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

[Skip Montanaro]

>> Thanks.  I'll have to check to see if that will work for my laptop.
>> I have plenty of other stuff on my plate though, so this particular
>> issue has sort of moved to the back burner...

Bob> If it runs 10.2, it'll run 10.3.  You'll probably notice better
Bob> performance, too.

Thanks.  The check is in the mail...

S

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

[Bob Ippolito]

On Mar 3, 2005, at 11:08 PM, Skip Montanaro wrote:
Thomas> I don't know where to find the release dates for different 
Mac
Thomas> OS X revs, but Other World Computing is offering Panther 
for
Thomas> $49:

Thomas> http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/specials/
Thanks.  I'll have to check to see if that will work for my laptop.  I 
have
plenty of other stuff on my plate though, so this particular issue has 
sort
of moved to the back burner...

If it runs 10.2, it'll run 10.3.  You'll probably notice better 
performance, too.

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

[Skip Montanaro]

Thomas> I don't know where to find the release dates for different Mac
Thomas> OS X revs, but Other World Computing is offering Panther for
Thomas> $49:

Thomas> http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/specials/

Thanks.  I'll have to check to see if that will work for my laptop.  I have
plenty of other stuff on my plate though, so this particular issue has sort
of moved to the back burner...

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

[Thomas Juntunen]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 01/26/05, Skip Montanaro imposed order on a stream of electrons to say:

>
>Bob> It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to buy 10.3 now,
>Bob> because 10.4 is definitely more than a few weeks away, but you
>Bob> certainly wouldn't be getting "full value" from it because it's 15
>Bob> months old (Oct 24 2003) already.
>
>Where would an interested person find a log of release dates?


I don't know where to find the release dates for different Mac OS X revs, but 
Other World Computing is offering Panther for $49:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/specials/


HTH,
Thomas Juntunen

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

[Jordan Krushen]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:16:05 -0500, Bob Ippolito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 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?

FWIW, I bought an iMac (with Jaguar pre-installed) a week after
Panther came out, and was eligible for a $30 upgrade.

The same was true for iLife recently -- I bought an iBook a few days
after iLife '05 came out and qualified for a cheaper upgrade, but only
machines that were bought after the release date qualify.

I can't state for certain if there's anything to account for purchases
a few days before a release, but surely a local Apple shop should be
able to confirm our speculation.  When I bought the iBook, they simply
handed me the form to send in.

J.
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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] [OT] To upgrade Mac OSX or not?

[Nicholas Riley]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 09:37:49PM -0600, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> Bob> It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to buy 10.3 now,
> Bob> because 10.4 is definitely more than a few weeks away, but you
> Bob> certainly wouldn't be getting "full value" from it because it's 15
> Bob> months old (Oct 24 2003) already.
> 
> Where would an interested person find a log of release dates?

I happened to use Ars Technica's reviews, but another good source is
Apple's press releases.

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

[Skip Montanaro]

Bob> It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to buy 10.3 now,
Bob> because 10.4 is definitely more than a few weeks away, but you
Bob> certainly wouldn't be getting "full value" from it because it's 15
Bob> months old (Oct 24 2003) already.

Where would an interested person find a log of release dates?

Skip

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

[Skip Montanaro]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[Eric]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
>
> I really hate to say this, but in this respect backward compatibility in
> Windows seems to be much better.  Am I missing something?
> 

I think you will find that Windows will quickly catch up in this regard
when they (finally) release LONGHORN and they, too, discover the joys of
settling in a totally new operating system.

At least there was much better backward compatibility over a longer
period with Mac as compared to Windows before OSX - and I believe this
is what they are aiming at again into the future.  This is really small
pain we are seeing for the massive gains that OSX brought.

I think if we persist for a bit and things settle down in this Brave New
MacWorld swetness and light will return (it ain't so bad now).



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

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 26, 2005, at 1:14 AM, Brian Lenihan wrote:

On Jan 25, 2005, at 7:53 AM, 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.
I might be misremembering, but I thought Python on 10.2 was an 
optional install.  I know 10.3 has Python 2.3.0 installed by default, 
so that is what I built PySol with.   I have a stand-alone version 
which uses Python 2.5, so it should work with whatever you installed 
on 10.2, but I believe you need a framework build of Python.  Bob will 
correct me if I am wrong.
A practically unusable version of Python 2.2.0 shipped with Mac OS X 
10.2.

If you built Python 2.5 on Mac OS X 10.3, it and anything you build for 
it (extensions, etc.) are not going to be compatible with Mac OS X 
10.2.  If you build the Python and all of its extensions on 10.2, then 
it will.  If you build a --semi-standalone PySol it will still bring in 
the third party extensions, so it's still nothing suitable for 10.2 
use.

Bob is right: I know how to cross-compile using Apple's tool chain, 
but I have no idea how to make a 10.2 compatible app bundle using 
py2app and I have no interest in investing the time to find out how.
Well, it's hard enough to where I couldn't figure out how to actually 
build a Python on Mac OS X 10.3 that was compatible with 10.2, and I 
tried for the better part of a day, so take that as you will.  I gave 
up and used a Mac OS X 10.2 machine (which I needed for testing anyway) 
and built Python and all the extensions and transferred it to my 10.3 
box.  I have a deploy script that sets up the environment properly and 
runs the py2app setup.py from that 10.2 compatible interpreter and 
everything just works.

Markus got annoyed by some people's rather loose behavior with his 
source code (and their even looser interpretation of what "forking" 
and GPL compatibility mean) and jerked everything but the code to 
PySol and the pysolsoundserver from his site.  If you take my modified 
tarball of his code and get the data files from one of my disk images, 
you can build a version compatible with your system.  The 
pysolsoundserver uses SDL, SDL_mixer, and smpeg.  Markus has provided 
a configure file and a setup.py.in for the sound server which will 
work with a little minor tweaking (fix the paths, if necessary).

There was a bug which prevented PySol from starting if the sound 
server could not be imported, but I fixed it so the sound server is 
now optional, but recommended.
Offering source code is the only feasible option to support Python 
software on versions of Mac OS X older than your build environment.  
That's just how it is.  It might be somewhat different between 10.3 and 
10.4, but I'm not going to make any promises.

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

[Brian Lenihan]

On Jan 25, 2005, at 7:53 AM, 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.
I might be misremembering, but I thought Python on 10.2 was an optional 
install.  I know 10.3 has Python 2.3.0 installed by default, so that is 
what I built PySol with.   I have a stand-alone version which uses 
Python 2.5, so it should work with whatever you installed on 10.2, but 
I believe you need a framework build of Python.  Bob will correct me if 
I am wrong.

Bob is right: I know how to cross-compile using Apple's tool chain, but 
I have no idea how to make a 10.2 compatible app bundle using py2app 
and I have no interest in investing the time to find out how.

Markus got annoyed by some people's rather loose behavior with his 
source code (and their even looser interpretation of what "forking" and 
GPL compatibility mean) and jerked everything but the code to PySol and 
the pysolsoundserver from his site.  If you take my modified tarball of 
his code and get the data files from one of my disk images, you can 
build a version compatible with your system.  The pysolsoundserver uses 
SDL, SDL_mixer, and smpeg.  Markus has provided a configure file and a 
setup.py.in for the sound server which will work with a little minor 
tweaking (fix the paths, if necessary).

There was a bug which prevented PySol from starting if the sound server 
could not be imported, but I fixed it so the sound server is now 
optional, but recommended.

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

[Chris Barker]

- Original Message -
From: Skip Montanaro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> This is probably a bit off-topic for this list,

That's OK. This list is the only one I'm on where folks that seem to
really understand OS-X reside as well.

> It seems that Apple's upgrade policy almost forces me to buy new 
> versions as soon as they are released.

It's not so much their policy, as the fact that they have been making
major changes, very frequently. This is a good thing, as 10.1 had, at
best the quality of a beta version.

>  I
> really hate to say this, but in this respect backward compatibility in
> Windows seems to be much better.

I'm no fan of windows, but you are absolutely right. Backward
compatibility is much better than it has been for OS-X. Of course, it
took Windows to get to NT 5 (Win 2000) to be worth using at all. Apple
did somethuing similar, but got to 10.3 MUCH faster, once they got started!

>  Am I missing something?

You're missing the fact that OS-X is a propriatary product, and they
therefore have you by the b**ls. If you want to run software like that,
you need to accept that fact. Apple has a long history of great
products, with occasional losers, a dedicated user base, and jerking
that user base around once in a while.

>From how I read your post, your only real objection is that Apple is
making you pay for all these upgrades. That's one thing I like about
Linux. Change is rapid, and backward compatibility is no better, but at
least I don't have to pay a bunch of money each time I upgrade.

As others have pointed out, the number of changes between the 10.1,
10.2, and 10.3 upgrades have been enough to justify calling it a "new"
version, and charging for it. However, they have been rapidly released.
I think free upgrades for say, three years would be reasonable. 

On the other hand, some folks like to license software more as a lease.
Perhaps $100/yr isn't too much for the use of OS-X.

-Chris






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

[Paul Berkowitz]

On 1/25/05 8:13 AM, "Skip Montanaro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
>>> Am I missing something?
> 
> Charles> Umm . . . Software Update?
> 
> Software Update won't take me from 10.2 to 10.3.  I'm as Software Updated as
> I can be on my laptop, but it's still 10.2.

You made it sound as if this was something happening to you on a weekly or
monthly basis:

> 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.

So it's understandable that Charles thought you meant ..x releases. You're
talking about major upgrades that are now coming every 18 months or slower.
It's hard to snooze through those, especially with all the hoopla that
accompanies one. It also seems you're being misled by the 10.x numerology or
pretending to be, into imagining the major OS steps are " what appear
(numerically) to be minor releases". The cost alone should tell you
otherwise. 

Of course you're just joking. The differences between each of 10.1 to 10.2,
10.2 to 10.3, and form the sound of it, 10.3 to 10.4 are bigger than OS 8 to
OS 9 was, by quite a long way. The reason for the small points is surely
just that Apple is still "branding" OS X as an entirely separate operating
system form what came before. I imagine they'll stick in the 10.x region for
a while yet.


-- 
Paul Berkowitz


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

[Skip Montanaro]

>> Am I missing something?

Charles> Umm . . . Software Update?

Software Update won't take me from 10.2 to 10.3.  I'm as Software Updated as
I can be on my laptop, but it's still 10.2.

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

[Nicholas Riley]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:53:38AM -0600, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 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.

10.3's popularity was a lot greater than 10.2's; also, the time
between 10.3 and 10.4 was considerably greater.  I imagine it'll last
you longer than 10.2 did, but you may find yourself wishing for 10.4
in a few months.

> Only now I have two Macs, so the costs are double.

Not quite; you can get a "family pack" good for up to 5 machines owned
by an individual or family for less than twice the price.



> 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?

Only that Mac OS X started out a lot less mature than recent versions
of Windows, and is evolving a lot faster than Windows, so often the
reason why a new Mac OS X version is required is that the
functionality simply didn't exist in the prior version.

Yes, backwards compatibility in Windows is better than Mac OS X, with
most products I see still supporting back to Windows 98, and some
requiring Windows 2000 (released December 1999, to use one
definition).

Mac OS X 10.0 wasn't even released until March 2001.  I used 10.0, but
had to reboot into Mac OS 9 a lot.  10.1 (September 2001) was a
marginal improvement, but not a paid upgrade; still I couldn't use OS
X full-time.  10.2 (August 2002) was the first version I voluntarily
gave other people to use, and 10.3 (October 2003) the version I gave
my mother.

10.4 is unlikely to be released before April 2005.  Note that the time
between releases continues to increase.  I doubt Mac OS X is ever
going to see Windows' multi-year release cycles, but you can expect
better backwards compatibility in future.

-- 
Nicholas Riley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | 
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Re: [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
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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] [OT] To upgrade Mac OSX or not?

[Charles Hartman]

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

Umm . . . Software Update?
Charles Hartman
http://cherry.conncoll.edu/cohar
http://villex.blogspot.com
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[Pythonmac-SIG] [OT] To upgrade Mac OSX or not?

[Skip Montanaro]

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.

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?

Thx,

-- 
Skip Montanaro
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.mojam.com/
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