Mac Problems

The Mac problems are going to continue. The Lab is working on individual issues. But, there is no concerted effort to clean up Cocoa issues.

Oz is mostly running on Mac. He is not seeing why there is currently such a problem for Mac users. He isn’t having problems, some inconveniences, but not real problems.

Mac users make up 6% of the user base (approximate). For the FS Team that is a lot of people that come in and bitch at the FS support people. Jessica says the support people have to sit and listen to them grip. I’m not sure why they have to… I’d be hitting the eject button for any abusive person. It isn’t like they are paying for the viewer.

Since FS support people are in-world, they are getting abused. Well there is the mute/block button. Jessica feels they have to be sensitive to the problem and that it is a larger issue for the FS Team than it is for the Lab. I just don’t see why that means having to put up with abusers. And is losing abusive users really a problem?

Not having any Mac developers on team means the FS Dev team is not going to be able to do much about resolving the Mac issues, the Lab has somewhat the same problem. Without more Mac developers, this problem for Mac users is going to be around for a time.

Oz says the crash rate on Mac version 10.8 and 10.9 looks pretty good. The older versions people are not supposed to be running have really high crash rates. That is also true for Windows XP 32-bit systems. Oz is amazed anyone running XP is still in Second Life with such outrageous crash rates.

The Systems Requirement page still shows support for Windows XP, but don’t expect that to last. We will soon see XP come off that page. Also, expect Mac 10.6 to come off the page and may be 10.7.

If a Mac users run 10.7 and has an ATI card, I understand from FS people they are going to suffer seriously degraded performance. Mac users need to run at least 10.8 and some question that. 10.9 is much better problem and performance-wise.

There is a fix that is coming to viewers that will require the OS be up to date with system patches. XP will have to be running SP3 to install the viewer. I’m not sure what the deal will be with Mac users.

The Lab is in the process of deciding what they will do with older systems. Support, sort of support, not support, block, not block… I suspect it will be ‘not support’. They may come up with something novel, but I doubt that.

Once support is removed what would change is in regard to fixing problems and how much support the SL Support team would or wouldn’t provide. If they cannot reproduce a problem in a new OS then they will ignore the problem. In this scenario they would not block the older systems they just won’t help with them.

I’ve been encouraging people to get on eBay and buy copies of Windows 7 while it is cheap.

64-Bit Viewers

While 64-bit viewers are nice, the big advantage in improved stability comes from running on a 64-bit OS. The added stability from running a 64-bit viewer is not that much greater.

Firestorm

Plans are to put a block on FS 4.4.0 in the next couple of weeks. That leaves 4.4.2 as the next target for blocking. But, this is the last version that Mac users can use until Mac problems are resolved. Sort of…

Leaving 4.4.2 open for Mac users means it leaves people running a viewer which does not support Fitted Mesh and renders it with log spikes that run to the 0,0,0 point of the region. Not a good solution. But, it may make people realize THEY have a problem.

The problem for the Firestorm team is the flood of support case they will have to handle.