In two months, Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) is coming. What’s your plan?
My plan is simple. Once it’s released, I won’t start any project that runs on 10.4 any longer. Once sufficiently many are using it, I’ll start dropping 10.4 support in my apps as I introduce features that need 10.5. If adopting happens as quickly as I think it will, I’m pegging that for spring 2008 (here, I’m referring to the Apple flavor of spring that apparently includes half of fucking June).
The aim isn’t to spit in people’s faces or herd them towards the nearest Apple Store. I appreciate that they use my software. I also recognize that that software won’t stop working just because a newer version is released. It’s entirely possible that people may need a hardware upgrade to enjoy (or even run) 10.5, but the rumored cutoff line is G3 Macs and despite early promises from Apple, most of these systems have been running Mac OS X under less-than-great conditions for a while now.
10.5 will bring great improvements - not only to the ease of which I can do whiz-bang features with animation, which I realize lots of people don’t see the value in, but mainly to the way I can write applications as a developer. I can way more easily debug my apps with improvements in Xcode and the new Xray app, and I can do away with an entire class of potential bugs (one being notorious for containing hard-to-debug crashers) with garbage collection handling much of memory management for me.
There might be a bigger resistance to this if 10.5 didn’t contain very many improvements for people. (This was clearly the case with how some people saw 10.4.) On the contrary, Apple has said that 10.5 is their biggest incremental OS change ever, and after having actually used it (yes, I have a seed key), I see no reason to dispute that fact. Especially not since many of the changes and most of the new features are really useful for everyone - like automatic backup or screen sharing with almost no setup. Some people may face trouble coming to terms with the theory that the honeymoon is over; there’s almost no low-hanging fruit left, and in the face of this, Apple has put together a remarkable update.
So that’s my plan. I really don’t want to cut people out, because I’ve sat there myself a bunch of times, but in the end, I want to do as good and as solid apps as possible, and 10.5 makes that dramatically easier and less time-consuming.
That (admittedly odd) definition of spring isn’t limited to just Apple, it’s an American thing. Go figure :)
By http://clarkcox3.livejournal.com/ · 2007.08.19 03:00
And to expand upon that: In sane places in the northern hemisphere, where by sane places I for once mean Sweden, spring is defined as March to May inclusive. (Summer: June to August; Fall/Autumn: September to November; Winter: December to February.)
By Jesper · 2007.08.19 10:22
I agree that the under-the-hood improvements in successive OS versions are in many ways more significant than the flashy features often advertised. For example, Spotlight and Dashboard were heavily touted during Mac OS X 10.4’s introduction, but they’ve hardly revolutionized the way I use my Mac. Spotlight stinks. However, from related APIs like NSPredicate to updated scripting languages and libraries, there are useful new tools for developers, which can translate into useful new products, features, and support for users.
Incidentally, here in my sane part of the US, we demarcate the seasons as in Sweden, except perhaps with an inclination to count November as a winter month. Perhaps the June thing is somehow related to the fiscal calendar. Or maybe it’s just how the seasons are designed in California.
By Jim DeVona · 2007.08.19 14:30
At the latest keynote, Jobs briefly showed a pie chart illustrating that 25% of Mac users are still on 10.3. I remember it clearly because I thought: what a high number! I guess it’s testimony to the maturing of Mac OS X. Extrapolating from that figure, I expect that in two years time a third of all Mac users will still be using Tiger, a significant number. In short: the Leopard release (whenever that will take place) will start me (and my clients) thinking about dropping support for 10.3. I really don’t think a 10.5 only apps will be on the cards before 2009. Developing on 10.5 will be a boon from day 1 though…
Apropos spring: although Apple is becoming bigger and bigger, the changing of seasons is still determined by Sun… Here in western/central Europe that means that summer officially starts June 21st.
By http://hieper.myopenid.com/ · 2007.08.20 11:38
It really depends on who your target market is. If it is kind of a “pro” app where you can expect your customers to have recent Macs and the latest OS version, go for it. If you are selling a more general consumer product, you may experience a lot of negative reaction by forcing people’s hands so abruptly (also, some businesses might be slow to adopt Leopard on Day 1 and want to see how it works for a few months before upgrading).
But, only you know best what is right for you.
By http://openid.aol.com/TrevasDavid · 2007.08.20 13:06
The best argument is that you don’t want to kick on your base or lock people out, and I don’t want to do that. As of WWDC (two and a half months ago), 67% of all users were on 10.4. That doesn’t necessarily mean 67% of my “target audience” are running 10.4. Right now, my number is probably a lot closer to 95%.
This is a corollary of the old “real market share” chestnut. Say Macs have exactly 5% market share - that doesn’t mean 5% of all shareware purchases are of Mac software. The real number is probably closer to between 10 and 20%. Why’s that? The Mac platform has a more vibrant shareware community, there are fewer “copycat” applications, and since the average Mac owner spends more on hardware and software than the average PC owner, that’s also reflected.
I should repeat that there’s two things I’m not doing:
I don’t work with “businesses” as such. I build free apps that I try to also make open source. I don’t have a sales quota to meet that will weigh down more radical decisions.
And it’s never been a matter of making people adopt Leopard on Day 1. I hope that if you get that from the post you’ll go back and reread it.
By Jesper · 2007.08.20 15:35
You know, the seasons are not chosen by the people. The seasons are set by the Earth’s rotation around Sol. The year is divided into four seasons, beginning and ending on the equinox or solstice, as appropriate.. Spring 2008 begins March 20 at 05:48 UTC and ends June 20 at 23:59 UTC.
By http://openid.aol.com/tophu@mac.com · 2007.08.20 17:17
I think there’s been perhaps two years of my life where summer heat hadn’t arrived by mid-to-late May. And that’s where my summer begins. The astronomical year can go take a hike for all I care. ;)
By Jesper · 2007.08.20 17:19