's basically useless. I guess it's nice that apple offers free upgrades, except that they mysteriously make a system that used to be lightning fast extremely slow, even though other OS's seem to run just fine..
It works perfectly. I have zero complaints or issues. It's no problem at all.
I use chrome and terminal for most of my work, but I do run itunes and vmware fusion and run some apps that give me a tiled interface and focus-follows-mouse.
No problems at all. I couldn't be happier.
I am sure it would all go to hell if I got a current model and tried to run SL on it ...
I upgraded SL -> Mavericks a few months ago when it stopped receiving security updates.
It's slightly worse (I don't like mission control, messages is useless to me) but not as bad as Lion (i.e. you'll just need to disable the stupid scroll behaviour, but performance is good).
On the plus side, you get the option to use new software developed for "10.7+" (heroku's db client, atom editor, swift etc)
Apple has a pretty vicious hardware/software upgrade treadmill.
I resisted updating 10.4 for years; IMO that was the high water mark for OS X, everything has basically been downhill from there. If I could still run 10.4 plus bugfixes and security updates, with modern software, I would.
But that's not possible. They push out new versions of the OS, along with new versions of development tools, which produce software that's not backwards-compatible past a certain point, such that eventually you can't run new software without installing major (0.1) updates. Apple's own products are the worst for this, but eventually you lose 3rd party apps as well.
Even if you resist the demands of new software, you'll eventually get forced to upgrade via hardware. Each generation of Apple hardware has a minimum OS version, keeping you from going back too far. For instance, Mac Pro "quad core" and 8-core systems won't run OS 10.4; Nehalem-based machines won't run 10.6. And Apple has purposely killed off its compatibility layers, dropping first the Classic environment and more recently Rosetta, in order to introduce barriers to running old software.
Classic/Rosetta were dropped during the moves to x86 and 64-bit. Given that almost all software was upgraded I can see why Apple didn't think the effort was worth it. And for all we know it could've been technically impossible.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I stuck with 10.6 until Linux. Took a look at anything past Lion... "nope!". I despised 10.8 enough to actually downgrade my 2012 MBP to 10.6.
But as for "why update" - up until 10.6, there were performance improvements as well as useful features (subjective -I know- fine).
As for "why update nowadays" - well, 10.6 isn't really supported nowadays. (cough Java 7 cough)
Both were Apple's choice. Apple's Java 6 relied on proprietary interfaces that were not part of the contribution to OpenJDK. Oracle could not have even recreated the Java 6 MacOS port. The other big reason was that new MacOS versions were only x64 and going to the trouble of making a 32 bit port for only obsolete OSes was a non-starter.
The reason--the only reason--I'm seriously considering upgrading from 10.6 is that new programs increasingly don't support it anymore. I download a simple little helper app and it says "The program requires OS X 10.8 or higher."
My best guess is that programmers build with the latest libraries, and the latest libraries require the latest OS version. If the dev is running on the latest version, it never crosses his mind to do otherwise.
I did the same thing recently, and I've hated it since. 10.7 removed Rosetta, broke "Save As", and annoyified the Save dialog.
But there were just too many pieces of software that wouldn't run, and unpatched security holes didn't seem like a good idea either.
To add insult to injury, Apple doesn't allow you to virtualize non-server versions of 10.6. You can, thankfully, hack VMWare Workstation and keep running your previous machine's image that way, but it's shitty that you have to jump through those hoops. It seems geared specifically towards keeping people from continuing to use their old apps.
I'd like to keep 10.6 support in the open source app I help out with but there are so many improvements in 10.7 and 10.8 from a developer point of view that the latest release will be the last to support 10.6 (and 32-bit macs). By improvements I mean genuine time saving features like base localisation, not "ooh shiny dot syntax!".
Until a version is EOL'd, sure, and that's what I've been doing. But 10.6 was EOL'd in late 2013, and by early 2014 at the latest it had unpatched major flaws, so I had to upgrade to 10.9.
So Windows has become more sane than OS X in terms of security updates?
EDIT: Windows 7 was released in 2009 and is still receiving security updates. 10.6 was released in 2011 and has been EOL'd. Seeing as both people still want to use these products, but one group is being forced not to, that's why I'm saying OS X is taking a less sane stance than Windows.
OS X upgrades are free, more like Windows Service Packs in a way. Microsoft also drops support for pre-SP versions of Windows after a time. The clock is ticking for Windows 8.0; you have to upgrade to 8.1.
I worked on the full screen feature in 10.7 through 10.9!
Full screen in 10.7 and 10.8 did render secondary displays useless. But it was a new feature in 10.7, so there was nothing to reverse. You can't take Safari, Mail, etc. full screen in 10.6.
Perhaps there was an app you used that switched from a custom full screen implementation to the system one, and so regressed on secondary displays?
VLC, iTerm (& Terminal? I think), Chrome, Firefox, ... Most things I used had some sort of full-screen mode that was then "hijacked" by 10.7's native full-screen mode. I say "hijacked" because even versions that were pre-Lion would somehow end up using the native "feature".
The thing to reverse would have been the "switch to new workspace when full-screening" - or at the very least make it optional. Certainly not respond "that's a feature" and close as "working as expected" when thousands complain.
I failed to see the value in that feature even with a single screen. An action that used to happen instantaneously now took 1-2s. and a dizzying sliding animation. (Many a flow was lost to toggling full-screen by accident - whereas previously you could toggle/toggle back immediately without losing your mental state - surely you appreciate that as a developer?).
Ok, I get it: you don't like how the system full screen integrates with workspaces, and you were peeved when other apps adopted it in place of their own implementations. Of course Apple did not "hijack" anything: full screen support has always been strictly opt-in. But apps would feel pressure to adopt the system implementation.
Full screen was an effort to make OS X more usable on small displays - recall that the 11" MacBook Air had just shipped. It didn't make much sense for media playback apps to adopt the system full screen mode, especially as it was in 10.7-8.
I would have loved to enable a system mode where full screen windows could coexist in the same workspace as unrelated windows, but this would have been a new feature, not something we could have achieved by reversing anything. And eventually Apple did enable a new mode, which was what shipped in 10.9.
Oh, and if you filed a bug, then whoever closed it as "working as expected" made a mistake. There was a (heavily duped) bug tracking the uselessness of secondary displays in FS, and it was closed when 10.9 shipped. I may even have been the one to close it, I don't remember.
Of course Apple did not "hijack" anything: full screen support has always been strictly opt-in. But apps would feel pressure to adopt the system implementation.
This doesn't make much sense, does it? Obviously apps adopt the system implementation. The problem the OP is talking about is that the system implementation became pretty weird, broke some apps that used to work just fine (especially lots of xquartz ones), and thought that the best use for your extra monitors was to just display a dark gray pattern.
Personally, I learned to live with it (sigh, uncheck "displays have separate spaces"), but it does seem like a good example of Apple shoving a half-baked idea out the door.
QuickTime and iTunes. I used to watch tv or a movie on one of my displays while coding on another. Instead I got to watch linen one screen while watching a movie (double whammy here because even showing pure black on the other screen would have been better since at least it wouldn't distract from the video).
I can't specifically recall, but I think the same was true of full screening video content from Safari (perhaps technically a "plugin feature", but maybe html5 video was around?), but QuickTime was 100% an apple regression.
I have no idea how the full-screen mode is supposed to work or what it is supposed to be good for; I just know that every now and then I fat-finger something and accidentally invoke it, at which point whatever single window I happened to be using zooms to take over one of my monitors, while the other monitor turns grey and useless. I don't understand how this could ever be a useful feature.
I took it personally because my vendor condescendingly told me that the fact that I can't use my environment (multi-monitor) the way I wanted (full-screening applications) was actually a feature. Apple was telling me to STFU or GTFO.
All you can do is seek your own joy. Expecting others to do that for you is setting expectations. Not sure why I got the downvotes, but I'm happy you got free of OSX. I'm still hanging in there...for now.
It worked exactly the same as before only Apple added full screen mode which didnt work in an ideal way. But guess what you don't have to use it. Just maximise your windows normally or use one of the many free tools to do it via keystrokes.
But yeh fuck Apple for offering free OS upgrades that are completely optional.
A service pack doesn't completely redesign how people interact with Windows, though. But OS X "service packs" tend to do just that. In fact, that was the author's frustration.
Seeing as OS X service packs also come out very frequently, whereas Windows are very rare, I'm not sure the two are comparable.
I should probably bow out now. I just thought it was interesting.
I think the principle attribute that determines how long support lasts is the cost to get to the next supported version and not anything to do with feature differences. Apple made the decision to give away upgrades precisely so they could move people off old versions I suspect.
They'd be like Service Packs if Service Packs broke backwards compatibility and changed core functionality of the OS, which they typically don't. They are not analogous.
