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Mozilla ponders ending Firefox support for Leopard

by Kelly Hodgkins Dec 1st 2011 at 4:30PM

Leopard owners, it might be time for you to update your operating system. It's four years old, and companies, including Apple, are no longer supporting it. Earlier this year, 1Password dropped support for OS X 10.5 Leopard, and now Mozilla may do the same with Firefox.

Mozilla engineering manager Josh Aas proposed ending support for OS X Leopard in six months. It lets Mozilla address any final bug or security fixes and gives Leopard owners time to upgrade if they want. Leopard owners don't have to upgrade as the current version of Firefox will continue to work. They just won't receive any supplemental security fixes or enhancements to the browser.

If you want to upgrade your system, we are publishing a series of Holiday Gift Guides that'll help you choose the right Mac and all the accessories to go along with it. Apple also recently upgraded its Migration Assistant App to support a move from Leopard to Lion. It's free, and it'll make sure your apps and data make the transition successfully.

[Via ComputerWorld]



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Leopard owners, it might be time for you to update your operating system. It's four years old, and companies, including Apple, are no...
 

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Mabhatter

The only issue I see with that is that Leopard was the final OS for PowerPC based systems. Even though the systems are old, the one good thing about open source in particular is that they have always brought life (and security) to older hardware.

I'm on a C2D Mac daily that SHIPPED with Tiger. It wasn't that much earlier for the PowerPC chips. There's no "technical" reason and G5 Mac can't run a current Firefox.

I think Mozilla has probably looked at the download numbers and found that not enough people download to make it worth their while. I'd expect Apple is also squeezing the Dev tools to make back-developing more difficult meaning they would have to have different physical copies to continue.

And of course, almost all Intel Macs Sold (like I said mine came with tiger) can run Lion with no issues... Why run anything else if you don't have to?

December 01 2011 at 8:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
AriX

Firefox is cross-platform, and goes by the lowest common denominator system (the one Jobs described when arguing against Flash) already across platforms. What is the huge benefit to targeting 10.6 instead of 10.5? Maybe there's something specific they want?

December 01 2011 at 7:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Faslane

I think people would live if they did....not really that big of deal.

December 01 2011 at 7:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CrisisDog

They already dropped PowerPC support, so in my eyes, what's the difference? I've been using TenFourFox...

December 01 2011 at 6:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
otheroom

So Firefox is still being developed for the antiquated Windows XP OS but they're dropping support for Mac OS 10.5?

December 01 2011 at 6:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to otheroom's comment
Boris

Yep. In part, that's because the number of people running XP is much larger than the total number of people using all Mac OS versions combined. In part that's because Microsoft doesn't go as much out of its way to make code that worked with one OS not work with a later version as Apple does, so supporting multiple Windows versions is a lot easier than supporting multiple Mac OS versions.

December 02 2011 at 2:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
puhsitch

It's all about the numbers (and the fact that most machines still running 10.5 are probably PowerPC, which is already unsupported (and upgrading to 10.6 for the Intel folks should be a no-brainier))

December 02 2011 at 3:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Quiroz

But power PC users don't have an option to upgrade to any newer OS! That sucks

December 01 2011 at 5:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to David Quiroz's comment
g.biggs

Some of us with older hardware are unable to upgrade from 10.5.x. Those with non-intel cpus. There is still a bit of life in my first gen mac-mini. Maybe it is time to pass this down to the children and maybe Santa will put a new 27" iMac in its place!

December 01 2011 at 5:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bonobob

I wish Mozilla would ponder fixing things so Firefox doesn't totally lock up my Snow Leopard machine.

December 01 2011 at 4:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Noah

People use Firefox on the Mac?

December 01 2011 at 4:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Noah's comment
macserv

Until Safari "extensions" offer anything close to the kind of customizability that Firefox Add-ons offer, vast numbers of people will continue to use Firefox on their Macs.

December 02 2011 at 1:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Faslane

yep, I find it much better than safari personally.

December 02 2011 at 2:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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