Dropping support for Mac OS X 10.4 and PowerPC

[audiospillage]

Hello,

We'd like to hear anyone's opinion on this subject. We are considering dropping support for OS X 10.4 'Tiger' and possibly even PowerPC builds for all future updates and software releases. So we would be 10.5+ and Intel only in the future whilst also dropping support for pre-Cocoa hosts, for example, Live 7.

Is this likely to be of huge concern for anyone? I know quite a few Mac users held onto their 10.4 machines for a few years for performance reasons but maybe that's all in the past now?

Cheers,
AudioSpillage

[ZenPunkHippy]

Hi,

Intel Mac running Snow Leopard / Lion + 64-bit where possible. I have no need for legacy support.

Experience with Camel support suggests the number of Tiger users is greatly reduced over the last 12 months. PPC similar, but certainly some people still expecting support.

Peace,
Andy.

[audiospillage]

Thanks for the reply Andy.

I think it's probably time to wind things down for Tiger and pre-Cocoa hosts at least. We're still prepared to support the older software and provide the downloads but from a development point of view it is becoming a bit of a drag. And most of our customers are living on the edge anyway!

AudioSpillage

[ZenPunkHippy]

Sean of Valhalla DSP fame ran a KVR survey thread about PPC support a few months back. You might find the results useful.

Peace,
Andy.

[jondl_2000]

I sold my PPC G5 over the summer and I'm now on the second of two Intel MacBook's... I think it would be wise to drop PPC support at this late date. I can't imagine the number of sales you would sacrifice would make up for the support effort required to maintain the backwards compatibility.

Jon

[JoeCat]

Struggling with the same issue here developing for Windows (still got some NT users!) Don't get me started on IE 6 users either

Just anecdotal but it certainly looks like dropping PPC support is common. Not sure about the pre-Cocoa support - still some stragglers (and with Live 7, more of an issue with purchasing the upgrade probably), but at some point the kids gotta leave the house...

[audiospillage]

Struggling with the same issue here developing for Windows (still got some NT users!) Don't get me started on IE 6 users either

Just anecdotal but it certainly looks like dropping PPC support is common. Not sure about the pre-Cocoa support - still some stragglers (and with Live 7, more of an issue with purchasing the upgrade probably), but at some point the kids gotta leave the house...

Hi Joe,

It's actually the OS X Tiger and pre-Cocoa builds that cause the most problems. Supporting 10.4 prevents us from using some of the newer compilers and language features. The pre-Cocoa builds involve the creation of a Carbon compatible view which has never been ideal.

Apart from some extra setup time in more recent Xcode versions the PPC builds haven't been too much of a problem, so they might stay for a while yet.

AudioSpillage

[audiospillage]

I sold my PPC G5 over the summer and I'm now on the second of two Intel MacBook's... I think it would be wise to drop PPC support at this late date. I can't imagine the number of sales you would sacrifice would make up for the support effort required to maintain the backwards compatibility.

Jon

You're probably right. I don't imagine someone with a 7 year old computer buys a lot of new audio software.

AudioSpillage

[audiospillage]

Struggling with the same issue here developing for Windows (still got some NT users!) Don't get me started on IE 6 users either

That must hurt! Even Microsoft celebrated the death of IE6 recently. They actually baked a celebratory cake..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16408850

[JoeCat]

Struggling with the same issue here developing for Windows (still got some NT users!) Don't get me started on IE 6 users either

That must hurt! Even Microsoft celebrated the death of IE6 recently. They actually baked a celebratory cake..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16408850

HA! Gotta hurt when you celebrate the death of your own product.