The entropic process of Mac OS
X 10.4 Tiger for PowerPC's gradual erosion of compatibility seems
to be accelerating. There was no Tiger version among Apple's latest
batches of OS X security updates, and browser support is showing
distinct signs dwindling, in much the same way it did for OS 9 in
the early-to-mid '00s.
Opera and Tiger
For a topical, concrete example, Opera says its current Opera version 10.53 supports Tiger
or higher on Intel- or PowerPC-based systems. That should include my
aging but still highly serviceable Pismo PowerBooks, but I've
discovered not so much.
I've found that the latest builds of Opera, starting with version
10.52, have been essentially unusable on the Pismo. Versions up to
10.51 work great. Consequently I've stuck with earlier Opera builds on
my Pismos after trying (and then soon afterward deinstalling) version
10.52.
Last Sunday I found that the usually solid and dependable Pismo had
suddenly gone very flaky on me. Pages were taking forever to load in
Opera, or refusing to load at all, and other browsers were misbehaving,
with the same sort of stalling. This was a puzzlement until I
eventually Force Quit
Opera in order to terminate a protracted interval of beach ball
spinning, and upon restarting a "Welcome to Opera 10.53" page
appeared.
Since I had just quit and then immediately restarted the program, no
deliberate update had been involved, so I had to deduce that the
trouble started by the program somehow downloading the 10.53 updater
unbidden and installing it, at which point the Pismo's Internet
performance went south.
I quit Opera again, rummaged around for a version 10.51 installer,
found a build from last October, installed that, restarted the program,
and everything returned to normalcy and tranquility.
I have no idea what the issue is with Opera versions 10.52 and
10.53, but I should add that 10.52 has not been an especially happy
camper on my Unibody
MacBook either, and 10.53 refuses to start up on the MacBook at all
in either OS X 10.5 or 10.6. Curiously, I've been running Opera
10.52 Beta 2 Build 8330 reasonably successfully on the MacBook for the
past couple of months, and it's been stable, but it refuses to "stick"
in any assigned Spaces desktop, insisting on following one's navigation
from space to space. My workaround is to (uncharacteristically for me)
collapse it to the Dock when it's not in use.
As for version 10.53's crash on launch issue, I contacted Opera, and
they asked me to send a transcript of the crash logs, which I did, and
to create a new, clean user account and try starting up in that, which
I haven't gotten around to yet. I've heard nothing back regarding the
crash logs.*
Other Browsers
But I digress. I was discussing the state of browser support for
Tiger. For now, Opera 10.51 is perfectly serviceable. It doesn't fare
very well dealing with Flash content, but neither does the cutting-edge
iPad. However, the proverbial handwriting
is on the wall. Safari 4 is only partly functional on the old Pismos,
and some of the cool newer browsers, especially Google's Chrome (finally out of beta
for the Mac), but also neat indie ones like Stainless and Cruz, don't support Tiger at all.
My current browser troika on the Pismo consists of Opera, which is
my default browser and the one I use most on that machine by far,
augmented by whatever the latest versions of SeaMonkey and Shiira are.
SeaMonkey is decently fast loading Web pages, very solid and stable,
but noticeably sluggish in executing GUI functions and navigation,
especially after the memory heap gets full (I have the RAM on my Pismos
maxed out at 1 GB) and Tiger starts dipping into swapfiles. I use
it mainly where stability and compatibility are priorities.
Shiira is fast and
light on its feet compared with SeaMonkey, starts up quickly, and the
thumbnail bookmarks can be useful in some instances. I like the look
and feel of Shiira, and my main complaint is its frequent instability -
crashing and/or locking up much more frequently than other modern
browsers. But at least it supports Tiger.
It Will Get Worse
I don't know for how much longer, though. Since Shiira is based on
Apple's WebKit, the prospects are probably dim after Apple releases
Safari 5, which I'm not expecting to support Tiger.
It would be nice to think that Opera might fix the Tiger support
issues, but it didn't happen with the 10.53 release, and I won't be
surprised if Opera 11 drops Tiger support altogether.
Indeed, I suspect that within a couple of years, up-to-date Web
browsers supporting OS X 10.4 Tiger may be pretty thin on the ground.
