[hansemannk]

Hi Omni Support,

you mentioned in the V2.3 "What's new" that this release will only run on 10.8 and not on earlier versions of MAC OS X - e.g. 10.7.

Is this limitation due to the pre-release or a new "feature"?

I would appreciate it if you provide me an short answer.

Thanks in advance.

Regards H.

[whpalmer4]

The reasoning goes something like this:

There are bugs in the Apple frameworks for earlier releases which are difficult and/or time-consuming to work around, and interfere with the features Omni wants to deliver. Coding only to 10.8 allows them to deliver software with those features sooner.

It's a great theory, so long as you're willing and able to run 10.8. If that assumption fails, the new software not only doesn't get delivered sooner, it doesn't get delivered at all.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by hansemannk

you mentioned in the V2.3 "What's new" that this release will only run on 10.8 and not on earlier versions of MAC OS X - e.g. 10.7.

Is this limitation due to the pre-release or a new "feature"?

The App Store now requires that we sandbox all updates to our apps. We started this process on 10.7 and reported to Apple the issues we were encountering with getting our apps working within a sandbox—but most of our issues weren't solved until 10.8.

All of our upcoming sandboxed apps are expected to require 10.8.

[hansemannk]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

The App Store now requires that we sandbox all updates to our apps. We started this process on 10.7 and reported to Apple the issues we were encountering with getting our apps working within a sandbox—but most of our issues weren't solved until 10.8.

All of our upcoming sandboxed apps are expected to require 10.8.

Thanks for your answer. Ok I understand your position. Nevertheless I'm a little bit surprised: thousands of developers are in the same situation. Does it mean, that for every software on the market an update brings the consequence to upgrade OS X from 10.6/10.7 to 10.8?

Sorry, I can't believe that.

I have already installed Apps from the App-Store and for many of them I received updates within the last 2-3 weeks. But the minimum requirements for all (!) updates were 10.6.8.

Here an example (a software update from last week):

• 

There are other reasons I guess. But stop discussing about this. OMNI has their point of view and I have an MacPro (late 2007) that does not support 10.8. So I have to change the software in the near future.

[Ken Case]

Oh, sorry I didn't see this sooner!

Originally Posted by hansemannk

Does it mean, that for every software on the market an update brings the consequence to upgrade OS X from 10.6/10.7 to 10.8?

Sandboxing itself doesn't require 10.8, so some software can be sandboxed without changing system requirements—for example, we could probably make OmniDazzle or OmniDiskSweeper sandboxed without requiring 10.8. But our major productivity apps all support AppleScript, and there were several sandboxing issues with AppleScript which weren't resolved until 10.8.

I should also note that we've delivered several unsandboxed updates to the App Store ourselves since Apple introduced the sandboxing requirement. Each time we do this, however, we have to explain why we're not yet sandboxed and hope that Apple chooses to grant an exception. In general, they seem willing to grant exceptions if an update simply fixes some bugs. But even that isn't guaranteed—and if an update introduces new features, they really want it to be sandboxed.