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xtremekinetix · Mar 15, 2005, 07:57 AM

OK, I am a total Noob and I know this question is probably so unbelievably stupid to some people that it is almost embarassing to ask, but...I just went through the Tiger tour on Apple's website and had the following thought:

Basically, the features that look most interesting are Dashboard and Spotlight (fun to play with, while core audio and video perhaps being the most intriguing).

OK, fine. So I will go out and buy it (when the release date rolls around).

...BUT (and here is my question), when I upgrade to 10.4, will I have to upgrade all of my other apps (Adobe Creative Suite, Office, Filemaker, etc)? Or, will I be able to install my current versions and have them work fine?

Again, profound apologies for my naivet�. (A simple "yes" or "no" answer might suffice.)

Thanks. Much love for this forum.

Busemann · Mar 15, 2005, 08:03 AM

Why do you write so much drivel instead of just asking the question?

Anyways, you don't have to upgrade your apps (except perhaps a little free update in some cases)

xtremekinetix · Mar 15, 2005, 08:08 AM

Thanks!

OreoCookie · Mar 16, 2005, 07:22 AM

Regular apps such as Photoshop, MS Office, etc. will continue to work fine. I still work with the first version of Office X (introduced with 10.1) on my 10.3 machine (basically to open attachments

).

Randman · Mar 16, 2005, 07:32 AM

Some apps, such as the GUI ones like ShapeShifter may need updates though.

larkost · Mar 16, 2005, 07:45 AM

Just to clarify what Randman said: any application that works with the documented API's from Apple will work just fine. Apple has a long history of making sure that these work version after version. Occasionally they have to change things enough that it does break legitimate apps (the 10.0 -> 10.1 transitions featured some of this). The problems happen when developers decide to get cute (haxies for example), or are writing somethings that has to go into undocumented areas (like a disk utility). The developers know that these are on dangerous grounds already, and that they will probably break.

Millennium · Mar 16, 2005, 09:31 AM

Most apps should work fine; Tiger introduces many new features but relatively few under-the-hood changes.

Some apps do break between OS releases, particularly those involved with extending the OS itself. Disk-repair utilities also tend to take hits when the filesystem gets new features, as it will in Tiger; they won't harm the OS or files themselves but they may do funny things to the Spotlight database.

This said, you mentioned the Adobe Creative Suite, Office, and Filemaker. It is unlikely that these apps in particular will break, as they tend to stick to using the OS in well-documented ways.

TETENAL · Mar 16, 2005, 10:24 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
This said, you mentioned the Adobe Creative Suite, Office, and Filemaker. It is unlikely that these apps in particular will break, as they tend to stick to using the OS in well-documented ways.

And even if they don't, those apps don't break because Apple knows about them, and they are important enough to get special workarounds if they contain bugs that would make them break with an OS update.

Catfish_Man · Mar 16, 2005, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by Millennium:
Tiger introduces many new features but relatively few under-the-hood changes.

Odd... I would have said that the other way around... (Massive rewrite of the whole quicktime and graphics infrastructure to use OpenGL?)

OreoCookie · Mar 16, 2005, 02:33 PM

Originally posted by Millennium:
Most apps should work fine; Tiger introduces many new features but relatively few under-the-hood changes.

Some apps do break between OS releases, particularly those involved with extending the OS itself. Disk-repair utilities also tend to take hits when the filesystem gets new features, as it will in Tiger; they won't harm the OS or files themselves but they may do funny things to the Spotlight database.

This said, you mentioned the Adobe Creative Suite, Office, and Filemaker. It is unlikely that these apps in particular will break, as they tend to stick to using the OS in well-documented ways.

Tiger is mostly under-the-hood changes, but most of them are additions or extensions without breaking compatibility (e. g. Spotlight is built on top of HFS+).

Nexus5 · Mar 16, 2005, 02:34 PM

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
Odd... I would have said that the other way around... (Massive rewrite of the whole quicktime and graphics infrastructure to use OpenGL?)

Yea, you are right. Core Image, Core Video, improved 64-Bit support (like 64-bit virtual memory) etc. are "under the hood features".

nexus5.

alphasubzero949 · Mar 16, 2005, 05:04 PM

I imagine DiskWarrior may be one of the "broken" apps because of the Spotlight database. Then again, the scenario may just be like v2.1 destroying the journaling, resulting in the user having to re-enable it.

larkost · Mar 17, 2005, 09:48 AM

Originally posted by alphasubzero949:
I imagine DiskWarrior may be one of the "broken" apps because of the Spotlight database. Then again, the scenario may just be like v2.1 destroying the journaling, resulting in the user having to re-enable it.

Why would you think that? Spotlight runs completely in userspace and has nothing at all to do with how HFS+ is stored. The only changes in HSF+ needed for spotlight happened in 10.3.5, and were not really changes in the HFS+ code, but was a file change notification system put in the Virtual Stackable File System into which the HFS+ code slots into.

Now it may well be that 10.4 breaks DiskWarrior in some way as DiskWarrior is one of those apps that goes behind the API curtain and plays with data structures directly (it has to). But if do it has nothing at all to do with spotlight. I have not heard anything about HFS+ changes in 10.4, but you never know.