Many Tricks
Today we’re releasing Desktop Curtain 3.0.1 and Time Sink 1.2.2. Neither of these are Mavericks-specific releases; they’re mainly bug fix releases with a couple small new features here and there. As with our Mavericks-specific updates, the following warning applies to these updates:
IMPORTANT NOTE: The following updates will bump the minimum system requirement to 10.7 or newer; if you’re still running 10.6, DO NOT INSTALL THESE UPDATES.
Why 10.7 or newer? Apple recently declared an old security-related API dead (i.e. deprecated), and recommended that all developers switch to the newer API, which we did. But that new API requires 10.7 or newer.
App Store buyers should see the updates shortly; direct buyers can get them through in-app updating, or by downloading directly from our site. If you care about the nitty-gritty details, make sure you check out the release notes pages for each app (Desktop Curtain • Time Sink) to see what’s up.
Regarding the deprecated API, it’s possible to call different APIs on different OS versions (weak linking)… so in the end it’s a choice you make not to support this or that version. I don’t really feel it’s honest to say “Apple forced us to, we had no choice”, even though people will believe you.
Maybe my tone was overly negative, so I’ll clarify: you do a great job, and have great products. It’s just this one time, seeing this commonly-used “we don’t support old OS versions because it’s impossible” argument annoyed me somewhat.
Technically, you’re right. These things are always the developer’s decision. And there are a lot of ways for us to keep fixing bugs and even add features for old OS X versions. But as the single coding monkey behind all of our apps, I just can’t justify spending a lot of time on that.
So what you’re supposed to read between the lines isn’t that Apple held a gun to our head and made us drop 10.6. What we’re saying is that given the circumstances, we don’t think it makes sense for us to keep supporting 10.6.