I’m writing a new project, and I have a choice between using a library that only exists in OSX 10.5 and later (We’re on 10.6 now), but makes my life much easier, and using a library from earlier versions, but I have to a lot more of the work myself.
How does one make this decision? How do you balance new/better technology vs customers on old systems?
ETA: does anyone know of a site that compares market share by precentage of a specific OS? Since this is a consumer product, if only 2% of mac users are still on 10.4, that sort of makes my life easy. Similarly, if 25% are still on 10.4… (I know, it’s almost guaranteed to be somewhere between…)
As others have said, this really boils down to whether you can afford to lose customers who aren’t on 10.5 yet. That said, lots of companies seem to support the two most recent versions of OS X in their new major releases, although older versions are often available for people with older systems.