On the March of Progress (Mac OS X Lion)

(Originally a letter to my MUG)


Keep in mind that this is the first beta released, so this may change, but according to Apple Insider these are not included in Lion:

Front Row:

Mildly surprising, but I don't know many people who use it.  I love it, but I don't think I've used it more than a handful of times in the past few years.  If you really miss the functionality, there are several alternative Media Center Solutions (such as XBMC, MythTV, Boxee, etc.)

Java Runtime Environment:

File this under "Not Our Product".  Just like Flash, it doesn't need to be bundled.  Apple including it means that it only gets updated when Apple gets around to it.  Besides, Apple's made no qualms about not caring about Java.  (See: Cocoa Development in Java.)  If you want it, (like Flash) you can get it from the vendor.

Rosetta:

File under "Dropping the Dead Weight".  Rosetta is the environment that allows you to run PPC-compiled apps on your Intel Mac.  Like the Moto 68k emulation on PPCs, and the Dodo, it's time to go extinct.  The Intel Macs were released almost five years ago now.  It's time to bid a fond farewell.  (In other words, find an app released in the last 5 years...)  

The topic of the March of Progress has come up before, but I'd prefer to not see that one again....  As always, nobody is forcing you to update or upgrade; if your apps and files do everything that you want them to, and don't want to upgrade, don't.  But please heed the warning that you will lose support.  (As a sign of the times, YouTube dropped support for IE6 this past year.  Google be Praised!)  For the non-developers, each every additional platform that you support means loads of testing and bugfixes that aren't going to apply to current platforms.  This is time that could otherwise be spent on more dedicated testing and bugfixes, and more importantly features!  Keep in mind, too, that it's not just Intel vs PPC; It's Snow Leopard x86, Leopard x86, Leopard PPC, Tiger x86, Tiger PPC, and so on...  (Truly diligent testing does multiple pieces of hardware per platform, but I think I've proven my point.  If you want more info, there's an oldish article describing Microsoft's Mac Lab)

Happy Updating!

Waldo