The author might consider using Microsoft products because they are obsessive about providing backwards compatibility. That's one of the positive things about Microsoft products. The downside is that they have to deal with a lot of old baggage as a result.<p>Apple, on the other hand is almost the opposite. They're obsessive about upgrading everyone and leaving the past behind. That's great because they're free to make bold and innovative changes. The downside of course is that you and your files sometimes get left behind.<p>Both are valid strategies in my opinion and appeal to different customers. If you feel like backwards compatibility is a really important feature then whether you want to admit it or not, you probably would be happy as a Microsoft customer.
A lot of people have absolutely no problem with proprietary software until it breaks. The problem is you never know when it will break, and what it'll take down with it.<p>I'm not saying 'go full Stallman'. I'm just saying think that when ever you hand over your data to a private company if they consider it as important as you consider it.
They made a similar break in the latest GarageBand where the format changed but also 32-bit plugins no longer work, and there's no way to download the old version of GarageBand on a new Mavericks machine. While it will open and update old files, it loses certain settings, sound clips, etc. so I have several "updated" files that are not what I recorded.<p>In my opinion this is totally unacceptable, and fundamentally opposite their philosophy of solving hard usability problems to make the user's life easier. If they were so committed to that, then they would automatically read and update old files, and do so accurately.<p>More and more, Mac OS X is becoming a shell for other peoples (preferably open source) software that I actually trust :\
I'm more concerned as to how it's increasingly impossible to buy an old copy and install it; the app store will only show you the latest version (and even for only the latest OS version), and the installer might even refuse to install, having detected a more recent version.<p>You basically <i>have</i> to pirate it in order to do these kinds of shenanigans.
Apple is pretty obnoxious about this sort of thing. They recently stopped printing photo books for the version of iPhoto my mom used, with no warning at all. I had to upgrade her iPhoto, which required I upgrade to Mavericks, which required I add more RAM to her computer.
This is NOT true of all proprietary software. It's just that with apple either you keep upgrading to the latest and greatest all the time or you will have problems.<p>Apple has its pros and cons, and one of those is that you have to keep upgrading regularly.<p>Most proprietary software will offer upgrade paths from older versions.
I think even MS is better than this at supporting old Office binary formats. Only PowerPoint has completely removed the support for pre-97 formats. With Word/Excel you can generally unblock support for older formats even if by default they will not open.
I have many Pages/Keynote/Numbers documents from 2005-2008, and I remember wondering if they'd ever become unreadable with future technology.<p>The date came sooner than expected.
When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license.<p>I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give you a digital download of Office 2003.<p>The inability to read old documents is shitty, yes, but Apple made a solution available. If you need 5-year-old software, then it's not unreasonable that you need some now-obsolete hardware.<p>AFAIK it's not necessary to buy Apple-branded drives - there are cheaper alternatives. You can also "share" the CD drive of any other modern Mac on the same WiFi network - I've used the family iMac to load Creative Suite onto my MBA. I bet they'd also let you use an optical drive at the Genius Bar, even if you're out of warranty.
I learned my lesson a long time ago, back when WordStar died. I never moved to WordPerfect, and I never moved to Microsoft Word. I do anything I really care about in LaTeX or HTML these days. I can still get to my WordStar documents though, thanks to DOSbox.
Hey look another thing Apple "simplified". Really not happy with this trend of dropping support/feature and calling it "we simplified it".
LibreOffice, as part of its goal to open <i>anything</i>, has rudimentary Keynote support in LO 4.2. I expect they'd heartily welcome bug reports and example documents. <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libetonyek/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libetonyek/</a> is the library that does the work.
It's just amazing. I found the same thing with "old" Pages documents (from 2008 as well). What am I supposed to do now? It does not make me feel like continuing to put all of my work in iWork format.<p>If one were to go Microsoft on the Mac, what are my choices? Office 2011? (it's 2014 now after all)<p>I know there's OpenOffice too
For some reason having those hashtags at the bottom of the article makes me feel dumb, as though the author thought I'd need Cliff Notes for the article. I know that's not the point of hashtags. Maybe it's #fail that flipped my switch.<p>#Apple #iWork #fail #proprietary #OpenOffice
What if someone maintained an online "virtual museum" of old emulated machines and operating systems? This could be done as SaaS, with some value add tools for converting to modern formats thrown in.
The "files" are really a folder/bundle with richtext and image files inside it. Why doesn't OP just extract the actual data from inside the bundle by right click > package contents
A couple of things here:<p>1) "Fresh Mavericks install." He should run Software Update and tell us he has done so, if he's going to write a blog post about whether stuff works.<p>2) He should file a radar (Apple's umbrella term for bug report / feature request) and share the radar number with us so we know he's at least going through the channels Apple has provided for concerns like this. <a href="http://radar.apple.com/" rel="nofollow">http://radar.apple.com/</a><p>Or... he could just write a blog post, but I'm saying it would likely be more effective if he also did these two things, in addition to his blog post.<p>Wait, he shouldn't have to file a radar? True, in an ideal world, he shouldn't have to. But you know what they say about ideal worlds...
[What the hell are you using to give presentations](<a href="http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2011/11/dont-use-powerpoint/" rel="nofollow">http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2011/11/dont-use-powerpoint...</a>)?
Advice: switch to latex with beamer.<p>Latex has a fairly long life time. A friend found the 20-year old source for his thesis and thought it would be fun to see if it would still compile in latex. Sure enough, it did, after just a few header lines being changed (sometimes library names change).
This has long been true of Apple and ever since Apple acquired Claris Works I've made sure I can open my old files or else keep around some emulation layer to do so. (E.g. SheepShaver to run Mac OS 9 and AppleWorks 5 which could open all the old Claris Works documents).
This is curious, because not long ago, I found myself needing to look at an old AppleWorks[1] file. It opened in Pages without a hitch.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleworks" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleworks</a>
Surprised nobody's mentioned SliTeX either here or on G+.<p>Source is plain ASCII. Output is PDF. Interpreter is TeX. All three are very, very robust for backward compatibility.<p>That Microsoft is being promoted for backwards (and forwards) compatibility strikes me as ... comical.
I ran into this issue with a Visual Fox Pro database setup used by FERC.<p>In 2013, documents are STILL being produced into a proprietary format that nothing open source can read (directly) a decade later.<p>This is why I love Python and Perl for data munging.
His biggest issue is he didn't have a CD reader? A basic USB DVD reader is cheap and sometimes quite handy. To say you lost your documents implies a lack of effort. If they were THAT important, you would get them.<p>As far as proprietary in general, MS Office has done a pretty good job other than their Office 2003 XML stuff which had to be broken when they lost the patent ruling to i4i. Anyone looking at document longevity now can easily use their XML formats.