[OS X TeX] To upgrade or not to upgrade (To 10.10)

[Alain Schremmer]

On , at 2015 Sep 18,11:59 AM, Richard Koch wrote:

> I thought your previous email said that your new machine came with Yosemite. ????

It does. I was thinking that since the "interim" mac, the one I am using right now, was on 10.6 I could just copy it to the one that came with Yosemite and be done with the whole thing. Those 10 hours I spent on the locked files were a bit of a bother.
> 
> I agree with the above advice. Go with the latest system unless there is a particular piece of
> important software that doesn’t work with it.
> 
> The following is my opinion and many developers may not agree. I’d separate the cases of
> TeX and the various GUI interfaces to it. TeX is mainly command line code which works on all
> platforms. On the Mac, PPC versions sitll work fine.

On the PPC, I was using MacTex 2013 with  TeXShop 2.47 and, as I said, it just went over to the interim mac mini 10.6. Never saw it going.

> It would be highly unusual if a system
> change affected its behavior. (The exception is programs which use system fonts, like XeTeX
> and LuaTeX, since Apple has been modernizing its fonts at a rapid clip.)
> 
> But those GUI developers who don’t write cross platform apps tend to update to new systems
> as soon as they are available, and adopt the latest system features. In recent years, Apple
> has encouraged this by making updates free, and their advice to developers for some time 
> has been “write to the latest system.” 
> 
> If a system works for you, it is fine to stick with it. But when the system fails

That was the point: the software didn't, it was the hardware (although I haven't had the time to do the autopsy yet.)

> and you have
> to upgrade anyway, why not go all the way?

I will, but for everything other than TeX, 10.5 to 10.6 was rather painful. I truly wish my PPC were still alive.

Of course, with Yosemite, everything will have to be fresh so it should be simple. 

Very grateful regards,
--schremmer