
Confirmed: Mountain Lion sends some 64-bit Macs gently into that good night - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/confirmed-mountain-lion-sends-some-64-bit-macs-gently-into-that-good-night/
======
rangibaby
It's a shame (although not surprising) that Apple has never released a
firmware update for the 2006/7 MPs to allow them to boot into the actual 64
bit kernel, as opposed to the 32 bit kernel's extended (4GB> RAM) mode.

It is still possible to boot the 64 bit kernel and install ML by using a non-
Apple bootloader (eg Chameleon), basically turning your Mac Pro into a 100%
Apple hackintosh.

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_mayo
Slightly OT, but did anyone else have any issue grokking the headline?

~~~
3JPLW
Let me recommend a poem to you. _Do not go gentle into that good night,_ by
Dylan Thomas.

    
    
      Do not go gentle into that good night,
      Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
      Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
      
      Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
      Because their words had forked no lightning they
      Do not go gentle into that good night.
      
      Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
      Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
      Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
      
      Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
      And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
      Do not go gentle into that good night.
      
      Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
      Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
      Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
      
      And you, my father, there on the sad height,
      Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
      Do not go gentle into that good night.
      Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
    

<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175907>

Edit: woops, late to the party. That's what I get for leaving a page up for 20
minutes before commenting...

~~~
sp332
It's confusing because the computers aren't actually dying, they're just being
left behind.

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tatsuke95
OS fragmentation? Call MG!

I kid, but it's interesting to see a few warts in the Apple ecosystem. Nobody
can argue that they don't make awesome products, but as they slip into the
"mainstream" we're going to see that it's more and more difficult to maintain
a flawless complexion.

First, they remove the "can't get a virus!" ad, now this, within weeks. Being
unable to upgrade your OS is no minor quibble. "It just works" indeed.

~~~
saturdaysaint
Consistently, strategically EOL-ing/deprecating technologies, even through
some painful transitions, is no small part of why Apple are in a good position
today. There's no way they could've pushed the iPhone out the door in 2007 if
they were obsessively keeping all of their Mac software compatible across
Intel/PPC or providing support to OS9 users (not that those are completely
meritless). The de-emphasis of backward compatibility has been a tactical
advantage against Microsoft.

~~~
harshpotatoes
On the other end of the spectrum, I work with lab equipment that are more than
15 years old but still work great. The software which interfaces with it is
old, but still works with Windows. Would such a thing be possible with Apple,
or would Apple's insistence on upgrading every few years force the lab
equipment to be replaced at significantly greater cost?

~~~
pooriaazimi
They're not gonna come and take your lab equipments away, you know... Leave
them on OS X Lion for a century and you'll be okay. Just like many have left
their lab computers on Windows XP for a decade.

As long as Lion gets security updates (2 years, minimum), there's absolutely
no need for an upgrade. After that, you can just disconnect it from the
Internet and use an stronger password.

~~~
eswangren
Because using a stronger password somehow nullifies security holes in an OS?

~~~
pooriaazimi
Sorry, I said a stupid thing. You shouldn't comment when you're sleepy... I
meant you can restrict remote access to them to be more safe (from trojans,
etc), but somehow a stupid point about restricting "physical access" made its
way into my comment and made it look ridiculous :)

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lysol
I'd say six years of OS upgrades before being EOLed is a pretty good deal.
That said, my primary machine at home is an 07 Macbook so I have a little bit
of envy going on.

~~~
danieldk
If you bought a 2008 Mac Mini, you are not so lucky. But how bad the effect of
the new requirements is, remains to be seen. If Apple provides security
updates for Snow Leopard and Lion for some years and if software remains
compatible with those versions, it's not so bad.

~~~
Flow
Early 2008 MBP is ok for ML. I guess I was a bit lucky there since I got
64-bit EFI in it.

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crag
I have a brand new MBP (Retina) and I won't be upgrading to ML anytime soon
(even though I get a free copy). I'm still bitter at the Lion upgrade process.
It was a nightmare for me. And at that time I considered Lion to be Apple's
trash OS. It's gotten better, After like _8 major updates_. :)

Hell I tried to downgrade to SL, but that's not possible due to drivers.

Lesson learned. Also,I'm STILL being forced to download the OS from the App
Store. I wouldn't mind that so much if the Store didn't have performance
issues.

~~~
tammer
Welcome to every Mac OS upgrade I've ever encountered.

Although, I can't place the blame entirely on Apple. I find that for any
consolidated release OS, a reformat is ALWAYS the way to go (after waiting a
good long time for all the bugs to be ironed out). Hopefully one day Apple
will drive the cost of their software down so much that they'll just go to
rolling release.

~~~
batista
Ok, setiously guys, what are you doing wrong?

I have updated 3 personal Macs to Lion. Some upgraded, some a clean install.
Didnt have a problem with any of them.

What broke for you? Drivers for exotic hardware? (on that front, I use Wacom
tablets, Midi controllers and external FW audio cards and had no probems with
either in Lion).

On the other hand I refuse to install ANY haxie.

Seriously want to know what broke for you -- and I dont mean stuff like "I
prefered old Expose better"....

~~~
jpxxx
I love me some Apple, but drama does occur. Off the top of my head:

\- silent DVD-ROM read errors causing perma-botched upgrades, even though
everything should be CRCed and nothing throws any errors at any point along
the way

\- pathologically long install stall-outs (40 minutes+)

\- pathologically slow performance at first restart, usually on older RAM-
constrained machines trying to re-thumbnail everything

\- Significant keychain issues requiring creation of an entirely new keychain

\- Spotlight issues requiring a first or second re-index

\- Mail.app upgrades are quite problematic, especially when moving to V2
layout or accessing previously configured accounts

\- Now-missing JVMs causing significant problems during first boot

\- Lion download progress bars blowing some internal math and going for that
235905329052 gigabyte

The biggest hassle I think is exploding third-party software at first logon.
Things like garbage rinter+scanner managers freaking out because drivers got
moved around underneath them cause a flurry of popups that frustrate techs and
freak out novices.

~~~
batista
Of those, I've seen spotlight needing re-indexing after an upgrade. But it's
something so minor and easily fixed that I don't even consider it a fault of
the OS (actually, it could have as well been DESIGNED to do that, e.g to
update the indexes to some new on-disk format).

Silent DVD errors, install stalls, keychain and Mail accounts missing sound
like genuine bugs.

As for the rest,

> _\- pathologically slow performance at first restart, usually on older RAM-
> constrained machines trying to re-thumbnail everything_

This doesn't sound like an OS bug, more like something to be expected.

> _\- Now-missing JVMs causing significant problems during first boot_

Sure, but what uses Java at boot?

The above and third party printer/scanner managers freaking out, sound like
totally orthogonal issues to OS bugginess.

If anything, I would _expect_ to have to install new third party drivers with
an major OS update.

------
shawndumas
It's always such a double-edged sword -- slough off legacy support to enhance
present hardware's experience; schlep a dated portion (in this case a 32bit
portion) of a code base and be inclusive.

Apple has always pushed for letting go of the past in order to reach for the
future. I mean, come-on, the original Apple Macs had no arrow keys...

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Aqua_Geek
I was quite surprised that my now 5-year-old MacBook Pro will still be
supported. Maybe it's time to fork out for that SSD upgrade and scrape one
more year out of it after all.

~~~
mariusmg
I got a 7 years old desktop which will get updated to Win 8. I would be
surprised if i would NOT be able to update....

~~~
IanDrake
I think that's what has left a lot of Windows Phone users completely
surprised. Buy a top end Windows Phone right now and it won't work with WP8 in
5 months.

That said, I have an HTC Titan and don't really care.

[edit for typos]

~~~
robin_reala
They’ve obviously never had a Windows Mobile device before then. If you got a
single update you were lucky.

------
ageektrapped
Is there somewhere I can go to check if my Macbook is one of those? I have to
start buttering up my boss if I need a new one. (Xcode updates sure force
upgrades. I was just fine with Snow Leopard, except iOS 5.1 wouldn't build
without the latest Xcode, which is Lion only. Grrr.) Now this.

~~~
Flow

       iMac:~ Flow$ ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi
           | |   "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">
       iMac:~ Flow$ 
    

EFI64 means ok for ML.

~~~
mturmon
And the reverse, not OK for ML, looks like this:

    
    
        % ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi
            | |   "firmware-abi" = <"EFI32">
    

on an old (white polycarbonate) iMac.

~~~
Flow
As long as your CPU is 64-bit it seems one can use "hackintosh" techniques to
run ML anyway.

------
pjmlp
With this type behavior I'm really happy to only spend money in OEM hardware
and be able to select what OS to install and when to upgrade.

~~~
kalleboo
This has nothing to do with hardware, this is an OS issue. You can still
install Windows 8 or Linux on these machines.

~~~
pjmlp
You are right, but I would be not happy with these constraints after paying so
much for Apple hardware.

~~~
pjmlp
Downvoted by Apple fans, lets see how many negative points I will be able to
achieve...

~~~
jpxxx
Unfortunately your commentary was only valueless, so sit tight at 0. It takes
actual work to make something properly inflammatory - you gotta earn the
negative scores.

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Hovertruck
While I'm typically excited for upgrades to anything (OS, Individual apps,
etc) I really have no desire to upgrade to Mountain Lion.

------
frou_dh
I see no reason to spend the money to replace my currently 3 year old MBP in
the foreseeable future. Barring breakages, I will probably be using this thing
in to 2015, even if it isn't getting OS updates by then. I wonder how long
Apple keep stock of replacement batteries for older models.

~~~
jpxxx
Seven years, all models everywhere. Special considerations possible in the
state of California.

