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Message from discussion Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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AppleManifesto17  
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 More options Feb 6 2010, 12:50 am
Newsgroups: mozilla.dev.planning
From: AppleManifesto17 <omarzafr...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 21:50:10 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sat, Feb 6 2010 12:50 am
Subject: Re: Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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On Feb 5, 12:16 am, Josh Aas <josh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In September of 2009 we stopped supporting Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") on
> mozilla-central but we left much of the code required to support that
> platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision. We
> have come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either
> restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific
> code.

> Here are usage numbers from 2010-01-25:

> ===========
> Firefox 3.5
> ===========
> 10.6 (Darwin 10.x): 1,497,221 (26%)
> 10.5 (Darwin 9.x): 2,855,842 (50%)
> 10.4 (Darwin 8.x): 1,379,770 (24%)
> All versions of Mac OS X: 5,732,833

> ===========
> Firefox 3.6
> ===========
> 10.6 (Darwin 10.x): 186,825 (59%)
> 10.5 (Darwin 9.x): 91,478 (29%)
> 10.4 (Darwin 8.x): 35,960 (12%)
> All versions of Mac OS X: 314,263

> Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed
> since then. We would like to take advantage of more modern
> technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where
> we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time
> and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this.

> The approximately 25% of our Mac OS X users still on 10.4 would
> continue to be supported by Firefox 3.6 until that product reaches end
> of service, which won't be until several months after the next major
> version of Firefox is delivered (built on Gecko 1.9.3) later this
> year. Past data shows that we do not lose appreciable market share
> when we stop supporting a Mac OS X version. We are often one of the
> last vendors to continue supporting older Mac OS X releases, and I
> suspect that by the time this becomes an issue Apple may themselves
> have stopped issuing security updates for Mac OS X 10.4.

> Adding 10.4 support back to mozilla-central would mean switching back
> to ATSUI from Core Text, switching back to gcc-4.0 from gcc-4.2, and
> doing a bit of porting work for code that has been added to the tree
> since we dropped support for 10.4. Other areas where 10.4 support
> consumes our time, makes our code more complex or error-prone, and/or
> limits our capabilities include complex text input (IME), out-of-
> process plugins, printing, native menus, and Core Animation.
> Furthermore, Apple's upcoming JavaPlugin2 will not support Mac OS X
> 10.4.

> We are planning to make the decision to remove 10.4 support final and
> remove the code from the tree. If you have any strong objections
> please let us know now.

If you are working with Apple's latest Xcode 3.2.2 and SDK's 10.4
Tiger support is not enabled by default. Leopard and Snow Leopard are
actually substantially different than Tiger really when you look at
all the Core Frameworks, I think they should really just worry about
innovation, speed, and using the very latest technology rather than
supporting and older OS and old technology if not they will really
just suffer the fate of MS, stop supporting legacy software and move
on with the latest technology, hardware, and software (OS included);
the browser "wars" are very competitive! I feel bad for those who
cannot upgrade, but no need to slow the pace of innovation for those
who can upgrade and are new to the Mac platform.

 
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