PowerPC

I've always gone out of my way to try to support older computers, I make it a point to support at LEAST two OS revisions backward. The current MacOS is 10.9, that means right now I fully support 10.8 and 10.7. However, kJams does continue to run on 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6, even tho it is not officially supported.

A problem coming up is this: 10.5 was the last OS that supported PowerPC chips. Anyone with a PowerPC computer is stuck forever on MacOS 10.5.

Apple is introducing Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) summer in the summer of 2012. At that point, "two OS revisions back" becomes MacOS 10.6. That means 10.5 is dropped. That means PowerPC is dropped. However, that sucks for people with PowerPC machines. Okay I get it. The real BIG problem however is the tools made by Apple (Xcode) *require* that I use the latest OS in order to develop for that OS, so I *must* update to the latest when it comes out. This is a big problem because those tools NO LONGER ENABLE the ability for me to produce a PowerPC version of kJams.

So if i really want to keep supporting PowerPC computers on OS 10.5, it means I have to create a virtual machine with an older OS with older tools installed to do it. It's really hard for me to justify the hassle and expense of this, considering only about FIVE customers have written to me saying that they have this very old hardware.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'll make that VM with the old tools, so i CAN build the PowerPC version, but i probably won't make a new version for every release. I'll probably update the PowerPC version only occasionally.

What you should do: nothing different. Whenever you see an update available, take it. You'll never be updated to a version that won't work on your machine. Your updates will come less frequently, but when they do, you WANT them cuz they'll have all the latest features and bug fixes.