[NewsPoster]

[Update: more details added, including iTunes 11.1] A day early, Apple has seeded another "Developer Preview" of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, two weeks after the previous release. Registered developers can obtain the new version by signing into the Mac App Store with their developer account Apple IDs. In addition, Apple released a new Safari 6.1 beta for Lion and Mountain Lion, as well as an updated build of iTunes 11.1. Mavericks DP7 also continues to list iCloud Keychain as an area for testing, with several bugs still existing in its implementation. Current speculation has Mavericks on track to be released alongside updated Mac models sometime in mid to late October.

While the version of Safari in OS X Mavericks will be numbered 7.0, many of the improvements are being handed down to Safari 6.1 for the two most recent OS versions, signalling that Apple will formally drop support for Snow Leopard (10.6.x) once Mavericks is released, in keeping with its usual practice. A number of the features in Safari 6.1 will be available only to Mountain Lion users, encouraging Lion users to migrate forward.

Among the features of Safari 6.1 and 7.0 are a redesigned Top Sites start point, the option for third-party data blocking for better privacy, faster JavaScript, and sandboxed plug-ins and PDFs for enhanced security and stability. In addition, Safari 6.1 offers Safari Power Saver, which manages energy by only playing the plug-in content in the active window, and even then only in the center of the page, not on the margins (for example, no animated ads playing unless users click on them to activate them). Mountain Lion-only features (which will also be available in Safari 7.0 for Mavericks) includes Shared Links (links shared from friends on Twitter or Linked In made easily available); continuous moving from one article to another in the Reading List; easy retweeting of Shared Links; iCloud Tab autocomplete and Smart Search of iCloud's synced tabs between Macs and iOS devices.

The release notes for the eighth Mavericks Developer Preview include the fact that network migration from earlier versions of OS X requires the Migration Update for Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion -- while migration from Windows requires the Windows Migration Assistant 1.0.3.4, both of which are available from the Mac Dev Center. Also included in the new version is an updated build of iTunes 11.1 (build 110, versus the build 48 that is still available on the Mac Dev Center).

An issue where purchased music may not show cover art in Preview is also noted. To resolve it, Apple suggests a working around involving running the command glmanage -r cache in Terminal.

The public release of Mavericks will feature Maps for OS X, iBooks for OS X, Finder Tabs and other efficiency features such as Compressed Memory and App Nap, which should enhance power savings in the company's MacBook line in addition to savings coming from the updated Intel Haswell chip.. To that end, conventional wisdom has it that Apple will hold back updated MacBook Pro models (and possibly other Mac models) until sometime in October, when Mavericks is expected to leave beta and be publicly released.

[bobolicious]

please stop the churn - at last check close to 1/3 of users still use snow - if it ain't broke...

[Charles Martin]

Don't see any reason for Apple to spend ever-increasing amounts of money continue to support increasingly insecure and outdated tech for an ever-shrinking pool of users who haven't bothered to do their "due diligence" and keep their software up-to-date.

If you don't like change ... computers are not really for you (a lesson I learned some 30 years ago).

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by bobolicious 

please stop the churn - at last check close to 1/3 of users still use snow - if it ain't broke...

Users Still Buying Windows XP Computers

[bobolicious]

"I don't see any reason...'

...for users & developers to spend ever increasing amounts of money, time and effort, risking error & incompatibility and orphaning access to client investments in digital assets to support the reinvention of applications and workflows that are getting substantial meaningful & productive work done in the real world, irrespective of a desire to support those needing material to write online articles to sell advertising...

When Apple abandoned the choice of rosetta (and classic) does it serve the customer, or Apple...?

I would be much more welcoming of upgrades if such were accretive in zeitgeist & did not force a choice of either or, abandoning the archaeology & infrastructure of digital history... I might also ask if that might better aspire to the challenge & zen of 'insanely great'...

[Laminar]

Ask any web developer how awesome it is when they're still expected to support IE6.

[Charles Martin]

When Apple abandoned the choice of rosetta (and classic) does it serve the customer, or Apple...?

As with most things Apple does, it served the customer. By encouraging (rather than forcing) them to move ahead with new and better technologies.

Nobody forced anyone to move off PPC immediately, certainly not Apple. But Rosetta's very EXISTENCE suggested that PPC support would not continue indefinitely. Those who chose to bury their heads in the sand for upwards of a decade are hoisted on their own petard, not Apple's.

Nobody -- even you -- could seriously or credibly argue that the move from PPC technology to Intel technology was a mistake. And yet you make the same argument the PPC people made when Apple moved on from it, the same argument the 680x0 people made, the same argument the OS 9 people made ... hopefully you can see why I don't think this line of reasoning carries a whole lot of water ...

Developers had both plenty of notice and plenty of time to convert their software to Intel (and take advantage of the technologies thus introduced). Almost all of them did exactly that: a *handful* chose not to. How is that Apple's fault?

Also, I don't think its fair to still be whining about a development change that happened eight years ago at this point (nor is it very valid to infer that such changes are spurious or frequent). Plus, you've provided ZERO evidence that the 28 or so percent (not "at least a third") are sticking with SL because of PPC compatibility (though I have no doubt some are). The fact that the SL percentage is declining makes it clear that people aren't holding onto it as you claim -- normal turnover is occurring pretty much as it did for Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard. Once Apple stops updating SL, whatever the current percentage of 10.6 users is (it was 28-29 percent in January of this year) will drop like a rock. Just like what happened to Tiger, just like what happened to Leopard.

In fact, looks like that has already happened: the latest figures from NetMarketshare show that Mountain Lion has more than double the percentage Lion and Snow Leopard do -- or is it your contention that the masses of SL users just don't access the web anymore?

Finally, claiming that Mountain Lion isn't "great" just further undermines your credibility. I think the sales and user response to ML speaks for itself.

[Rapscallion]

Yes because the big flat rock was the best hammer! Never improve, never change. I would MUCH rather that improvement come at the expense of the developer rather the customer when we are talking software. There is no better way to achieve this.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by bobolicious 

When Apple abandoned the choice of rosetta (and classic) does it serve the customer, or Apple...?

I would rather they invest their resources into the future, rather than continuing to design and develop compromises required to maintain the past.

I hear that Snow Leopard will run just fine within virtualization (such as Parallels or Fusion) with a very little hack, so there is that option, eventually.

I've retained some of my Snow-Leopard-only software and have been poised to partition the internal drive and install SL at some point, but the truth is, I haven't needed any of it in 2 years.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Ask any web developer how awesome it is when they're still expected to support IE6.

It's more like IE 7 or 8 now, but hopefully Windows XP's retirement early next year will move that process along...

[bobolicious]

...firstly 'close to' & not 'at least' a third, and searching 'snow leopard apple's xp' yields many articles...

Indeed Lion use may fade quickly, as an intermediary to Mt Lion. Mavericks on the other hand has some major upgrades which I would be thrilled with, if I didn't lose in migration...

...secondly I am on upgrade subscription to 2016 of a primary vertical market application & current iWork suite on all iDevices, yet Pages will only open a percentage of Appleworks files...

...nobody is 'forcing' a move off snow, but snow server did not work for me in virtualization, so with dropped support from Apple I am dropping support of Apple (hardware upgrades) which I would happily invest in if they ran my workflow faster...

...that being said my indy mac dealer has no vertical market customers in my profession left - those that might use high margin 12 core pro computers, and perhaps even x-grid if it too was still supported...

I suspect the masses will get the inconvenient truth, perhaps in hindsight blamed as luddites of digital history, & others will simply migrate away, presumably to opensource, including those simply needing legal statute of limitations access. Some things may be considered important enough to be worth accessing beyond a decade...

And yes I approve of the intel switch - it opens many options for vertical technical apps only available on other platforms, something it sounds like some might have little use (or apparently understanding & tolerance) for, being able to function with presumably simple software upgrades...

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by bobolicious 

I suspect the masses will get the inconvenient truth, perhaps in hindsight blamed as luddites of digital history, & others will simply migrate away, presumably to opensource, including those simply needing legal statute of limitations access. Some things may be considered important enough to be worth accessing beyond a decade...

This is a problem of the digital age that has not much to do with Apple's business decisions. It goes far beyond that.

There are still punchcard mainframes from the 1960s in operation because there is no effective way to transfer those data sets into modern databases, and we still need to access them for cross-referencing or new analysis angles.

I have Superpaint files that I can no longer access.

Decades of lab work are stored on computers from the early 90s that are required to operate the equipment (worth well into six figures) and can never be replaced with newer systems.

A friend maintains what is probably the world's most comprehensive archives of jazz notation sheets, all harmonically correct down to the tritone (he knew many of the composers personally). All stored in Notator format on an ancient Atari, because the guys at Emagic did not manage, in twenty years, to provide a path for properly migrating those data into their direct successor product, Logic (despite his best attempts at working with them directly - they're local).

This is normal, and it's actually quite terrifying.

But Apple is not the company to call upon to buck that trend.

[sajaki]

"...All stored in Notator format on an ancient Atari..."
Logic 8 & Logic 9 can read Creator / Notator .SON files.

[Spheric Harlot]

These will not import correctly. The chord symbols and notation are lost, which is the only reason this database exists.

As I said, he's spent quite some time working with the Logic developers directly.

[yohannon]

No, seriously.

Back when I was working User Level Quality at the mothership, our test matrices had turned into major points of contention. When I started with Apple in 1993, we were still testing all the way back to the Mac Plus (at that point over 8 years old). Over the next few years it only got worse -- Performas, Quadras, PPC, Centris (remember those??), with every new model resulting in an even bigger testing matrix.

Copland was even worse. Originally intended to be OS 8, Copland was the big jump that OS X eventually was. However, whereas X sensibly used a "Classic" layer to maintain backward compatibility, Copland was deliberately designed to be API COMPATIBLE. In other words, developers would be able to compile using the same API they had, while adding new functionality at their leisure.

Needless to say, it was almost an impossible task. When Copland collapsed under it's own weight, many of the engineers were bitter to see that X would go the route they had wanted to go in the first place.

Apple really was close to the brink (being there gives one a pretty clear perspective on that!), and Copland almost was that last shove into the abyss. Fortunately, things happened the way they did.