Fleeing from Snow Leopard
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@scottalanmiller said:
Apple can get everyone to leave Snow Leopard but Microsoft is still struggling to get people off of XP!!
Price perhaps? Or the fact that a lot of people got their very first computer with XP and they just don't want to leave it. Bill Gates may have put a computer in every home but they don't want to give it up.
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@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Apple can get everyone to leave Snow Leopard but Microsoft is still struggling to get people off of XP!!
Custom applications, manufacturing systems, and SCADA environments aren't typically running on Mac. Until that changes, it's a bit hard to compare the two.
Are you really making excuses for companies who make poor business decisions? Those companies all decided to write software that only works on a platform that from at least 2005 they SHOULD have been aware would see an end of life (I say should because if they would have read about it, they would have known).
I suppose this gives a possible excuse to those running who made things on XP from 2001-2004, but come on... again, MS isn't supporting windows 95/98.
For those environments that can't be bothered with keeping security updated, or whatever excuse they want to use - fine. Segment your networks completely so this isn't a problem.
I simply can't understand a company that doesn't keep it's core business requirements covered. Clearly these companies don't have a disaster plan, etc.
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We still have a number of bespoke legacy applications that only run on XP. The cost to replace these is around $70k, which is a massive sum for a company our size. I'm not too worried about security (but a little). I've disabled internet access on them, which I'm hoping prevents the majority of problems (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think we're making poor business decisions - it's a decision based on the cost of mitigating the risks, which is something we have to do all the time.
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@Carnival-Boy you have bespoke that was written to XP only? What did they do that locked you in? Even casually following standards going back to the NT4 era should protect you against that.
Do you still have your code?
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We have specialist machines for testing our products. The software that these run on only runs on XP. I'm not sure why, maybe it's a 32-bit thing., It is provided by the Italian manufacturer of the machines. We don't have access to the code and I don't know much about it. They may be ripping us off, for all I know.
We also have a number of DOS and dBase III applications. I'm not sure what the DOS applications were written in. We don't have the code. We have the code for the dBase III applications, for what it's worth. These are all bespoke applications written by former employees of companies that we've bought. The programmers have long since disappeared. This is the downside of allowing employees to write custom applications. dBase III! It's ridiculous that a company is relying on dBase III in 2014, but there you go. It is a least rock solid.
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@Dashrender said:
@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Apple can get everyone to leave Snow Leopard but Microsoft is still struggling to get people off of XP!!
Custom applications, manufacturing systems, and SCADA environments aren't typically running on Mac. Until that changes, it's a bit hard to compare the two.
Are you really making excuses for companies who make poor business decisions? Those companies all decided to write software that only works on a platform that from at least 2005 they SHOULD have been aware would see an end of life (I say should because if they would have read about it, they would have known).
I suppose this gives a possible excuse to those running who made things on XP from 2001-2004, but come on... again, MS isn't supporting windows 95/98.
For those environments that can't be bothered with keeping security updated, or whatever excuse they want to use - fine. Segment your networks completely so this isn't a problem.
I simply can't understand a company that doesn't keep it's core business requirements covered. Clearly these companies don't have a disaster plan, etc.
Let's say that you're an IT person for a power plant. Sure, the critical systems are air-gapped from Internet-connected systems. However, upgrading critical components takes time. The platform has to be evaluated and show years of consistent reliability before even being a consideration. From there, there's the implementation and validation phases to go through.
For a manufacturing firm to upgrade can be incredibly costly. Let's say there's a 27-person firm with a $1m piece of equipment that has an ancient amber-screen DOS interface. The manufactuer of the equipment supplies replacement parts, but otherwise makes new models of the equipment. Other than the interface being old, the equipment works great, and will for years to come. The company then has 3 choices:
- Buy a new one for $1m
- Hire someone to reverse engineer the system and make a new interface for $50-100k
- Leave it as-is
Which do you think they'll do?
A 4000-person company is moving to Windows 7. Their LOB software doesn't support anything after XP. The company's working on switching over to a new software package, but that involves finding one that's a good fit, retraining their developers to write custom modules for the new system, implementing the custom code, training 4000 people, then implementing the new system globally without causing major work stoppage. They're working on it, but right now are on XP.
Would you consider these to be excuses, or valid business cases?
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@Carnival-Boy dBase III? Holy crap.
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Alex,
I'd say in all of those cases the companies bought something without looking to their own future needs. Sometimes I understand you just can't help it because no other solution exists, and in those cases you air gap the old equipment and move on. But more often than not, you have people saying they can't air gap something for one reason or another and you find yourself in a horrible spot. -
The Fruit Company
tends to EoL their stuff after 3-4 years. I'm surprised they haven't dumped support for snow leopard sooner. -
@Katie I think it got longer than normal support due to the fact that it could still run the old code.
