A memory leak in Apple's Network Extension framework

I wish there was an independent unit test suite for operating systems and other proprietary software.

The suite would run the most-used apps and utilities against updates and report regressions.

So for example, the vast majority of apps on my Mac can't run, because they were written for early versions of OS X and OS 9, even all the way back to System 7 when apps were expected to still run on 4/5/6. The suite would reveal that Apple has a track record of de-prioritizing backwards compatibility or backporting bug fixes to previous OS versions.

Edit: integration test suite

You don’t need to do anything special to “reveal” that Apple doesn’t prioritize backwards compatibility. That is very well known. For example, standard practice for audio professionals is to wait a year or more to upgrade MacOS, to give all the vendors a chance to fix what broke.

Even 15 years ago the common knowledge was to never upgrade to major versions of Apple software, and wait for a .2 release, at least.

However, these days it seems that even point releases only introduce new bugs in the rush to deliver late features, and rarely address any issues

I have to disagree. Sequoia .0 was spectacularly broken and .1 is a very noticeable improvement.

…of course I’d rather stay on Sonoma if I could go back in time…

Eh, I agree in a sense, but I'm also ok without the same level of backwards compatibility that Windows is beleaguered by. Every new version of Windows is little more than a thin veneer of whatever they think is a popular choice for UI design that year, and with that comes a clumsy amalgamation of hugely varying settings dialogs, the classic registry, all the goop. Meanwhile on macos, I don't expect very complex software to maintain perfect compatibility, but I can reasonably expect most of the stuff I use to carry forward 5+ years. Parallels and Omnifocus were the exceptions, but 1password from 2012 is still kicking, Data Rescue 3 somehow still works, I'm sure even Adobe CS6 would even though it's from the Carbon era.

Just as well, although I loathe some of the choices Apple's made over the years, such as it's own Settings app, the overall UI would be pretty recognizable if me from 20 years ago found a time machine (pun intended). I recently bought a new mac, and it occurred to me that it feels basically like the E-Mac I used in middle school all those years ago, albeit with the occasional annoyance I wouldn't have been aware of then.

Funnily enough, that’s what the UNIX™ certification is, in some—much too limited for your purposes—sense :) See also Raymond Chen’s story of buying one of everything[1].

[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050824-11/?p=34...

Huh? In service of what? There’s not all that much inherently good about backwards compatibility, but you’re really implying that deprioritising it is a misdeed. If I wanted to use an OS that prioritised backwards compatibility more than macOS, I’d use Windows, and suffer through the downsides of that trade-off. I’m happy using an OS that balances things in a way that’s more in line with my priorities.

The Android CTS is essentially this for device OEMs. https://source.android.com/docs/compatibility/cts – it's a set of tests that a customised Android implementation must pass.

CS6 is after the Carbon2Cocoa effort, IIRC. No 32bit apps run on modern macOS and Carbon was infamously 32bit only.

This isn't backwards compatibility though - the example in the post here is a major bug in an actively supported API.

Apple dropping support for old things over time is a reasonable philosophy, but Apple breaking current things unintentionally and then neither fixing nor communicating about it, primarily because they don't actively engage with their ecosystem in general, is a problematic choice on their part.

IT departments installing MDM trashware which forces upgrades is the problem.

And the compliance-industrial complex that incentivizes/forces that behavior.

Out of curiosity, I just checked, and while the CS6 installer is 32-bit, Photoshop CS6, at least, is 64-bit.

The .app icon shows the "circle slash" overlay, however, and attempting to launch it from the Finder (Sequoia 15.1 running on an Intel Mac) yields the OS-level "needs to be updated" alert without actually exec'ing the binary.

The Mach-O executable in "Contents/MacOS" loads and runs successfully when called directly from a shell prompt, however, and displays an application-generated "Some of the application components are missing…Please reinstall…" alert.

Which is actually encouraging, given that I'm attempting to run it directly from the Master Collection .dmg image without actually installing anything, which, given all the prerequisite detritus Adobe apps habitually scatter around the system when installed, I wouldn't expect to work even on a supported OS.

Less encouraging is the fact that the app-generated alert box text is blurry, suggesting the application wouldn't properly support Retina displays even if it could be cajoled into running.

Interesting experiment, thanks for the detail, I think I do still have my installers backed up somewhere, if not the actual disks.

> Less encouraging is the fact that the app-generated alert box text is blurry, suggesting the application wouldn't properly support Retina displays even if it could be cajoled into running.

This was actually the main reason I simply stopped using it (aside from not needing it professionally anymore and Adobe switching to subscription after CS6). CS6 was the last version before laptops started shipping with high dpi screens, and Carbon (from what I understood at the time) was simply the older cocoa UI framework that was replaced as Apple switched to a more versatile SDK. Sibling commentor suggested it was because Carbon was 32-bit only and that seems plausible, I hadn't experimented heavily with Obj-C or Apple dev, but I'm sure the switch was a massive undertaking.

64-bit Carbon (as a port of 32-bit Carbon, which itself was an aid for porting apps from classic Mac OS to OS X) was originally loudly announced and then relatively quietly killed[1]. Not clear if any code was ever actually written, but given the announcement was at a keynote I expect that somebody, somewhere, at least judged it feasible.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2007/06/13/leopard-drops-carbon-64...

I thought CS6 was still in the carbon era, rather than after, or was it just that CS6 wasn't hidpi capable?

I don’t remember photoshop ever not being hidpi safe. In fact, I don’t remember a single app. Apple was touting for years that a retina Mac would be coming along.