Q: I have Mac OS X Tiger and I want/NEED to upgrade my software to Snow Leopard. What do I need or how can I?
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May 22, 2014 11:49 AMby benwiggy,Are you sure your hardware is supported by Mavericks?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5842
From what I can tell, the only Mac that came with Tiger which can upgrade to Mavericks is the Mid-2007 iMac or MacBook Pro.
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May 23, 2014 5:23 AMby MlchaelLAX,benwiggy wrote:
Nothing "harsh" about Mavericks, though, if you can upgrade to it.
The lack of Rosetta in Mavericks can be extremely harsh to a Snow Leopard user who upgrades to Mavericks without fair warning. Most Snow Leopard users have no idea that they may be using PowerPC apps, which of course, will fail to run in Mavericks.
AND: if they did not make a backup or clone and installed Mavericks over Snow Leopard, turning back the clock will be a very time consuming and perhaps daunting task!
Which is why I always recommend to a Snow Leopard user that instead of installing Mavericks over Snow Leopard (which will destroy their Snow Leopard environment), that they partition their hard drive or add an external one and install Mavericks there.
This gives them the ability to experiment with Mavericks and discover which, if any, of their existing, important apps may be PowerPC, and yet have the ability to dual-boot back into Snow Leopard and still use these PowerPC apps.
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May 24, 2014 3:09 AMby benwiggy,Perhaps. But it's been several years since Apple binned Rosetta -- and much rumpus has been made of it. (It was of course an optional download in Snow, which gave the game away.) So there has been considerable "fair warning".
I can only presume that people who have been happily using Snow Leopard or earlier for many years, who suddenly now decide to upgrade, are doing so because the apps they use demand it.
Of course you should always make sure that your apps will run in any new OS version. Snow Leopard itself stops a number of apps from working which ran fine on Leopard or previous, because some frameworks were removed without warning.
You should expect that hardware and software will come and go: but hopefully, your data remains eternal. Non-proprietary data formats will help here.
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May 24, 2014 9:00 AMby MlchaelLAX,A somewhat naive and insensitive response to the problem:
benwiggy wrote:
Perhaps. But it's been several years since Apple binned Rosetta -- and much rumpus has been made of it. (It was of course an optional download in Snow, which gave the game away.) So there has been considerable "fair warning".
Fair warning to who: geek-heads like us who frequent tech boards on a somewhat consistent basis?
That is not who is continuing to use Snow Leopard in 2014. These are people who purchased a Mac for a few specific tasks and believe in the well-worth aphorism that: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Optional install of Rosetta in Snow Leopard -- minimal significance in that the first time they ran a PowerPC app, it directed them to download Rosetta. This happened once and long ago. Few would even remember this occurrence.
benwiggy wrote:
I can only presume that people who have been happily using Snow Leopard or earlier for many years, who suddenly now decide to upgrade, are doing so because the apps they use demand it.
A mis-reading of the current tea leaves!
Apple's latest update of the Snow Leopard App Store continuously reminds these users that a new version of OS X, Mavericks, is available; and... FOR FREE! With the only option to close this dialog box, a click on DETAILS...
Pretty hard for the inexperienced (let alone the unexperienced) to ignore.
These people have not thought much about upgrading their OS X since Snow Leopard's introduction in June 2009. That is a long time to have had computer stability and ignorant bliss! I am somewhat jealous of their status!
benwiggy wrote:
Of course you should always make sure that your apps will run in any new OS version.
Sage advice: but only if the end user has read it! How often do we see the roaringapp website cited to those Snow Leopard users that are educated enough to come to this forum and inquire about the update?
Unfortunately too many of them have already taken the plunge and now are confused why their individual set of important programs will not operate after the upgrade! They at least have options...
Far worse are those who upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks for hardware reasons: they purchased a new Mac, potentially to replace one whose hardware has failed. Now after their migrate their data from their backup or clone, they are faced with a much more limited set of options.
The fact of the matter is that there is significant history here: the 'miracle' of Rosetta. Apple designed it to be transparent and mostly invisible. Most Snow Leopard users today have no idea what the difference is between PowerPC software and that which will run on an Intel family processor; and why should they?
Again, only when faced with the dreaded "PowerPC apps will not run" dialog box, do they realize that something is wrong, very wrong!
The proof of the pudding are the significant numbers of recent Snow Leopard to Mavericks upgraders who, for the most part, find their way to this forum facing a problem they are neither reasonably educated about by Apple beforehand, nor are they at fault for the problem they are facing.
Telling them that somehow it is their fault for not having taken the proper precautions only adds to their frustration!
The fact that you personally have seen this problem happen countless times, has no significance to that one user who tomorrow will post the problem anew...
For those who are lucky enough to have the same hardware and have inquired about the problem ahead of their upgrade to Mavericks, the proper advice is to partition or add another hard drive and install Mavericks there!
Experiment with their existing environment in Mavericks but have the dual-boot ability to immediately go back to using Snow Leopard as needed.
Any other advice is heartless and cruel and certainly not harsh!
