[quote=54287:@Richard Vivash]Isn’t the real problem here that Xojo can’t easily support App Store builds and support 10.6.
[/quote]
Thats one of the issues - I think I’ve said that previously.
And joe has as well in this thread https://forum.xojo.com/7709-what-features-require-10-7-in-xojo-r4.
There are real technical reasons that continuing to support 10.6 - regardless of how old it is - is problematic.
The problem is that some years ago, all of us changed our system as soon as Apple updated it. Now we are more “suspicious” of what is better in a new system.
I say that but it’s just a feeling. I don’t have any rate.
And thank you for your answer, but now I know I can update, will I do it? I was exciting some years ago when a new system came out. Now I am boring.
hello, it’s me again …
wouldnt it bepossible, like you can choose between cocoa and carbon for the build, that you put a box “old quicktime” and “avkit”
as you use the llvm now, and all the libraries are already made for 10.6 may be this is not a huge work to do ?
I know it is a choice between the past and the future, but the future is too early for almost 20% of us “old guys that are still in 10.6 and their customers too”
the main example I find relevant is iTunes : it uses quicktime and it works in 10.6.8 AND LATER
so they were able to mix the quicktime and avkit in the same app ?
[quote=54645:@jean-yves pochez]hello, it’s me again …
wouldnt it bepossible, like you can choose between cocoa and carbon for the build, that you put a box “old quicktime” and “avkit”
as you use the llvm now, and all the libraries are already made for 10.6 may be this is not a huge work to do ?
I know it is a choice between the past and the future, but the future is too early for almost 20% of us “old guys that are still in 10.6 and their customers too”
the main example I find relevant is iTunes : it uses quicktime and it works in 10.6.8 AND LATER
so they were able to mix the quicktime and avkit in the same app ?[/quote]
I want a button for Classic
I’m ok to leave classic and powerpc stuff, even 10.5 that some of my customers still use, so I’m not so old style ?
[quote=54645:@jean-yves pochez]hello, it’s me again …
wouldnt it bepossible, like you can choose between cocoa and carbon for the build, that you put a box “old quicktime” and “avkit”
[/quote]
No
[quote=54645:@jean-yves pochez]as you use the llvm now
[/quote]
Not yet for the main compiler
They are rebuilt with each release
[quote=54645:@jean-yves pochez]I know it is a choice between the past and the future, but the future is too early for almost 20% of us “old guys that are still in 10.6 and their customers too”
the main example I find relevant is iTunes : it uses quicktime and it works in 10.6.8 AND LATER
so they were able to mix the quicktime and avkit in the same app ?[/quote]
Apple doesn’t follow Apples rules 
“Snow Leopard is Still King of the MacOS Jungle”, April 2013:
http://chitika.com/os-x-version-distribution
“Snow Leopard remains the most popular version of the OS, generating 35% Mac OS X traffic.”
That may have been in April. But now, it’s not even close. You can look at more up to date stats here:
https://www.gosquared.com/mavericks/
10.6 is now in 4th place (with each newer version being in a higher place), and the Mavericks adoption curve has accelerated…
Since the release of 10.9 that is, even in our own stats, not the case for our user base.
Nor true in general (see http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 which was done in November after the release of 10.9)
If you view the trend line for 10.6 (see http://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac+OS+X+10.6&qpcustomb=0 it is in decline)
compare it to the 10.9 curve (see http://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac+OS+X+10.9&qpcustomb=0)
From that graphic, Snow Leopard is at 35%. Lion and Mountain Lion combined are at 54.8%.
This more recent tracking shows:
Mavericks + Mountain Lion + Lion: 78.3%
Snow Leopard: 18.3%
Earlier than Snow Leopard: 3.3%
The Snow Leopard number will only continue to drop as more Macs are purchased and more people upgrade to Mavericks.
With its memory compression and battery life improvements, Mavericks is a very worthwhile upgrade if your system can handle it, which almost all Core 2 Duo and newer Macs can.
We are not happy to leave those Snow Leopard users behind, but Apple has forced the issue here. At least for those that cannot upgrade, sticking with 2013r3.3 is a perfectly viable option.
I’m having trouble understanding the timescale of the gosquared graphs, but regardless, 10.6’s share seems to range from 20 - 25% share. The leader, no. In decline, yes. Nonetheless, not an insignificant number imo. There are roughly 60 million MacOS users; 20% of that is 12 million users. Snow’s market share could decline a lot further and still leave a heck of a lot of unhappy app users if support is removed.
10.6 literally does not support the technology we need to use to support 10.7 and newer
Thats one of the issues - I think I’ve said that several times before.
And joe has as well in this thread https://forum.xojo.com/7709-what-features-require-10-7-in-xojo-r4.
There are real technical reasons that continuing to support 10.6 - regardless of how widely its used etc.
It’s around 18-19% and falling faster from the last sampling I took of the GoSquared data. As we’ve said- if Apple hadn’t stopped 10.6 support (updates, development tools, and APIs), we would be in a different place. We did several point releases with r3 to make sure it was a solid release. You can build using r3.3 if 10.6 is still a requirement for you.
Different thought:
Why does this have to be a either/or? Why not a both/and?
The issue is “why ELIMINATE 10.6 support”? Why not just leave the last compiler version in that supported 10.6 and ADD the cutting edge compiler? The issue isn’t so much that you what the IDE to support newer versions, but that in upgrading you LOSE the ability to compile for those platforms.
Saying all this stuff about “keeping up” doesn’t directly answer the question “why did you drop it”? You can do both, you know, it is possible.
[quote=54763:@Garth Hjelte]Different thought:
Why does this have to be a either/or? Why not a both/and?
The issue is “why ELIMINATE 10.6 support”? Why not just leave the last compiler version in that supported 10.6 and ADD the cutting edge compiler? The issue isn’t so much that you what the IDE to support newer versions, but that in upgrading you LOSE the ability to compile for those platforms.
Saying all this stuff about “keeping up” doesn’t directly answer the question “why did you drop it”? You can do both, you know, it is possible.[/quote]
I’m sure this is possible, but I’d imagine the engineering required to recreate all the code that uses QTKit to instead use AVFoundation, whilst retaining the old QTKit code and then maintain two separate frameworks would not be small. I’d imagine just updating the existing media code would take far less time than creating a second set of code that would need to be dynamically switched in or out depending on the build target. I’d like to bet that by the time this were accomplished 10.6 would be a dim and distant memory with very low usage.
There is a non-trivial amount of engineering effort that would have to go into such a feature. Off the top of my head:
- Adding an option in the IDE to pick a runtime. This involves things like ensuring the data is read/saved correctly to the various file formats, taking into account potential backwards compatibility issues.
- Setting up the internal build infrastructure to have another copy of the frameworks being built.
- Maintaining a codebase that has two implementations of various things separated with
#ifs. This alone has a high cost and increases the longer time goes on and more cases are added. - Increased testing burden to ensure that both implementations behave correctly.
I jokingly referred to Classic, I should add PowerPC. I remember years ago when RealBasic supported these environment, still big at the time. Who needs them now ? The same will happen for 10.6, and in a few years, nobody will remember
See this other thread for more details about the decision. Support for 10.6 support isn’t coming back and users who require deploying back to 10.6 should stay with 2013r3.3.