Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Firefox 17 is out, but not for Old Macs

I haven't upgraded Firefox here to this version.  Maybe later today...

Firefox 17 has been released.   Most of those out there will get a little message saying "Hey, I've upgraded, click this and make all your problems go away.   I do mine Manually since I don't want to have to completely back out of my browser windows and stop what I am doing.

Firefox has been excellent for me.  I don't want to use another alternate browser such as Chrome or Opera.  I will stay here on Firefox for a while until its time to move on. 

The newest version of Firefox offers integration into the social networks.  I fail to see why that is needed, it just sounds like a massive security and privacy hole, but there really isn't that much privacy left unless you want to stick your head in the sand.   That's why I manage what I say online fairly closely, you should too.

There are also other features that will be helpful to the user and you can find the complete list here.

That Mac problem though ...

I support a few folks on Mac here.  It's a pleasant experience and to say I support them is a major exaggeration.  It's more like I get an occasional question and they go off into their happy world where Unicorns roam free and your kitchen sink gives you hot, cold, and Hot Chocolate.  

I even have a Mac here, but it is an aging beast that is really well past it's prime.   The old PowerPC platform is the problem.  When the sainted and departed Steve Jobs deigned that it was time to make the move to the same Intel hardware that most of us use in our desktops and laptops, he also said that he would limit the support to the old PowerPC platform to two more revisions of the OSX operating system.

Now we are three versions past that, at least another 5 years along.   Those machines are still around and if you believe the "Apple Distortion Field" they're heavily in demand.

They aren't but people who have them are trying to sell them like they are.

The biggest problem with modern computing is the Browser.  It's a huge security problem because it is where we do most of our "work".  Since all the major browser programs are stopping support for the older operating systems, you can look forward to more and more spam from friends who are on those computers because they surfed a "bad" page and now have a virus.

Their last modern browser is Opera.  These holdouts on Tiger and Leopard need to stop using anything else and switch over.  It's a modern browser that has all the things we've come to depend on and works fairly well.

If that isn't what they want to do, there's always LinuxLinux is a thriving operating system platform that is currently being supported on the ancient hardware.  I can say from personal experience that Linux on PowerPC runs amazingly well and actually faster than the Mac OSX that I replaced it with.  It won't run the usual programs in the Mac world so it means keeping the old hardware or buying a new computer.  On the other hand, you can run MOST windows programs on Linux using Wine.  I've run Wine in the past and it works well.

There you have it!  Happy updating!

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