Re: List of Applications Not Compatible with Leopard

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:58:53 -0800, Daniel Johnson wrote
(in article <13mds8s92o3ad09@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

"George Graves" <gmgraves2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C38AF079089F4E71F0182648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:32:27 -0800, Daniel Johnson wrote
(in article <13mao9aghj69d24@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

"George Graves" <gmgraves2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C38A7DCF08846E1FF0407648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:55:15 -0800, Daniel Johnson wrote
(in article <13ma81jcatanj73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

Well, because it's very advanced, pretty, and excellent OS, and it's
gaining
marketshare steadily at a rate that puts everyone else to shame.

Actually, the latest figures show that it's losing market share.

What figures are those? That would represent a remarkable turnaround. I'm
skeptical: it sounds like wishful thinking.

Aren't the latest figures around 93%? Down from 97% a coup;e of years ago?

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were treating Vista as a separate OS.

Which is absurd, really, and it was silly of me to assume that's what you
meant- it's just that so many people in c.s.mac.advocacy do that.

Windows, of course, is the proper unit of comparison, and it has slipped
just a bit from its high. It really had nowhere to go but down, and Apple
has really improved their computer products quite a lot over the last five
years or so. So perhaps this isn't so shocking.

But if you are being reasonable, I don't know what we have to talk about.

[snip]
But in the final
analysis, the tools for what I do just don't exist on Windows and what
Windows does have is primitive compared to similar capabilities on the
Mac
(such as Color Sync)

If by "tools" you mean "apps", they perhaps you are being sensible.

I mean both apps and the enabling technologies afforded by the OS.

Hmm. Not so sure about that. Do you even care about Microsoft's color
management? It's capabilities are quite close to ColorSync as far as I can
see, but it is not widely used. Does a technology afforded by the OS, but
not actually used by apps, count for anything?

I use Colorsync a lot and I have used the Windows version too (ICC 2.2) and
the Windows version just isn't as consistent, or as deep, or as
comprehensive.

I would think, from a consumer's standpoint, the answer would be "no'.

Consumers don't care, that's very true. But then I'm not a consumer. I use my
Macs to make my living and believe me I couldn't do it as easily or as well
with Windows.

[snip]
That is a different question: they standardize on particular versions, of
course.

"Recent" is, of course, relative. I presume it means "still supported":
they
may, for instance, be standardized on Excel 2000, now in Extended
Support.
That's a pretty recent version in the real world. But in Apple's world,
Excel 2000 would no longer work at all. It's more than 6 years old.

Perhaps, I didn't ask. But what they did say was that if they ran into a
case
where the latest version of the OS left some apps behind, they would
either
remain at the old OS level for a while (like they are doing with regard to
Vista) or simply upgrade everyone to the latest support versions.

Exactly. With Apple, this is not an option: once a new OS comes out, new
Macs after that won't support the old version- not even one major revision
back- and so you can't buy new computers until you do upgrade.

Of course it is an option. I can run everything back Photoshop 8 and Office
X under any OSX release there has been,

But if your apps don't work, then it's even worse- you must upgrade the OS
and those apps. For your own line-of-business apps, that gets expensive real
fast. For 3rd party apps, you are stuck until the vendor does the update.

That's been no problem. Apple always has a stop-gap solution. Whether it's
the 68K emulator in the first PPC machines, or the Classic environment for
OSX or Rosetta for the Intel conversion, Apple always makes transitioning
possible and as easy as possible. The fact that it doesn't keep these legacy
runtime solutions as part of the OS forever is simply not important. After
some amount of time has passed, the software developer has released native
versions of his applications in question and the customer has upgraded to
them and everybody moves on.


And of course, there are their line-of-business applications. The ones
they
wrote themselves, or that consultants wrote for them. What does a "recent
version" mean for such an app?

One IT manager I spoke with said that his company had several such apps -
mostly on the production floor, and that they are in the midst of having
those apps re-written in Java.

All of them? All at once? That is rather strange.

Not at all. The way they see it is that it's insurance against whatever the
future might bring and they won't have to be in a position to do it again.

[snip]
Now, if you want to tell me you know lots people at Big Important
Companies
and they are all upgrading to the latest versions of all their apps as
quick
as can be, but won't touch Vista with a barge pole... well then I'll know
where you are getting these stories. :D

I didn't say that, though, did I? The impression I got was that they do
what
they have to do to keep-up with the IT industry while avoiding disruption
of
work. For instance, they see the move of proprietary enterprise apps to
Java
as a step to avoid being locked-in to one platform or OS. This makes them
flexible and more obsolescence proof.

That's rather foolish. Java *is* a platform, and now they will be locked
into that platform instead of Win32 or whatever. Perhaps they like being
locked in to Sun rather than Microsoft, of course. But if they think they
won't be locked in, they are in for a shock.

But all platforms support Java, Mac, Windows, Sun Unix, even Linux. The point
is if they can put all of their proprietary apps into Java, they could change
from Windows ME (which I think he said they were using now) to Linux and not
have to pay for a new OS at all.




--
The only reason that the air we breathe is free, is because the corporate
world has been unable to figure out a practical way to meter it.

.

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