I mean this in the nicest way, but you've rather missed the point. While your response might be technically accurate and true, the author speaks to a greater issue than a one-off hack will support.
No, I haven't and I do mean this in the most condescending way possible; he's complaining about the proprietary format not working and laments losing his stuff. He could easily solve his problems. It's not a "hack" to open a folder or do you reward yourself with a cookie every time you open a folder on your desktop?
FFS, this is "HackerNews"... write a bash script to do it for you. Better yet, use some "super 1337 h4x0r google-fu" and search "convert keynote 08 to keynote 09" and you'll find a bash script to do it in 5 seconds[1].
FFS, this is "HackerNews"... write a bash script to do it for you.
I have written quite a few bash scripts, python scripts and long ago ruby and smalltalk scripts to do things for me, that bothered me. My point is, this is a software I am paying for (and I've already mentioned that 2008 should not be considered as old) and I would rather spend my time writing the "super 1337 h4x0r" bash and python scripts for something that I can't do otherwise.
You really don't get to complain about a proprietary format being retired due to age or even just disappearing off the face of the Earth. There's an astounding amount of software written for the sciences that uses proprietary binaries that are depreciated two years later. We all realized long ago that if you want to preserve something, export it as an 'open' or standardized format. That's why every image producing/editing software supports `tiff` encoding.
Your comparison is unhelpful. The expectations for broad-market consumer software and obscure narrow-market scientific software are entirely different.
Apple leads users to expect an easy experience, and not to need to worry about technical details. The cost of that strategy is that Apple should expect criticism when those expectations aren't met.
How about all non-hackers who don't know what a "file format" is, but may have important documents in decade-old formats? "Normal" people are not only not trained that they should keep upgrading lest they perish; they will ask you with bewilderment, "why I'm supposed to throw away that perfectly working machine after only 3 years?".
I agree. If it takes less time to google-fu and implement an answer than it does to write and publish a blog post about the problem, there is a high probability that the blog post was the real intention all along...
FFS, this is "HackerNews"... write a bash script to do it for you. Better yet, use some "super 1337 h4x0r google-fu" and search "convert keynote 08 to keynote 09" and you'll find a bash script to do it in 5 seconds[1].
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=convert+keynote+08+to+keynot...