Re: OS X Lion - breakdown of features, changes - appleinsider

On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:15:39 -0400, nospam wrote
(in article <140420111515392298%nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <io7evb019ri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, J.J. O'Shea
<try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

office 2008 is 3 years old.

So? It (mostly) works. Office 2011 doesn't do a damn thing that we need
that
Office 2008 doesn't already do... and it doesn't fix the problems that
Office
2008 has. There is absolutely no reason for us to buy it.

then don't buy it. office 2008 is intel native and will work on lion.
no need to buy anything.

And parts of it _still_ use PPC-only code. Not big parts, not important
parts, but parts still do... and the parts that are Intel-capable aren't as
compatible with Windows Office as Office 2004 is. Removing Office 2004 will
cripple Mac-Windows round trips for Office documents. A _lot_ of our clients
use Office 2003 and earlier. They are not about to upgrade. We must support
them or lose their business.


the problem is with office 2004 (and v.x). they're *old*, and it's time
to upgrade.

They still work. They do a better job of producing a document which works
properly in Windows than the newer versions. We must support people who use
Windows. We _cannot_ upgrade.


upgrading 7
year old software is not an unrealistic expectation when upgrading an
operating system, and microsoft can release intel native updaters for
it going forward.

They just kicked out an update yesterday. It uses a PPC-only installer.

after lion ships, they'll kick out an intel installer. no big deal.

For a PPC-only app suite? I doubt it. I really do.


I, personally, just purchased a LaCie drive;
the setup app which ships with the _brand-new_, 2TB, FireWire 800, drive
requires Rosetta.

there's no need for any setup app to use any hard drive on a mac. plug
it in. done.

I know that. John Public doesn't.

and that's apple's fault?

No. But it is Apple's problem. Who do you think John Public is going to call
when there's a problem, and who do you think he's going to blame when his
stuff doesn't work any more?


And, just so you know... that brand-new 2TB drive shipped with MBR
partition
tables, which means that if I had not dug out Disk Utility and
repartitioned
it GUID I would not be able to use it as a boot disk. The setup app _will_
handle things like that. Most members of the public would have no idea why
they can't make their brand-new drive boot, or why they can't install a new
OS onto it...

so lacie can make an intel version. no big deal.

Except that they show no sign of doing this.


until now, they didn't need to, now they do. if they don't, there are
other companies that will be happy to sell a hard drive without being
saddled with crappy software.

I used LaCie as an example. Western Digital has similar software, also
PPC-only. So does Iomega. I haven't looked at Seagate, but I'll bet that
they've not updated their software, either.


There are even some _newer_
hardware which require Rosetta, and not just the LaCie drive I mentioned
above. You can work around the LaCie setup app fairly easily, but at
least
two Epson and three HP MFDs which are _shipping today_ require Rosetta or
you can't scan with them.

which ones?

HP PhotoSmart C4680, Officejet 8500, assorted Epson CX systems.

printing and scanning is supported, as part of snow leopard.

1 Apple publishes the drivers provided to it by the MFD vendors.

2 Those drivers are PPC-only in many cases, including the above noted items.
They simply will not work if Rosetta is not available. If you have a device
which uses PPC drivers, it will not work in Lion. Period.


<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669>

i just bought an epson printer, plugged it in and it 'just
worked.' there was no need to install anything, including scanning.

You have Lion? Tell us more.

it is snow leopard, and nothing in the epson software was necessary for
the printer or scanner to work. epson can ship 68k binaries for all i
care.

I'm talking about Lion and the lack of Rosetta for PPC drivers. Rosetta is
present in Snow Leopard, so PPC drivers will work there without problems. And
you _will_ care if Epson ships PPC drivers, as Apple will bundle the drivers
Epson gives it... and if Epson gives Apple PPC drivers, then the hardware
will not work.

Do you _really_ think that Apple writes the drivers for all the various
Epson, HP, Canon, Brother, etc. devices that work with OS X? I've got a news
flash for you if that's the case: Apple is the publisher, not the producer,
of those drivers.


i bet that with whatever printers your thinking of, you can scan with
image capture or vuescan. usually the bundled software isn't all that
great.

You can't 'cause they require TWAIN, and the version of TWAIN they ship
with
is PPC-only.

i *can*, and i *do*.

did you miss that i did not install *anything* from epson?

Did you miss the fact that Epson sent its drivers to Apple for inclusion in
the OS? Are you _really_ that thick?


Finally, there is the legacy stuff. At the office we have a considerable
amount of older hardware which would cost tens, or even hundreds, of
thousands of dollars to replace. (That is, tens to hundreds of thousands
of dollars for _each item_, and we have multiple items. Hey, we have five
imagesetters, none of which will work if if there's no Rosetta...) This
is
actually working hardware which has plenty of life in it... and which is
no longer supported because the vendor which supplied them is either out
of
business or no longer supports Macs or both. There will _never_ be
software updates for that equipment. Yes, it will have to be replaced
sooner or
later, if only when something breaks and we can't get the parts to
fix/replace it.
However, moving to Lion would break _all of it_ _all at once_. This means
that we are _very_ unlikely to move to Lion until after we've replaced
our
legacy hardware... a process which is budget-driven. We've replaced some
of the oldest equipment over the last few years, and some more is due to
be
replaced this year. But other items are scheduled for replacement over
the
next three-four years, not immediately.

If Apple kills Rosetta with Lion, we simply will not be able to purchase
Macs which can't run Snow Leopard for at least three years.

most people are not in that situation.

That's nice. Lots of people who do pre-press are. There are a lot of Macs
which were sold to do pre-press. If they can't do pre-press, then there's
no
reason for them to be used in the company.

sure, but out of the 20 million macs sold in the past year and millions
more sold since the intel transition, what percentage of them do
pre-press? hint: it's not high enough to justify maintaining rosetta.

It's not just pre-press. It's the rest of printing and publishing, too.


it sucks for those in that group, but that's the price of progress.

it's the same thing when they killed classic. some people bitched, but
most didn't care.

It'll be considerably worse. There were work-arounds. I know, 'cause I used
them.


I am quite sure that we are not alone in this.

you're not alone, but you are definitely in the tiny minority. yes, it
sucks for you and anyone else who relies on powerpc apps, but it won't
adversely affect mac sales a whole lot, if at all.

I suspect that you may be incorrect on this point.

based on what?

Based on the simple fact that anyone in the printing business who has legacy
hardware won't be able to buy a Mac until all the legacy hardware is gone.
That will take years. A lot of Macs were sold not just for the office, but
for work away from the office. There'll be a ripple effect.

apple has been outpacing the market as a whole for a
number of years.

Irrelevant. That was then, this is now.


check back next year after lion ships and let's see if their sales take
a dive because of the lack of rosetta. it didn't dive when classic was
eliminated.

Actually, a lot of people bought a lot of older Macs around that time
precisely to use them instead of newer Macs because they needed Classic. We
certainly did. I predict that there will be strong sales of machines which
can run Snow Leopard for quite some time after Lion is released.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.

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