Old Safaris need to die? Takes $$$ to go to macOS

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three-cushion
three-cushion
Community Member

I tried to use @troyhunts new Pwnd Password on my iMac that still runs Yosemite. (It is too old to run mac sierra)... This new use of 1PW forced me to use Chrome. In fact I use Chrome more & more these days as my copy of Safari balks more & more often at opening new sites.

Chrome worked great with Hunt's app!! Thanx for this additional option. I now can clean up long forgotten site logins.

I guess why I posted this is: Many of us enthsiastic users of 1PW may begin to wonder how long our older OS system will be able to run 1PW at all.

Please don't forget us our here with solid systems such as Yosemite or El Cap. We need 1PW. Apple wants us to spend $$$ that may be out of reach for us.

Jim B


1Password Version: 6.8.7
Extension Version: 4.6.12
OS Version: 10.10.5
Sync Type: iCloud

Comments

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni
    edited March 2018
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    @three-cushion - first of all, thanks for being a long-time 1Password user. You rock. :)

    Before I dive a little deeper, I want to make sure I point out that you should always be able to run a legacy version of 1Password on the system(s) it was designed for. So, 1Password 3 for Mac will still run on, say, OS X 10.7.x or 10.6.8. And you can always find legacy versions of 1Password at our updates server, if you need them. But that's different from making sure older versions are compatible with all the new features and new OSes.

    As a security company, we can't really do anything BUT suggest you always update to and use the latest versions of just about everything, including OS (and patches, etc) as well as our own software. Running older/outdated/legacy software is simply an invitation to problems (or nearly so). And yes, while both larger companies like Apple or Microsoft and developers like us all try to provide some amount of backward-compatibility because we're quite aware that users may be in differing situations with regard to what devices they're able (or need) to run, there's a limit to what kind of support we can provide for older versions. The problem becomes one of compatibility -- as soon as a version is released, it becomes frozen in time. Other things change: hardware, the OS on which it runs, related software or underlying libraries necessary to run it, etc. Some can be updated, but some of it requires updating from other developers or vendors. And the further back in time you go, the less likely it is that something from that era will continue working today.

    At present, on the Mac side of things, all users from Yosemite forward can run up through the current version (6.8.6). That may not be true for 1Password 7, but it is now. Assuming we release 1Password 7 by mid-year, that will be just under four years since Yosemite was released. We're certainly sympathetic to users forced by circumstances to use older hardware or versions of OS, but at some point, we have to choose between maintaining compatibility with (and supporting) older and older releases, or concentrating our resources on what's current, and improving for the future.

    I hope this has been helpful in terms of giving a little insight into our thinking around (and the difficulty of) maintaining support for older and older releases. Let us know if you have any follow-up questions!

  • three-cushion
    three-cushion
    Community Member
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    Lars: thanx for prompt reply.
    yes..even as a retired nerd, .I under stand the whole concept...stay current for fear of older cyber holes that may exist I older systems.
    BTW, i am on 1PW 6.8.7 with Yosemite.

    one of my volunteer efforts is helping elderly folks with their systems. one in particular still runs Snow Leopard! so I keep an old system on CD to help him trouble shoot. The user world is filled with similar situations. No money; no upgrade.

    As long as I can use a old 1PW version to keep my Yosemite running...great. And as a subscriber user, I trust getting older versions should be easy.

    I can well afford new iPads/iPhones....new iMacs, desktops or laptop, not so easy.

    thanx again for listening...after being a Mac user since 1985,I'm not changing. also i use Windows regularly on my iMac.
    Can't do that on tablet or phone😉.

    Jim b

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni
    edited March 2018
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    @three-cushion - I totally understand "no money, no upgrade." But what I think you understand (and I hope you try to get the folks you help to understand) is that although the version of 1Password that was current when Snow Leopard was the current version of OS X (1Password 3 for Mac) should still work if you still have Snow Leopard, many of the thing needed to make 1Password work are out of our control. For example, Dropbox sync: Dropbox retired v1 of their API in 2016. Because v1 of Dropbox sync was current when we wrote 1Password 3 for Mac in 2009-12, it no longer functions...and it's not something we can do anything about. I suppose if you don't use it, you'd never notice its absence, but Dropbox sync was a crucial part of 1Password 3 for Mac, and if you relied on it, there's now no solution for that...due to the march of time and 1Password 3 for Mac's age. Similarly, 1Password 3 for iOS cannot be used any longer if you have an iOS device on which you installed iOS 11...because Apple simply doesn't support 32-bit apps any longer, and they don't allow us to change the code of versions no longer for sale in the App Store. Basically, the older something is, the more of these kinds of issues we run into, and the harder they are to solve.

    We're glad to have both you and all the folks you assist (thanks for volunteering, by the way!) as 1Password users...but we can't guarantee that older versions of 1Password are going to keep working, or keep working as well as they used to. Too much is out of our control, and even some of the stuff that we technically might be able to address by finding other ways to solve problems created by things like APIs being deprecated, boils down to: do we spend our time, energy and developer-hours cracking open years-old code repositories and trying to find solutions for that decreasing number of folks still using such systems...or do we work to make the current version of 1Password, which is what most people are using, the best it can be? We'll always issue critical security fixes if needed...but once an app has passed into "legacy" status, it's a safe bet that we aren't actively developing for it any longer.

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