Catalina

[Richmond]

Not for me: as a person who is normally an early adopter, I'm breaking 
my own rule and
keeping well clear of Catalina.

I have always been ambivalent about upgrading as the benefits have 
almost always been balanced by downsides

[ https://www.downside.co.uk/ ]

and, as I still use a BBC Model B computer (saving my work on an audio 
cassette) for tinkering around with
BBC BASIC in a way that seems direct and to the point: no GUI, boots in 
5 seconds., I am not automatically
a believer in the ever-upwards thing (remember, in Jacob's dream there 
were also being coming down the staircase).

As I, almost exclusively (well, except when I'm fooling myself about 
Devawriter Pro) develop humble
little programs for EFL kiddos for deployment on manky-franky old PCs 
running Xubuntu the need for Catalina
exists in no bigger way than the fact that I regret never having "had a 
bash" at Mount Everest.

As, at 57, I'm working my way towards being one of Jacque's "wrinklies", 
I suspect the shaking will be
elsewhere.

On 9.10.19 19:29, J. Landman Gay via use-livecode wrote:
> It may be too late for you, but last week I got an email from the 
> company that makes my accounting software warning customers not to 
> upgrade to Catalina. They said they've been working on the transition 
> for a year and thought they'd finish in time but it didn't work out. 
> They were quite up-front about it, said they were working hard and 
> would let us know when it was ready.
>
> That seemed thoughtful, and probably saved them a lot of tech support 
> as well. On the other hand, I almost never upgrade to the first 
> release of a major dot-zero version. I wait for the wrinkles to shake 
> out.
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
> On October 9, 2019 10:52:25 AM Paul Dupuis via use-livecode 
> <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
>> Customer (at least ours) do not understand 32 bit vs 64-bit. They will
>> only know that (a) Apple says there is a new update for their computer
>> and they click to update; or (b) as a member of some university or
>> business, their computer is upgraded (perhaps at their request, perhaps
>> as part of a planned upgrade cycle).
>>
>> In either case, after they or some IT person has helped with the OS
>> update, suddenly some of their software (including ours) no longer works
>> (being 32-bit). They don't know why. They don't care why.
>>
>> Now as for the "Well, Apple has been notifying you forever that, as a
>> developer, you needed to be at 64 bits" or "But if you make your apps in
>> LiveCode, just recompile with LiveCode 9"
>>
>> Our apps have hundreds of thousands of line of code. In migrating them
>> to LiveCode 9, at first they would not even run. In the course of
>> migrating, Researchware staff has filed some 40 Livecode 9 bugs, some of
>> which have no or no good workarounds, that directly impact features of
>> our apps. Thankfully, most have work-arounds, but work-arounds and
>> testing take time. Now for the record, LiveCode, Ltd. has been
>> absolutely great in suggesting work-arounds or helping us work through
>> the most serious of the bugs.
>>
>> Our customers do not need 64 bits. Our very niche software does what it
>> needs to do in 32 bits. Our customer have no disk space issues or memory
>> issues due to both 32 and 64 bits libraries or support. Our customers
>> would all be very happy to just keep using our tools as is. Hence, my
>> venting is about Apple's intentionally planned obsolescence. What our
>> customers want in new versions is not 64 bit, but functional
>> enhancements to what our software does.
>>
>> Being a small (very small), we have sunk a year of development in to
>> getting to LC9 for 64 bit and making sure what we have in our app just
>> works (QA testing!). We have had no resources to work on new or enhanced
>> features. So our customers get an upgrade, with almost nothing new
>> except 64 bit support, which also means with nothing new, we can't in
>> good conscious charge an upgrade fee for it. Which means lost revenue,
>> which badly hurts our small business.
>>
>> Should we have migrated to LC9 sooner? Probably, but doing so would have
>> meant - as it does now - only doing the migration and not new
>> features/revenue. Also doing in now, we still found 40 bugs. If we did
>> it a year or two ago, how many more bugs would we have found that have
>> since been fixed!
>>
>> That's what Catalina represents to us. I realize that many many Apple
>> customers will be delighted with Catalina and I am happy for them. I
>> just wish that Apple cared a bit more about not breaking what came
>> before. Say what you will about Microsoft, but I still have specialty
>> applications written for Windows 2000/XP that run fine under Windows 10!
>> Microsoft is guilty of many many sins, but **for the most part** they
>> try to keep things that once once worked still working.
>>
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