On Monday, 13 August 2012 at 07:05:11 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Sun, 2012-08-12 at 23:29 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
[…]
OSX has a lot less backwards compatibility to worry about.
Not entirely true.
<semi-rant>
Apple's strategy appears to be that computers are
non-upgradable,
non-repairable, disposable items that last until the next
release:
everyone is supposed buy the latest version as soon as it comes
out and
so be on the latest kit(*). Therefore Apple don't care about
backward
compatibility in the way some other manufacturers do, e.g. JDK
for the
last 17 years. Of course sometimes this backfires, cf. many
white
MacBooks which have 64-bit processors but 32-bit boot PROMs.
OSX detects
this and will not boot 64-bit. This leads to extraordinary
problems
trying to compile some codes where the compiler detects 64-bit
processor
and assumes a 64-bit kernel API. To build some applications I
first have
to build the whole compiler toolchain so as to deal with this
mixed
chaos.
(*) And as we know there are a lot of people who actually do
this, which
is why there is a great market in second hand Apple kit, which
is fine
for me, since it is reasonable kit at a reasonable price.
Unlike new
kit.
</semi-rant>
It is this type of issues that keeps me away from Apple products.
