[xutopia]

What I find disturbing here is the expectation that they would include it.

I was speaking to a Microsoft evangelist two years ago and asked him why it took them so long to release a new version of Windows. He essentially told me that Microsoft does the best legacy support in the world and wanted to ensure that every single piece of important software could still be installed and work with the new version. He also explained to me that Microsoft was not in the business of pushing new technology but that they were in the business of bringing it to the masses. It was his excuse for why IE was so much worse than Firefox or Chrome.

X11 missing from my computer was a simple google search away from a fix. It's not essential for 99.9% of Mac users and only developers and system admins would want it installed. They know how to use google.

To a company like Apple pushing technology is more important and supporting a fraction of users with something they can get on their own is spending time in the wrong place.

[MBCook]

The first time I tried to open Gimp after upgrading to Mountain Lion, OS X popped up a prompt telling me that X11 was now provided by the XQuartz project, and it had a link to go download it.

Barely different from trying to run Java software and getting the "You need Java, click here to install it" dialog box.

Apple may not be releasing X11 any more, but they made sure the experience was relatively simple. And give the number of people who actually use X11 (as a percentage of Mac users) it seems like a pretty fair decision.

[smashing]

Same thing happened to me. I looked for XQuartz after the ML upgrade on my hard drive and found that it had not been uninstalled. So I ran Gimp and it requested XQuartz be installed and opened the download page. I downloaded and installed it, then I attempted to open Gimp again. The program then requested the location of XQuartz and I identified it under Utilities and Gimp started running.

Go ahead and open a bug report. I don't that this is expected behavior.

[Zak]

only developers and system admins would want it installed

False. While I do make software and know how to handle situations like this, my other work is making light shows for concerts. I sometimes make use of a PC-based controller (Chamsys MagicQ PC) and recently had to borrow a Macbook to run it when I left my Thinkpad's power supply at a venue. The Mac version seems to be a port of the Linux version, itself a desktop port of the embedded software that runs their lighting consoles. It uses X11.

The experience of running it on a Mac was more or less like any other Mac software - it just had a longer startup time. Now, either the developers will have to modify it, or users will have a complicated series of steps to follow to get the software.

Sure, it's still an edge case, but Apple made the UX worse for some users here without making it better for others. That seems like a bad trade.

[phren0logy]

Sure, it's still an edge case, but Apple made the UX worse for some users here without making it better for others. That seems like a bad trade.

False. Seriously, you are blaming Apple because of program for which "The Mac version seems to be a port of the Linux version, itself a desktop port of the embedded software that runs their lighting consoles" which runs on X11?

There are genuine uses cases for X11, but users who can't figure out how to install it are at the very beginning of a gauntlet of pain. That Apple is not ushering them into the gauntlet seems, at best, neutral.

[azar1]

the complicated series of steps here seems to be:

1. Get alert from OS that you need X11 to run this app.

2. Click link to get XQuartz

3. Install XQuartz

It's a one-time difficulty install that basically amounts to the same thing as a user installing Flash or Java on their computer. Just because some amount of users need something doesn't mean that Apple has to provide it.

[jwbaker]

That certainly does not justify the installer removing X11 from a perfectly working Mac.

[gmac]

My understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that an 'upgrade' is really a fresh installation, with your user data migrated across afterwards. In that context it's not really a 'removal' as such -- and it's hard to see how else they'd do it.

I'm actually glad they made this change. In the past, XQuartz was sometimes ahead of the officially distributed version, which could be messy. Now they're the same thing.

[simonster]

If the old version of X11 will not function on 10.8, it does.

[X-Istence]

Except that XQuartz in the past installed itself to various system paths on Mac OS X. When you "upgrade" the OS the installer moves everything installed out of the way and basically does a clean install of the OS. At the end it copies over everything in paths that it doesn't control (mainly /Users, /usr/local, (/usr/<everything else> gets wiped), /Applications, /opt and others). Anything that is core to the OS will basically be in a clean install state.

For example, I've written some custom device drives for OS X that were installed in the system path (being kexts and all), those were removed. They weren't specifically compatible with OS X Mountain Lion, so it makes sense.

[kapuzineralex]

+1. <black humor>Next time they remove Dropbox because it might be a conflict of interest with iCloud. And then...</black humor>

[jlarocco]

> What I find disturbing here is the expectation that they would include it.

If it's always been included in the past, why wouldn't it be included now?

Maybe it's just me, but when I buy an "upgrade", I expect it to be a better version of what I already have.

Also, the installer didn't just not include X11, it actively removed the version he had installed. If the current install isn't compatible with Mountain Lion they could have popped up a message box or prompted him to upgrade the next time he ran an X app. There's no reason to delete things from his machine without telling him.

[X-Istence]

Except that the old version came with the old OS... also XQuartz installs itself as part of the system so that you don't run into issues using an older version of XQuartz when you upgrade your OS. I just re-ran GIMP, and it prompted me to go download X11. Downloaded, installed, and now everything works as expected.

I really don't see an issue with this. It is not like it is completely removed (XQuartz BTW is completely open source, so if Apple stopped developing it someone else could pick it up).

> Also, the installer didn't just not include X11, it actively removed the version he had installed. If the current install isn't compatible with Mountain Lion they could have popped up a message box or prompted him to upgrade the next time he ran an X app. There's no reason to delete things from his machine without telling him.

Instead it removed the software, and on first run it told him he would need to download XQuartz which is available freely ... The old software is not compatible, leaving it in place could have caused issues. I don't see why the solution Apple used is so wrong, they clearly did present a popup and didn't just let it fail without errors.

[johncoltrane]

X11 used to be included on install disks (possibly as an "extra") but it wasn't installed by default, IIRC.

[cageface]

There are a number of changes in the last two releases of OS X that concern me.

But removing Java and X11 from the base install doesn't bother me as long as they remain easy enough to obtain afterwards for those of us that need them.

[gurkendoktor]

> It's not essential for 99.9% of Mac users and only developers and system admins would want it installed.

It is worth pointing out that X11.app is necessary for window management apps like Cinch[1] and Divvy[2]. The former simply reproduces Windows 7's "dragging to the edges to split/maximize" behavior. This is hardly deeply technical stuff. Both apps are available on the Mac App Store - but users need to jump through a painful DMG installation hoop to get their purchases to run.

[1] http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ [2] http://mizage.com/divvy/

[gizmo686]

The expectation in the article was not that apple would include X11 in the OS, but rather that an in-place update to the new version of the OS would not remove X11