Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!rodan.acs.syr.edu!isr
From: isr@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Michael S. Schechter - ISR group account)
Subject: Re: system 7.0
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.163024.26790@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Organization: Institute for Sensory Research
References: <18336@imag.imag.fr> <6602@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <18349@imag.imag.fr>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 16:30:24 GMT

In article <18349@imag.imag.fr> gourdol@imag.fr (Gourdol Arnaud) writes:
>In article <6602@idunno.Princeton.EDU> bskendig@dry.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes:
>>In article <18336@imag.imag.fr> gourdol@imag.fr (Gourdol Arnaud) writes:
>>>Another Urban Legend.
>>>Always use latest system software.
>>So, in short, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
>Sure, I agree with you on this.
>What I was "fighting" against is the myth that new system versions
>must be used ONLY with newer computers they were made for.
>Many people believe this. And this can be very annoying for
>customer support. Sometimes, a bug in a program is due to a bug
>in the system software (of course, not that often, but anyway).

I've found far far more often that so-called "power-users" always
want to have the latest, newest release of software, whether it's
stable or not. And these "enthusiasts" are often highly vocal
an infect other users with this desire. What this means from the
support viewpoint (of LOCAL support where you have to support 50
applications, not just your own 4 or five)
 is that with EVERY minor change of system, new
betas spread outward from the faculty Apple Associates, so within a
couple of days half the people on our network are all running various
mixed-up versions, and typically on machines that don't need the
new ones. After enough crashes and rebuilds, people have learned not
to do that and to let system upgrade/INIT/etc decisions be handled by
professionals, not 'enthusiasts'.
 Apple itself, while they used to say always use the latest,
doesn't anymore. According to what i've seen, here's apple's 
recomendation: (please correct me if your from apple)
Classic,si,lc    6.0.7
Fx,ci,portable   6.0.5
cx,ii,iix,se,+   6.0.4
se/30            6.0.3

Now if really supporting users, you know that you don't go and 
upgrade with every little change, becaus eyour just asking for
trouble when some rarely-used but vital-to-operations program
dies on you because of some obscure rare bug. Yes, 6.0.7 works fine
on a ii, and we have it installed on one, but only because that's
the machine that we prepare linotronic output on and we have to
use it. Everything else uses 6.0.4 with no  problem. (except for
the ci's, si's, and portables).  Why upgrade them when things work fine?
So i can pay a couple hundred upgrade fees at 5-20 bucks a shot?
and then find out that they're not avilible for half the apps anyway?


-- 
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