Old macs and new Indigo

[turtle]

Indigo told me there is a new version of indigo available, however, it requires MacOS 10.X and my admittedly older macMini cannot upgrade to 10.X. I know countless people will tell me to buy a new macMini (or other Mac), but that is going to be about $600 at least (I will want to get the latest box) and I have become cheap in my retirement.

So ... I'm wonder what Indigo relies on in the newer releases of MacOS that requires an OS upgrade? After a career in software development, I really have no argument to support my cause other than that $500 expense. Supporting apps for Android left us using the least common denominator, about 10 versions or more back from the latest.

I know Indigo does not have a large staff and the backlog is carefully managed, I'm just curious what technology the later versions of MacOS provide that is crucial for the version requirement? I noticed the free trial requires 10.7. A parting note - a lot of the allure of Indigo for me was the ability to run it on cheap hardware.

[jay (support)]

I'm wonder what Indigo relies on in the newer releases of MacOS that requires an OS upgrade?

Unfortunately, that's not the reason for macOS minimum requirements changes. In order to support newer macOS releases, we have to upgrade Xcode. Apple has made supporting much older macOS releases impossible (in practical terms). So, in order for us to support very old macOS versions, we would need to keep around older Macs running older Xcode versions (because Xcode always changes macOS requirements for Xcode to match whatever the current release of macOS is) so we could compile newer versions for older Macs.

Also, they also often change APIs such that we have to work around changes/differences/bugs introduced in later releases, so it would require different versions of the source for different macOS versions. So as a programmer, you can imagine tons of #ifdef statements all over the code to segment it out OR making the same changes to multiple source trees and how that would quickly become unmanageable (especially in a company of 2).

So, while we don't generally use/need new functionality in macOS releases, the fact that we have to support newer versions of macOS require us to update Xcode, and Apple deprecates support for much older macOS versions (either intentionally or by breaking APIs). We do as much as we can to try to support backwards compatibility, but when Apple makes changes that break that, then we have to increase the macOS requirement.

And, finally, we monitor our customer base and what versions of macOS they use. We never change requirements without looking at what everyone is using to determine what a minimum system requirements would change. If there are a very small percentage of users on a given macOS version, then we have to weigh that against the amount of effort it would require to continue supporting that macOS version. We also look at what Macs can get upgrade to which versions, so we can approximate how many of those users should be able to upgrade.

We always make an increase of minimum macOS version very grudgingly, but sometimes it's unavoidable. If you look at the downloads page, you'll see that we rarely change them.

[jay (support)]

I noticed the free trial requires 10.7.

We allow users to download and install older versions, and this includes trials (back to Indigo 7). This does not mean that the newest version of Indigo supports it.

[turtle]

Ahhhh - Xcode - of course, I should have thought of that! I never use it except for the "Xcode tools". Being bounced around various projects, you learn to use the common denominator, which is usually GCC and vi. That makes sense, one of a few ways Apple sucks - I had to buy Snow Leopard from a 3rd party because the Apple Store no longer sold it and I needed to upgrade to the version following Snow Leopard.

Fortunately, what I have now will work for the foreseeable future. My wife could not function without Indigo (paraplegic), I even integrated a medical device into Indigo to control it automatically. The only new feature I would need is for a confirmation to exit an unsaved editor when I hist escape.

Thanks for the quick and detail response! Keep up the great work!

[midd]

what year is your mini?