Starry Night - 6.3.3

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So far no one at Imaginova has offered any help to those of us with G4s whose programs were killed by the 6.2.3 update.

Below is a log of my attempt to run 6.2.3:

> Last login: Sun Mar 30 02:15:46 on ttyp1
> Welcome to Darwin!
> Beowulf:~ dmanasco$ /Volumes/Arthur/Starry\ Night\ Pro\ Plus\ 6/Starry\ Night\ Pro\ Plus\6.app/Contents/MacOS/Starry\ Night; exit
> -bash: /Volumes/Arthur/Starry Night Pro Plus 6/Starry Night Pro Plus 6.app/Contents/MacOS/Starry Night: Bad CPU type in executable
> logout
> [Process completed]


It's obvious that they left out the G4 code.


When are we going to see an update that includes the G4 code?


-=-Dennis
















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I was using Starry Night 6.2 and thought it a pretty good program (except for all the star databases they've removed in the last few years...).

(I've used earlier versions since the 90s.)

Then the 6.2.3 "update" was offered.

It totally destroyed my ability to use the program. The program doesn't even bounce in the dock anymore.

To add insult to injury:

I complained about the upgrade's destruction of my program to the Starry Night Users Group.

My post was never posted or sent to the other members.

Obviously this is a "User" mailing list tightly controlled by the corporate interest, rather than the user interest.

This is the post I made to the (alleged) "User" List for Starry Night:


At 10:01 AM -0500 3/6/08, Dave Whipps wrote:


>> We've confirmed that there is a problem with 6.2.3 on (Macintosh) G4 processors on any version of OSX.


Read it again:

"there is a problem with 6.2.3 on (Macintosh) G4 processors on any version of OSX."


"Problem??"

Totally disabling a product is a "problem"?

It's a disaster.


"Any version of OSX?"

That means that the upgrade was _never_ tested against G4 Macs using OSX.

How incredibly stupid is that??


This sort of quality-control failure is absolutely unconscionable.


My complimentary "update" of Starry Night made the program totally non-functional.

My program has been killed by the "update."

Dead.

Useless.

It doesn't even bounce in the Dock.


This problem _must_ be fixed quickly, without my re-installing the original and destroying my modifications.


It is absolutely amazing to me that Starry Night would release an "upgrade" that completely disabled the program for so many users.


-=- Dennis


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Yes.

If you can't tell:

I'm MegaPi$$ed.

If I can't download something within the next few days that makes it all better, without reinstalls and partial restores from backup and etc., then I'm going to be:

Mega SCREAMING Pi$$ed.


Then I'm going to pursue a secondary career in on-line software commentary...

)



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I'm using the Pro Plus version thanks to a sale and very reasonable upgrades, but I've also used more limited versions many years ago and was happy with them.
The updater has worked perfectly for me with version 6.
The recommendation below is good. Celestia is free so give it a try.
As far as I know Celestia lacks many of the features available in Starry Night, such as telescope control for example. Starry Night has a level of detail that I did not find in Celestia, both in terms of number and quality of the objects included, as well as the information provided for each object.
This is not meant to put down Celestia. It's great and it's free, but just from briefly using 1.5 it pales in comparison to Starry Night.
And Starry Night has a button aptly named Spaceship. You can travel with a joystick or a keyboard.
Unfortunately I don't know how my version compares with the Pro and Enthusiast versions.

Starry Night is a great program -- but version 5.7 is a massive step backwards. It now requires an auto-updater that simply does not work. I'd avoid this program until they resume manual downloads of their updates!

Near perfect software!