[OSM-talk] End of road for JOSM on OS X for ppc

Morten Kjeldgaard mok at bioxray.dk
Sun Sep 12 08:54:58 BST 2010


On 11/09/2010, at 14.53, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote:

> 2010/9/11 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 09:39, Morten Kjeldgaard <mok at bioxray.dk>  
>> wrote:
>>> Yesterday I tried to upgrade JOSM on my trusty old Apple Powerbook  
>>> G4.
>>> However, JOSM now needs Java 6SE, which is _not_ supported on OSX  
>>> version
>>> 10.5 (Leopard). If you own a Mac with an Intel CPU, you can  
>>> upgrade to OS X
>>> 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but that is not an option for machines using  
>>> the PPC
>>> architecture.
>>>
>>> I had to downgrade JOSM again to version 3376, which is the end-of- 
>>> the-line
>>> version for Mac OS X running on a PPC chip. So, if you own a  
>>> machine like
>>> that, don't upgrade JOSM!
>>
>> One thing you could do to run newer versions of JOSM is to install
>> Ubuntu or Debian on the machine and dual-boot it.

Heh, yes, but I don't really need to do that, since I have a few  
workstations and a netbook, all Ubuntu machines.

> You might also try to contact apple and complain about their product  
> philosophy.

Yeah, but to be fair, Apple has actually done quite a lot to keep old  
hardware and software working. When moving from the M68K platform to  
PPC, they supported the older architecture for years. When moving to  
OS X, they supported OS9 via an emulator for years; the support of  
that emulator stopped with OS 10.5.

The Intel transition happened in June 2006, four years ago, and so I  
grant you that giving up on the PPC for OS X 10.6 so soon is quite  
disappointing for Apple customers, especially given the fact that  
Apple hardware is very durable. My Powerbook from 2005 still looks  
great, I am happy with it, and has had no serious problems other than  
a hard-drive faiure a couple of years ago. Of course, it's not like my  
laptop suddenly stops working, however I will be seeing more and more  
problems like this, upgrading software. At some point, I will need new  
hardware. If that is in 2 years time, I will have gotten 7 useful  
years out of my purchase, which is not too bad.

There are other things I would much rather criticise Apple for;  this  
is obviously the extremely closed nature of their iPhone/iPad  
platform, and I would never buy that hardware. This is stated by  
someone who has been an Apple fanboy/owner since 1985...

Sorry for this slightly OT discussion on talk :-)

Cheers,
Morten




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