[tor-talk] Dropping Tor Browser support for Mac OSX 10.6?

[Matt Pagan]

Mike Perry wrote:
> Are there any 10.6 32bit Mac users on this list? Is Tails a workable
> option for you?
> 


Hi Mike,

Sorry for chiming in belatedly on this question. I still see emails
from Mac 10.5 users maybe once every two or three months on average. I
usually tell them they should either purchase an upgrade to their
operating system or switch to an operating system that doesn't make
them pay for security upgrades such as Debian, Ubuntu, or Tails.
Sometimes I get asked why Tor Browser doesn't support Mac OS 10.5, and
I can truthfully say that this was a Mozilla decision, not a Tor
Project decision, and point them to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US
/kb/firefox-no-longer-works-mac-os-x-10-5 or some similar page for the
underlying cause. In more than one of these conversations, the user
explained to me that their reason for not upgrading to a more recent
version of Mac OS was financial. I also get that switching to Linux for
the first time can be a jarring transition for non-technical users.

I encounter Mac 10.6 users much more frequently than that. Probably
once a week, on average, that I know of. Most Mac users I don't find
out their OS version at all, just that they are Mac users. I imagine
there are many more Mac OS 10.6 users that don't bother emailing
support. I can think of at least one Mac 10.6 user I talked to last
month who said he was a journalist. I'm not sure if he had a 32-bit
system or not though.

I think it's more likely that rather than take the initiative to get
started with Tails, existing Mac OS 10.6 32-bit Tor Browser users would
just not upgrade the Tor Browser they have that still "works" rather
than switch their operating system (a task that requires some
commitment). Recently I can remember assisting a Tor-Browser-2.3.25
user switch to the latest version of Tor Browser after he told me that
version was "the last one that worked" for him.

Another possibility, of course, is that one of the many web forums out
there that describes sketchy Tor workarounds directs Mac users who see
whatever-the-error-is-for-failing-to-run-64-bit-Tor-Browser-on-a-32-
bit-machine that they should just download and use this link to an old
archived Mac Tor Browser. "Awesome! Tor works now!"

Sorry for asking you to do more work, but I'm requesting that we keep
supporting Mac OS 10.6 with a deadline, maybe a year in the future.
(The number of Mac 10.5 users has definitely decreased in the past
year). If 32-bit Mac Tor Browsers are no longer distributed, I can
imagine an increase in the help desk volume when confused, sometimes
desperate, Mac users discover they can't run the Mac Tor Browser on
their 32-bit Macbook.



Matt Pagan