Why not compatible with Mac 10.6?

• Dec 28, 2014 - 21:58

I tried to start Musescore on my Mac Mini with SnowLeopard 10.6.8.
It doesn´t work. What is the problem to make Musescore 2.0 compatible with older versions of the Mac OS?
I don´t want to upgrade my MAC-OS to an Mac-Iphone-OS 10.7 or higher.
Please, make it compatible!!


Comments

Realistically, there is little/nothing we can do about it if the libraries and other tools on which we depend do not support older hardware or older versions of some particular OS.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Sorry, but Musescore 1.3 is working well with older versions of OS.
So , if you use only the libraries and tools which were good for Musescore 1.3 there should be no problem. Lots of programs for Mac, nearly all are compatible. Isn' t it more a question of what you want? If you want the compatibility, there should be a way, If you don't want or it has no great priority than there is no way.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

As far as I know, 1.2 is the last that can run on Snow Leopard.

But yes, it is the dependencies (Apple, Qt, etc) that determine compatibility, rather than the MuseScore developers.

To illustrate the strive for wide compatibility, the forthcoming 2.0 release may not have run on Lion (the last compatible operating system for my MacBook) at all, had it not been for the efforts of lasconic. :)

In reply to by wibem

Not only is 1.3 a couple of years old already, it really just a series of bug fixes and minor enhancements on top of the 0.9.6 code base, which is now over four years old. 2.0 has been in development that long.

One can of course keep compatibility by continuing to use four-year-old versions of third party libraries and tools, yes - as long as they actually continue to work at all, anyhow. But then you give up the possibility of the new features and support for the newer platforms that is made possible by the newer libraries and tools. That is, if the choice is between supporting MacOS 10.6 versus supporting MacOS 10.10, Windows 8, and a host of new features made possible by the more recent libraries and tools, unfortunately, that choice is very clear. This is just a fact of life in the software business, particularly when it comes to OS's with relativewly low market share like MacOS (third party tools generally support older versions of Windows longer).

I am not sure why such a big deal is made about not wanting to upgrade. Apple lets you upgrade to Maverick or Yosemity for free, provided your computer is new enough (roughly newer than 2007).
I just did it with our Macbook from 2010 which had 10.6.8. on it. It was easy and the performance of the machine is as good as before. Apple themselves do not support Safari for 10.6.8. any more (it still works, but develops more and more problems--web sites with which it does not work), so why would you ask an independent group to still support it?
So my advice here is: Either use Musescore 1.3.--it is damned good already--or upgrade if you must have 2.0; I admit that I like the appearance of the scores in 2.0 a lot more than in 1.3.

If we didn't want to upgrade from 10.6, could we instal Linux and use Musescore from that? I bought a used Macbook Pro with 10.6.8 and nervous about upgrading because of several bad experiences listed in some Mac forums. This is the only computer I have and need it for work so don't want to risk having a dysfunctioning computer, or buy a new one. Can't afford it yet.

Also, previous Musescore worked for awhile but after installing Silverlight it stopped working. I tried getting rid of Silverlight but Musescore still didn't work.

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