Not only haven't there been that many Intel machines with Tiger, but on all machines that came with Leopard it is impossible to go back and install Tiger. The Tiger retail package only contains the PPC code. Yes, it's true. Every Intel machine with Tiger came with a DVD that contained all the necessary drivers for that machine only, and there does not exist a Universal Intel Tiger installation disk.

So forget about Tiger!

-Christian

Backwards compatibility, ah the old millstone that most firms hate because they can never really win. I think Microsoft have shown that keeping backwards compatibility can be a real nightmare, how much of XPs initial nightmares were caused by old legacy code (I don't have the figures but I've spoken with some people who did some freelance work for MS, some of what they told me would scare even the most ardent MS fan).

As one of the previous posters said how many intel Macs actually have Tiger on them? Of course the follow up question is how small does a percentage have to be before it is classed as safe to "prune"?

I guess you have to decide which group of people you want to upset because whatever the decision someone will get annoyed with it.

Evan Hillas Posted:

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I think you already know the answer.  Finish what has been started and make that the final Tiger release.

As a consolation, how about keeping the final Tiger compatible release separately available for those that might want it.


Evan

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I second Evan's suggestion.  

On a side note, I'd like to add a suggestion to this one; perhaps, after releasing the final Crossover Tiger release, put it's price down a little bit from the normal Mac/Linux versions. If Tiger has issues with Wine/Crossover, companies may not want to pay the normal price for it; a lower price would theoretically factor into their decision to purchase or not.  

Anyway, I agree with Evan that you should make a final Tiger release and offer it to download (Up to you if you want to make a discount or not. Just my 2 cents).  

Hibba.

Posted:

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Further, less than 10% of our customer base is still on Tiger.

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That sounds a lot like the arguments companies use to support only Windows.  Even though CrossOver and Wine do a good job picking up the slack (while earning you a living), I think that even (or especially) you would prefer them to go the extra mile for the "less than 10%" of the market.

That said, if there are serious problems supporting the older version of OS X and it's reasonably to expect most users to upgrade soon, then the "one last version" idea sounds good.  Also, can't those using Tiger switch to Ubuntu if they can't afford Leopard?

I'd be wary of pushing against 10% of your existing customer base but a few more numbers would help. How many of those are actually running the latest version and recently renewed their license? For laggers its hard to predict if/when they will renew a license if their current version 'just works'. If a significant number of them have recently renewed/purchased then you likely don't want to abandon them.

Things that might make your decision easier... Prior to Leopard large deployments with Mac OS were a bit painful. (Hell even with Leopard things really didn't get acceptable in most corporate environments until 10.5.7/10.5.8 with some authorization/authentication issues only being resolved in Snow Leopard...) I can't think of a large corporation with a large Mac base that isn't running Leopard. (Security fixes pushed most large deployments to upgrade pretty quickly...)

Worry about the impact on your existing customer base, if they can absorb it then go for it. In the  unlikely event you receive a large request dust off your old code-base and start merging.

In my mind Crossover is still a very young product. If requiring Leopard leads to a better product it will likely offset any lost customers. Put your best effort into building the best customer experience and hopefully your market will continue to grow.

(This all assumes that maintaining a fork for the affected components and building two releases is too costly...)

I'm not a Mac user.  I'm a proud Linux user. :)

But while I'm usually all for everyone having access to the latest software, it doesn't seem right to hold back 90% of your users just because the remaining 10% have an obsolete OS version.  I mean, when the user statistics are that one sided, it's probably in the best interest of your customers to focus more on getting the majority the best software possible.

I'm sure the easiest answer is to fork CrossOver, in a sense, and have a version of CXOffice and Games just for Tiger.  A Legacy version, if you will.  But I don't know if CodeWeavers has the man-power to deal with two (or four, depending on how Office and Games are developed in relation to each other) code bases for Mac.

Make this the last release and then drop support for Tiger.  I've upgraded all my Macs to Snow Leopard, personally. In all the Apple forums I participate in every Intel Mac owner has upgraded to Leopard or Snow Leopard by now.

With the update to Snow Leopard's price tag of about 30 bucks, I don't see why it would be necessary to continue support for tiger.. Just my opinion though, I could be wrong.

( also, my mac came with tiger :] )

That has to be a tough one for you guys. I'm going to say that you should drop Tiger for two reasons:

1) For those who haven't upgraded beyond Tiger, their goals clearly aren't to get the most out of their Mac, the just need it for some very low key applications. (Word, Pages, etc.) People who haven't upgraded from Tiger don't see things from the "I need to get the newest stuff now!" point of view. They just want a computer that will work for what they do. If not, they would have upgraded a long time ago.

2) You can't hold back advancement to appease the minority of your users. Though it's tough to say, "Screw you Tiger users!" you have to take this into consideration. If you drop support now, they would still be able to run all of your previous versions, meaning that they will not have the most up-to-date version. If you don't drop them however, the 90% of your customers won't be running the most up-to-date version because it won't exist yet.

I believe it becomes necessary for you guys to ultimately drop support for Tiger. You will have to do it some time in order to continue to enhance your product, and now would be a great time with all the new renovations put into Snow Leopard. Don't wait too long or else you will be holding back everyone in the name of the few people to cheap or lazy to care to make their computers the best they can make them. Just make the Tiger compatible version of Crossover a separate product at a reduced price, or something. But I know I would be angry if I knew that I wasn't getting the most out of a program as I could because they are trying to appeal to the lagging 10% of their fan base.


P.S. If you guys could work in some of the new Snow Leopard advancements into Crossover, that would be excellent!

If you guys can make significant gains on the Mac by ditching Tiger support, then do it. Snow Leopard costs $30, is extremely easy to install, and is very capable. Make one last legacy release that is Tiger capable and then move on. If there are people who still insist on running Tiger on a Intel Mac, it is reasonable to say that those people are not concerned in running the latest technology, and therefore, not concerned with advances in WINE/CrossOver technology.

If 90% of your Mac base is on Leopard and Snow Leopard, then drop support for Tiger. Offer the last remaining Tiger build for those that want it, but that's it. Or a possible idea would be to include the Leopard and Snow Leopard features, but have them only enable if the proper OS is detected. Of course development is still slowed due to catering for this small market.

As far as I'm concerned, all intel Mac's support Leopard, or even Snow Leopard for that matter. They can upgrade if they want, or just stick to the last version of Crossover made for Tiger. Their choice. They shouldn't be holding back the rest of us.

Ok here my mac (well both of them) are running snow leopard.  I know of the advances snow leopard brings because I myself write games, software, and in general program.  I mean this is what you should do.

A: Release One last build for tiger then drop it

B: Develop a strain of Crossover Games and Crossover just for tiger.  And then have one for snow leopard and leopard.

C: Develop a strain of Crossover Games and Crossover for each OS (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard) so that it cranks out the most of Crossover GAmes fro each platform plus makes crossover games smaller (No PowerPC Stuff in Snow Leopard Version, snow leopard optimizations in snow leopard version, same for leopard and tiger)

D: Continue doing what you are doing and head straight into that brick wall :)  (The windows strategy make it run on as many platforms as possible and then see how big the OS gets (or crossover in this case) and how inefficient it gets :) )