6 ms·
Got to admit - that's a simple yet clever solution.
by nameoda 6y ago
Got to admit - that's a simple yet clever solution.
- greatgib 6y agoQuite the opposite, it is a complex mess.
- coldpie 6y agoYes. Caring about backwards compatibility is a whole universe of compromises.
- agnokapathetic 6y agoThere is speculation the reason Windows jumped from version Windows 8 to Windows 10 is that too many things were string matching (version ~= "Windows 9\d*")
- richardwhiuk 6y agoor just .startsWith("Windows 9")
- Lammy 6y agoAt some future point the frameworks that are getting the backwards-compat version number will be dropped, all those apps will cease to function on macOS 11.n+1, and it won’t matter any more. I think it’s a great solution.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoI agree, this is not good. I manage Macs in MDM and I already saw that in some actions they show up as 11 and in others as 10.16. sw_vers tends to report 10.16 but UIviews tend to report 11.0. MDMs are complex machines and they don't always do every operation the same way. Why is this bad? Well for one example, because sometimes you use version numbers not exactly. Consider the statement: "Applies to 11.0 and higher". Depending on how the OS identifies itself this will be valid or not. On the same OS. Or consider reporting, if under some conditions the Mac identifies itself as 10.16 and in others as 11, you're going to have them in 2 different buckets even though they're the same thing. Really, they should have made a choice, one or the other. If software wasn't compatible because of this it should just be updated. Apple never said it would always be 10.x. I don't really understand why they're doing this as Apple normally has no issue telling developers to fix it or stuff it. They never cared about backwards compatibility before. If having 11.x was not that important to them to upset a lot of stuff, they should have just stuck with 10.16.
- klodolph 6y agoThis is exactly how Windows has done it since 8.1, back in 2013. Apple’s strategy isn’t new or unusual.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoIf others do a bad thing too, doesn't make it right :)
- klodolph 6y agoThe reason why both Microsoft and Apple are doing this is because there is too much software in the wild which will break if it detects a major version bump. So, that is why both are doing it, and that is why it is the right decision.
- johnmaguire2013 6y agoThe right decision may still be a complex mess.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoExactly, and what I'm trying to point out is, is this really worth it when the only advantage of having the "11.0" is just marketing?
- coldtea 6y agoYes. The alternative is how we have legacy things with no meaning 30 years down the line...
- zeroimpl 6y agoMarketable version numbers are quite useful. If somebody says they are running 10.12.3, the first thing I do is check which version I am running to see how that compares. On the other hand, if somebody says they are running iOS 12.1.2, I immediately know that is a patch of the preceding year's major version. The reason is that Apple actually applies marketing to their iOS version numbers, but doesn't do the same for macOS, because incrementing the minor version isn't marketable. Their crack marketing team does come up with funny names for macOS releases, but few people remember the mapping between those and the actual version numbers.