Apple ends software update for OS X 10.3 and earlier

[wardsenatorfe92]

I just saw this today, figured I would share it with everyone.

Apple has disabled software update for all Macs running OS 10.3 and earlier, and also Mac OS 9 (as we've already discovered in previous posts).

Here is the page on their site:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5405

 

[uniserver]

wow thats bull crap… i hope the combo updates are atleast are kept available!

 

[Unknown_K]

It must coast Apple too much to keep that server running.

 

[Emehr]

I have a hard drive with all of the major OS X updates on it from Panther on up so I'm not too worried at the moment. However, I did have a disturbing experience trying to use my 10.6.8 updater after I reinstalled Snow Leopard from my 10.6.0 disk: the updater wouldn't work! I tried it twice and it failed (I forgot what the error message said). I think it detected a time stamp or something because when I went to download a "fresh" copy off of Apple's website it ran just fine. That's a load of crap if I've ever seen one: ticking OS update time bombs. Surely there's a hack around it...

 

[krye]

What's the big deal? The KB article states that the updates can be downloaded manually. It's not like they're gone.

 

[trag]

What's the big deal? The KB article states that the updates can be downloaded manually. It's not like they're gone.

If you can find them, and know that you need them. Apple's software downloads are a disorganized, inaccessible mess, ever since they switched from FTP to web interface only. One can enter a clear search term, with a version number even, and get back a links only to the very latest software which is completely irrelevant to the search terms.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Well, to me if you're using old software, it's nice but not especially critical to have the latest version of the old software. We can probably get by if we track down combo updates, security updates, and java updates. Anything else, like Safari, iTunes, Airport stuff, etc. - we can just browse for these things as we run into issues.

I totally think that software update is a much easier way to do this, and it's pretty lame that Apple would take it away, but we should still be okay. It's not like the software self-destructs when it has become old. That actually makes some sense to self-destruct software with a lengthy fair warning -- Apple would not want to be liable for any security issues with old software and it would also force people to buy new software / hardware after it expires.

So considering that, I'm still happy with it.

 

[krye]

Maybe it's just me, but since I'm a collector, I've always made it a habit to have all these OS updates burned to CD. You never know when they'll kill them off for good. If you know you're collecting old machines and you're going to need the software, why would you rely on a link that Apple could take down at any given time?

I've make it a point to collect as many OSes as eBay allows me to collect. For the 10.x.x updates, I grab them off Apple's site and keep it archived.



You never know what machine you'll get your hands on. One day you might find that you need 10.2 for an old iBook or something. It's nice to have it at the ready without having to scour the internet for a disk image and you don't have to worry about getting the machine on the internet to do it.

 

[directive0]

Thats an awesome collection Krye. Seems like a smart move.

I know its not approved but I keep a software backup of every OS I can get my hands on, and with this news I will now be collecting updates.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

The KB article states that the updates can be downloaded manually.

The combo installers are simple enough, but particularly for the security updates, these can be tough to track down and some have a byzantine maze of prerequisites that Software Update at least would unravel for you.

I have just about everything for 10.4 downloaded, and it's still easier to let Software Update have its way with the Mac than attempt to install it all manually. I install 10.4.6 retail, upgrade to 10.4.11 and QT 7.6.mumble, and then let it crank away at the rest.

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

What I've decided to do is to make an install of Mac OS X 10.whatever, install all the updates (and going through all the tedium that involves), and maybe a few applications, such as iWork/iLife, VLC, etc. Then I image it with Disk Utility while booted up from another OS (usually the installer disk).

And I just recently learned to erase the initial user stuff and reinstate the out of box experience routine, which makes this method very streamlined I think (write the image to a disk of my choosing, and it's like a fresh from the factory setup with all the updates and stuff, right down to the OOBE).

It's too bad Apple stopped operating the Software Update servers for these old OS's. Frankly, I was surprised that they were still supplying updates for OS 9 after all these years!

It's inevitable that they'll do this also with Mac OS X 10.4.x, 10.5.x, and 10.6.x, eventually.

Such is life...

c

 

[krye]

You'd think we'd be used to this by now. It's inevitable that as each new OS comes out, something rolls off the back end. Next year when we're talking about 10.9 coming out, we should scour Apple's Support site for things that look like they'll disappear.

 

[trag]

The thing that is frustrating to me, is that I'm so far behind the curve, I have not started downloading updates for some of the older OS yet.

So, yes, I do save all my updates as I download and use them -- although unraveling the file names later may be a pain. But I have not downloaded the updates for several systems now. I still don't have an Intel Mac, e.g..

Why would it be so hard for Apple to have a nice hierarchically organized FTP server for the old OS and updates, the way they used to for the pre-OSX stuff? It doesn't cost that much to keep a few FTP servers up and organized and it gives you a clear internal archive. Or, if you already have an internal archive with meaningful organization, then it should be trivial to mirror it as an FTP server of software downloads.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Because it would increase the value and sustainability of their old hardware. OH NOES DON'T DO THAT.

Yes, Apple's in the hardware business, but small favours like this are good for making a company not look like a colossal d*ck.

 

[bbraun]

Has anyone investigated the issues of implementing a replacement update server?

10.4 and higher are supported by various versions of Mac OS X Server's Software Update Server, and there are several 10.4+ 3rd party implementations. The update mechanism for 10.3 and lower is different, but I haven't looked into what it would take to implement a solution for those releases.

 

[Cory5412]

I'll be interested in seeing from this point forward when and how Apple discontinues Software Update support for older machines.

it's pretty lame that Apple would take it away

After a decade -- plus, every computer that can run 10.3 can run 10.4, and many of those can also run 10.5 -- so there's a few more years of "support" in the "automatic update" sense. It may be lame, but is it at all surprising? In fact, I've always been a little bit amazed that the software updates have been kept online as long as they have.

Plus, technology and delivery methods change. It may be a technological reason as much as a cost or "support lifecycle" reason. 10.3 may just not work with some new server software Apple is using.

Why would it be so hard for Apple to have a nice hierarchically organized FTP server for the old OS and updates, the way they used to for the pre-OSX stuff?

Organizing information is hard, I'm sure we all know this. It's Apple, and it almost certainly wouldn't be "just a mirror" of whatever their internal systems have. Plus, network transfer often costs money, disk space costs money, backup systems cost money, and the server hardware (and electricity) that the thing runs on (even if it's just a VM on another box) all cost money.

I know its not approved but I keep a software backup of every OS I can get my hands on, and with this news I will now be collecting updates.

That is typically within the restrictions of the software license agreement. It's just responsible computing to have backups not only of your machine, but of your relevant installation (and in some cases, update) media.

It's also not illegal (but it can be considered to be in bad taste) to make a backup or image of a used system's hard disk when you get it, so you can return it to the state the previous owner had it in. For me, whether or not I do this depends a lot on context, my available resources, and my mood at that moment.

Generally, if you're relatively well equippped for any given platform, you won't need to return to that image in order to bring a machine back up, either in the case of hardware failure, or if you just want to start fresh with the software on the machine so that it's "yours."

Has anyone investigated the issues of implementing a replacement update server?

Not recently, but long ago in a universe far away, I had started to deploy an OS X 10.5 software update mirror. I gave up when I realized that it was going to take an inordinate amount of disk space for a relatively small return (there were only 20 machines in my deployment, and since I was imaging them anyway, I just installed the updates before I imaged them.)

It'd be interesting to read through the updates and see if the 10.5 software update server would have distributed updates for 10.3 and earlier as well. Although, the deployment relied on Apple's SW update server(s) being up to begin with.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Organizing information is hard, I'm sure we all know this. It's Apple, and it almost certainly wouldn't be "just a mirror" of whatever their internal systems have. Plus, network transfer often costs money, disk space costs money, backup systems cost money, and the server hardware (and electricity) that the thing runs on (even if it's just a VM on another box) all cost money.

Reasonable argument on profitability is not mutually exclusive with "is a d*ckmove." It may be a rational d*ckmove, but it's still not very nice, and we really have no idea how much or how little it would actually cost Apple.

 

[Cory5412]

Sidenote: My apologies for the rambles herein. I think I ended up making a few points twice without cleaning up previous writing. It's a bit past my bed-time.

We can infer that it cost Apple a lot to run. -- a certain number of gigabytes or terabytes cost a lot more for someone like Apple to store (since they'll have to store it on fairly fast disks, that are reliable, presumably hooked up to a raid controller, on some kind of server system, and there'll have to be some kind of backup or restorable archive somewhere, for disaster recovery purposes -- elsewise, why have the information at all? They're not going to pop the archive up on a used G4 they bought on eBay and only expect one or two people per day to hit. Especially if Mac OS X 10.3 (and other older versions)(which could still be installed on a lot of network-connected machines) is set to automatically update. That would be getting potentially thousands of requests per day, worldwide.

We're talking about a fairly big system that needs to be fast with a high load.

Heck, what if Apple did have all of this stuff back in 2003 or so (and spent a small boatload on it) and when it came time to renew their hardware investment in this system (because maybe the hardware kicked the bucket, or was becoming too expensive to run), to provide updates for software a decade older or more, decided it wasn't worth whatever it was going to cost. (And given that Apple buys Sun/Dell/HP/whomever's hardware and runs linux/solaris on it for server duties, and that they'd probably want the support for the machine, they're going to be spending a lot.)

Not that Apple would ever publically talk about the statistics of such a service, but I bet the number of people hitting the 10.3 software update server who weren't fully patched has gone very very close to zero. Heck, when was the last time any of us here really did a clean install of 10.3?

My bet is that "most people' (who aren't computing hobbyists that buy old systems used and then reformat them with their period-appropriate operating systems) who still have these systems have been "fully patched" (as many patches as Apple will ever release) for years now.

sidenote: Stuff like this is part of why I've always considered it a good idea to, where possible, make and archive a backup of your full system in a working state on a regular basis. If something goes wrong with one of my machines, I rarely rebuild it and restore just the data -- I restore the whole machine and if my full system backup is old, I can then apply delta backups of the data.

I also build and archive full clean images of each system with all of the available updates/patches, the apps I'll generally want, and (where applicable) hardware drivers. This way if I get another system like it or really do need to start fresh (like the time I installed, uninstalled, changed versions, then did an upgrade on Visual Studio before Windows Update stopped working) -- doing so is quick and easy.

(although that is partly why I've started moving experiments into virtual machines.)

Support for 10.3 and everything before it ended a long time ago. It's arguably not really a mean-spirited move for Apple to actually end that support. That's what "support ended" means. Anyone doing production on that product either move off of it or prepare to do all of their own support. Apple having kept the stuff around so long was a nice gesture, not a mandate or promise.

The removal of a nice gesture isn't a mean gesture.

Even if it costs in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $20,000 (not counting the expense it may take to re-write or update the actual server component, since I'm pretty sure that won't run on modern linux/solaris/windows unmodified) -- that's $20,000 Apple could use somewhere else. ("drop in the ocean" aside) A very big component of the Steve Jobs Apple is that wherever legally and logistically possible, you don't look back. It's just a part of their corporate culture now, a part shared by many companies making consumer electronics.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I think we're just going to have to disagree on what's nice and what isn't.