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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1883
Poll: 'Should I continue Classic support?"
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
March 25th 2003
Drag Thing developer James Thomson has posed a question near and dear to the hearts of
many
TLA Systems, James Thomson's software development vehicle, is facing a conundrum
that's likely confronting Mac developers of all sizes right now: Whether or not to
continue supporting OS 9. He's already decided to drop support for versions of the Mac
OS that predate 9, but is agonizing over taking that final step into pure X-illicious
goodness.
"I don't like dropping support for older systems, but there comes a point where
supporting them makes it hard to add new features for everybody else," says Thomson.
"I estimate that less than one percent of DragThing users are using 8.6, and nobody
should be running the initial 10.0 release when 10.1 makes Mac OS X much better and
was a free update.
"So, I am hoping this change won't inconvenience [dropping support for 8.6 and earlier
versions of the OS] too many people," he says with some conviction. "Looking forward
though, a more controversial question is how long I should continue to support Mac OS
9."
Thomson muses that support for OS 9 is holding back development of the application.
Moreover, he says that less support for Classic the application could gain a number of
new features "quickly and easily."
To be sure, he reassures, the next version of Drag Thing, 4.6, will include OS 9
support (with Carbon Lib 1.6 installed) and will require 10.1.5 or higher on the X
side of things.
"[T]here are many vocal proponents for Mac OS 9 who say that they'll never move to Mac
OS X," Thomson says. "If I have accurate statistics for how many DragThing users are
running Mac OS 9 versus Mac OS X, then it will be a lot easier to make that decision
one way or another."
To vote in this "whither OS 9" poll, point your browser here.
Editor's note: OS X is the future and the three largest Mac developers (Apple,
Microsoft and Adobe) have all indicated they won't produce new OS 9-compatible apps.
The writing is on the wall and to underline that point I've cast my vote: death!
What's your take?
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