[OS X TeX] OS X and iOS Futures (was LaTeXit and Keynote 6)

[Herbert Schulz]

On Nov 16, 2013, at 2:40 PM, Alain Schremmer <schremmer.alain at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Nov 14, 2013, at 4:31 PM, Red Roo wrote:
> 
>> Until I saw Herb's remark, I wasn't sure anyone else had foreseen this  problem. This raises the question, might there be some way that the MacTeX community could make this viewpoint known to the decision makers at Apple? The decisions will very likely be made sooner rather than later.
>> 
>> Maybe this is already being done or done elsewhere (perhaps more directly via the OSX dev community). Or, maybe others don't see it as an important issue. But primarily I wanted to second Herb's point here, just in case, as well as find out what MacTex developers think about it.
> 
> Inevitably, sooner or later, support for the Mac OS is going to be ended just as support for, say, the Power PC was dropped---as well as, more generally, support for 10.4 and 10.5.
> 
> It seems to me that the only solution is something along the lines of TenFourFox but I have no idea what/who is behind it. But, indeed, I have finally switched from Safari to TenFourFox. The latter does not support plugins but, at least, does not crash the way Safari does and certainly seems to be maintained.
> 
> Hopeful regards
> --schremmer

Howdy,

I believe OS X (no longer called Mac OS X and, once 10.0 came out, never as Mac OS) will be around for quite a while. You analogy isn't quite right since it was Motorola's and IBM's fault that they didn't keep promises in development of Power PC processors and Apple didn't really have a choice in going to another processor company. In terms of dropping support for 10.4 and 10.5 those versions of OS X have been superseded by later versions OS X and support for Power PC had to go away since those processors most likely couldn't provide the necessary performance increases the new versions of the OS needed.

PS: I know you're using a Power PC system running OS X 10.5 (and it took you quite a few years to go to that! :-)) but you really should take a look at more modern systems which will offer a 5--10-fold performance increase; you won't know what to do with your time. :-)

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)