4 ms·

Requires Yosemite, seriously? Why does so much OSX software have an apparently unnecessary requirement on the very latest revision or two?

brazzledazzle 11y ago
For good or bad Apple is very much opposed to maintaining backwards compatibility. Sometimes it's reflected in third party software by necessity, sometimes by practicality. I do think any commercial project worth its salt should have at least N-1 compatibility but I can understand why a one man team might make that a low priority.
nicky0 11y ago
There are compelling reasons for developers to require the latest OS versions; especially for access to the newest APIs. As a developer myself I'd be interested in your opinion of what's a reasonable minimum requirement, and why. 10.6? 10.9? I assume you do not expect devs to support all the way back to 10.0.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  I think there are a lot of factors that go into what makes a 'reasonable minimum requirement', and since I'm not an OSX developer, I'm not as well placed as you are to judge all of them. However, as a user, I would certainly want the following to be considered: * Install base. Judging by this [1] and some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, 10.6 has ~7% of the OSX share, and 10.9 has ~13%. To exclude at least 20% of your market seems unreasonable, to me. It certainly seems unwise if you're in the business of selling a product. Although that's obviously not the whole story; that 20% almost certainly represents less-than-average potential value. * Nature of the product. Of course, an app that absolutely must use a feature of El Capitan will have to set the requirement there. What on earth is there about a file finder that requires Yosemite, though? This is where your expertise as an app developer can add some value to my opinion: can you guess what APIs we're talking about here, and isn't it possible to program in a backwards-compatible way to avoid them if they're not available? In fact, if we were talking about the web, it would be bordering on unforgivable to fix on a specific release of a specific browser because it supports a specific feature. The Right Way (TM) to do it would be to feature-sniff and act accordingly, not reject use of the application altogether. Isn't that possible in the world of OSX development? [1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qpsp=201&qpnp=2&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...

brazzledazzle 11y ago

For good or bad Apple is very much opposed to maintaining backwards compatibility. Sometimes it's reflected in third party software by necessity, sometimes by practicality. I do think any commercial project worth its salt should have at least N-1 compatibility but I can understand why a one man team might make that a low priority.

nicky0 11y ago

There are compelling reasons for developers to require the latest OS versions; especially for access to the newest APIs. As a developer myself I'd be interested in your opinion of what's a reasonable minimum requirement, and why. 10.6? 10.9? I assume you do not expect devs to support all the way back to 10.0.

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
I think there are a lot of factors that go into what makes a 'reasonable minimum requirement', and since I'm not an OSX developer, I'm not as well placed as you are to judge all of them. However, as a user, I would certainly want the following to be considered: * Install base. Judging by this [1] and some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, 10.6 has ~7% of the OSX share, and 10.9 has ~13%. To exclude at least 20% of your market seems unreasonable, to me. It certainly seems unwise if you're in the business of selling a product. Although that's obviously not the whole story; that 20% almost certainly represents less-than-average potential value. * Nature of the product. Of course, an app that absolutely must use a feature of El Capitan will have to set the requirement there. What on earth is there about a file finder that requires Yosemite, though? This is where your expertise as an app developer can add some value to my opinion: can you guess what APIs we're talking about here, and isn't it possible to program in a backwards-compatible way to avoid them if they're not available? In fact, if we were talking about the web, it would be bordering on unforgivable to fix on a specific release of a specific browser because it supports a specific feature. The Right Way (TM) to do it would be to feature-sniff and act accordingly, not reject use of the application altogether. Isn't that possible in the world of OSX development? [1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qpsp=201&qpnp=2&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...