Our customers are adopting Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) at an incredible pace. A week hasn’t even passed and 50% of LicenseKeeper users have already adopted it as their primary OS. Knapsack users aren’t far behind with 30% having already made the move.
Because of this incredible adoption rate, I’ve decided to finally make the move to start dropping support for older OS X versions along with PowerPC (PPC) in our Mac apps with the next round of updates.
Tiger
Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, was released over six years ago on April 29, 2005.
Except for Bullfrog, almost no-one is still using Tiger on a regular basis. Because it’s free, Bullfrog won’t hold up this move.
| LicenseKeeper: | 0% of user base in last 60 days |
| Knapsack: | Has never supported Tiger |
| Bullfrog: | 15% of user base still using Tiger |
Leopard
Mac OS 10.5, Leopard, is now four years old and was released on October 26, 2007. More of our customers were already running Lion before it was even publicly released.
| LicenseKeeper: | 4% over the past 60 days |
| Knapsack: | 2.5% |
| Bullfrog: | 18% |
PPC
Apple stopped supporting PowerPC Macs with the release of Snow Leopard in August of 2009 — three years ago.
| LicenseKeeper: | 1.9% PPC users over the past 60 days |
| Knapsack: | 0.6% PPC |
| Bullfrog: | 19% PPC |
Schedule
The next set of updates for each or our applications will require at least Snow Leopard (10.6+) to run.
LicenseKeeper
I’m currently working on LicenseKeeper 1.8. I still have several open items to take care of which will then require a fair amount of testing. I’m hoping to have this update out in the next couple of weeks — sometime in August.
Knapsack
There is a lot planned for Knapsack over the course of this year. Knapsack 2.3 is scheduled to follow the LicenseKeeper update which will also require Snow Leopard (10.6+). Development on Knapsack 3 along with iPhone and iPad versions has already begun.
Bullfrog
Because Bullfrog is free, it takes a low priority for us and tends to sit on the back burner. I don’t have any specific releases scheduled, but I will no longer be updating Bullfrog for Tiger and Leopard. Any updates that do make their way out will require at least Snow Leopard and possibly only Lion.
Questions & Concerns
If you have questions or concerns regarding these changes and plans, please let me know.
The current versions of our apps will continue to run on your existing configurations and you will not be forced to upgrade to the newest versions.