Minimum MacOS version

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Tachyon (Posted 2006) [#1]

What is the earliest (or rather oldest) MacOS compatible with a BlitzMax created program?

Winni (Posted 2006) [#2]

The BlitzMax product page says 10.3.9.

Tachyon (Posted 2006) [#3]

Yeah, I saw that too. I was wondering if that meant BlitzMax itself required version 10.3.9 for development reasons, but that the finished (compiled) application could run on something a bit older. On Apple's Game page, most new releases there can be played on 10.2.x and a few even go back to 10.1. If BlitzMax requires such a late version of OS to run on it cuts out a large customer base. :(

Winni (Posted 2006) [#4]

If you want to create Universal Binaries, then 10.3.9 is the minimum system platform, because this is the oldest OS version that supports UBs. Intel-only versions of your software require 10.4.4 or higher; there has never been a (released) Intel-version of older OS X builds. 10.3.8 or older therefore can only support PPC-only software builds. Personally, I do not believe that there are still many relevant (in terms of market share & interest in buying new software) Jaguar 10.2.x installations out there. However, if you want to support a by now five year+ old OS, you just have to get yourself at least one old Mac with 10.2.8 installed on it and test your software on that machine for compatibility and performance. Jaguar was the first really usable release of OS X, but it still had many issues that only got resolved with Panther, and I think the Mac community knows that and most users upgraded to Panther or now even Tiger. In my opinion, supporting 10.2.8 is a wasted effort, but that is just my opinion and if you have good reasons to support Jaguar, by all means, do so and test your software on it.

Tachyon (Posted 2006) [#5]

Cool. Thanks for your input, Winni. This makes me feel a little better about it. Now here's hoping that Mark can pull off some magic and allow us IntelMac owners to compile PPC code in BlitzMax. That would be a HUGE help to most Mac developers. How feasible is this? Mark? Anyone?

Banshee (Posted 2006) [#6]

Working in Mac support in the last year, out of the thousands of machines I deal with, i've seen Jaguar twice and in both cases they where so relluctant to purchase new software that I wouldn't worry about Jaguar support.