Problem downgrading 3.4.5

[chrishamm]

@infiniteloop Thanks, I'll give it another try with a stock Lion installation. If it works there, I'm afraid I can't put much more effort in this topic. DWC 3.4 targets iOS >= 9 in the browser list, so I assumed it would work already on that particular device.

[infiniteloop]

@chrishamm

I'm afraid I can't put much more effort in this topic.

Right, and IMHO you shouldn’t. My shed is densely populated with ancient Macs, and I hate to recommend someone to trash his device just because it has been coming to age. OTOH, to actively support 10 year old machines is developers hell. My moderately recent Xcode simply blocks all such efforts.

DWC 3.4 targets iOS >= 9 in the browser list

Just now, I’m sitting in front of an iMac 27" from 2011, which maxes out on macOS "High Sierra". So I really appreciate your efforts to maintain backward compatibility. However, I don’t know of a single 10 year old iOS device in my customer base. Admitted, I still possess an original Newton, but I would never urge you to support DWC for this old sweetheart.

So, don’t waste your resources on obsolete devices. That’s bad for @Stout, but, as I wrote above, such old handhelds have become extremely rare. @Stout: keep your iPad in honour just as I keep my Newton running. Were darn good devices at their times.

[chrishamm]

@infiniteloop I just installed OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and discovered that not even the Apple welcome page is displayed correctly any more! I believe in Safari DWC fails to load because that WebKit version doesn't support lamda functions yet - I get Unexpected token '>' there. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to get Babel to output ES5/Safari 6-compatible JS chunks yet.

[infiniteloop]

@chrishamm

I just installed OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and discovered that not even the Apple welcome page is displayed correctly any more!

IIRC, Apple stopped to bundle Java with macOS around that timeframe. But some JS support existed in Safari back then. I can’t help you much with this, as I’m anything but a web dev. Some bare-bone HTML and JS with TextEdit, that’s it.

Just found this here on StackExchange:

macos - How to use Java Plugin in Browser with JDK within Mountain Lion OSX

… but I think, it’s time to mark these macOS and iOS veterans as deprecated.

[chrishamm]

@infiniteloop Java is not JavaScript. JavaScript is integrated in the browser whereas Java is a separate application framework. It's just the use of newer JavaScript features that break DWC/Apple's start page in old Safari versions AFAICS.

[infiniteloop]

@chrishamm

Java is not JavaScript.

Sure. What I don't know is whether Safari's JavaScript implementation at that time relied on the presence of Java - up to "Lion", Java was part of the macOS distribution. This changed when Oracle got their hands on Sun.

[Stout]

@infiniteloop

The "old handhelds" are not rare. People put them on the shelf because the software developers eager to not make their software backward compatible, which is a shame. If someone made an app for these "old handhelds", I am 100% sure that they will start using them again as they are actually still working. If that happen they will probably be hot stuff on the used market and shoot of in price like old mobile graphics cards did when someone found out that you can swap an old iMac 2011 graphics card with a newer and get a decent computer for peanuts.

I also have an Imac 2011 27" i7 3.2Ghz with a"new" graphics card, and it's absolutely stellar in 2023 when it comes to average usage. I use it all day for all 3D-printing work/apps. It's not much (if any) difference to my newer iMac's when it comes to this.

In the day when I was a programmer (read 1983-1999) and used assembler, system code, fortran, pascal, C or whatever there were never a problem because the application was stand alone and would always work. But it was of course suited for a particular task and there were only one or two platforms which made it easy. Those were the days

I am still frustrated not be able to use a fully functional iPad for such an easy task as running an internet browser with DWC.

[infiniteloop]

@Stout

the software developers [are] eager to not make their software backward compatible, which is a shame.

Don’t blame @chrishamm on this. Developers rely on frameworks, and these develop over time. Some of the older frameworks won’t run on modern hardware, so, in order not to ignore current machines, we simply have no option than to limit backward compatibility.

I am still frustrated not be able to use a fully functional iPad for such an easy task

If you consider a 12 year old iPad fully functional (what about battery life?), feel free to use it with contemporary software. If you find a DWC version which runs on your iPad, that’s fine. Consequently, you then have to revert to a matching RRF version, too.

[Stout]

@infiniteloop

Thanks for all your constructive positive inputs.

Believe it or not. Battery life is just fine. I can (if I want) watch Netflix 1 hour/day for a month and then I get a warning that it´s 10% battery left. That's good enough for me, age doesn't matter, it's working!

But who needs a battery when It can easily been connected to USB. I can even use it as an extension controller to Logic Pro without any problem, so why throw it away? Beacuse it's 12 years old?

[droftarts]

@Stout I've got a Gen 4 iPad. Yes, Netflix works still, just. Barely anything else does! Games and other streaming services, and iOS updates have left it behind. My 4yo uses it to watch Paw Patrol, to avoid fights with her older brother for the newer iPad, that actually can run everything. I had an even older Gen 3 iPad (Retina), which was even worse, so I bought an Adafruit Qualia board (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1716) and converted it into an external monitor. I may eventually get around to mounting it to one of my printers, and use it as a RPi display. Or perhaps build it into RPi tablet format, and reclaim it for it's original use. At least it cuts down on the e-waste.

Ian

[infiniteloop]

@Stout

Thanks for all your constructive positive inputs.

Meh. Just wanted to generate some understanding for developers and the decisions they have to take.

so why throw it away? Beacuse it's 12 years old?

Beware! Remember the venerable Newton I mentioned above? Or look at @droftarts’ suggestions. BTW: until now, I replaced more than 10 batteries of iPhones and iPads instead of trashing them. The monitor of my M2 is a 12 year old iMac (modded), I run a G5 „cheese grater“ for elaborated HDD recovery, and my Duet lives in a G4 casing.

The thing is: Apple cuts support for older machines, so we are on our own with how to keep them alive and useful. Some of us then install Linux, some jailbreak their iOS devices in order to install unsupported software.