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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 intereste

by 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...

by nicky0 11y ago

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...