End of support for MacOS X.4

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Most people are probably not following the development mailing lists. And even those who do, might easily have missed the not-so-fresh news. In any case, VLC 1.0 is currently dysfunctional on MacOS X. The cause is a matter of perspective:

• lack of (really) active maintainer for the the VLC OSX port.
• Apple Computers Inc. operating system support for POSIX standards is horribly obsolescent (say compared to Linux distributions) and broken.
• Some of the VLC 1.0 core enhancements and changes are not compatible with OSX in their current form.

The vanishing of the Mozilla/Safari plugin in VLC 0.9 was only a warning sign. Since then, it seems to me t hat the OSX port has fallen in a much worse state of abandon than even the somewhat troubled Windows port.

For the technical details, you should refer to the vlc-devel archives. Anyway. One seemingly potential solution out of this involves dropping support for version 10.4. Since the feature freeze and planned release of VLC 1.0 are drawing very close, fixing the OSX is way overdue. If it does not happen really soon now, we will end up either delaying VLC 1.0.0 to no end because of the OSX port, or shipping VLC 1.0.0 without OSX support. VLC 1.0 brings much needed enhancements and fixes to the Windows and Linux port. Hence, I am confident that we will not significantly postpone the release on all platforms (and as a Linux user myself, I also hope so). We are trying to build a world-class modern media performance and streaming framework, and that excludes limitting ourselves to the lowest common denominator of all operating systems.

I am sure we will get our share of whining with this proposal, especially if it is implemented. Let it be known that I do not care. When millions of people use your software, whining users are a more often than daily occurence, no matter how excellent/crappy your software may be. You simply cannot satisfy everyone, especially when your project is constrained by the time and motivation of a few core open-source developpers.

So anyway, if you care about VLC on MacOS X, especially on MacOS X.4, take this as a call for help. As usual we are looking for source code patches, not for money, hardware donation or moral support.

N.B.: This post represent my personal view, and shall not be construed as the official position of the VideoLAN association.

[zacwest]

According to Adium's usage statistics, 10.4 users are about 25% of the userbase. Omni's statistics puts this at somewhere around 50% (but they also have a lot of legacy software, too).

0.9.8a is stable and works, your consideration should be: what makes development easier? Dropping 10.4 support is really an important step, especially in Obj-C where the advantages of Obj-C2 (properties, fast enumeration, etc) really make development a lot more fun and easier.

More and more OS X software is going 10.5+. It's just a lot easier for everyone involved.

You're definitely going to have a lot of complaining users, this is a vocal minority. At this point in the game, they are either on ridiculously old hardware which is probably having playback issues anyway, or utterly refuse to fork over $100 for an OS update. They are not the type of user you should care about.

[killasapo]

drop 10.4

10.6 is on it's way rumor 1st quarter of 09 so 10.5 should now be the min. OS to be running

keeping fingers crossed that a native 64bit version of VLC is being brew up in the background hehehehe

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

drop 10.4

10.6 is on it's way rumor 1st quarter of 09 so 10.5 should now be the min. OS to be running

keeping fingers crossed that a native 64bit version of VLC is being brew up in the background hehehehe

You read minds...

[Roland21]

Come on Guys Drop 10.4. Snow Leopard is comig and is better than ever!

P.S: I Hope 1.0 comes really great! Take all the time you need... but not to much

[nikola23]

The way I see it no one has the right to complain as long as critical bugs are fixed as they pop up in 0.9.x like exploits and such.

Like you said you can't let a minority let development be held back.

[danshaku]

Agreed. Put the 0.9.x for 10.4 on security-bugfix-only-mode and make new features and stuff require 10.5.

[madmax_2069]

I am sorry but there is more then just 25% of Mac users using tiger. There is alot of systems that cant run Leopard (unless the user modded leopard to run on the said system like i did).

but this topic makes me sick. Why not just drop OS X altogether, or build one version of 1.0 for tiger and one for leopard

[OhNoes09]

I think 10.4 should be dropped. Also PPC support should also be dropped. Look, you guys run the show. If it make it easier for you to maintain intel code for 10.5 plus then do it. I think the wrong answer here is to completely drop the OSX port.

I wish the http://www.perian.org/ developers would join the VLC project. Maybe you should become friends and discuss this a bit.

[marklar]

As a VLC user with 3 PPC machines, 2 on Tiger, 1 on Leopard (due to system requirement issues), I am disheartened to hear this.

There are tons of users -- and machines out there that will be affected, the real extent won't be realized until the change to drop support is done (I would guess that the bulk of users here are more heavily invested in current hardware/software than the mac-vlc using population that isn't participating in these forum threads).

Luckily, the existing 8.6i is quite decent (though it crashes on FF or RW .flv files... and apparently has some security flaws being addressed in later versions)

Wish I could in the poll vote to add patches, but don't have the skills, so I will have to simply offer the unneded "moral support"

[nobody.loopback]

VLC 0.8.6.i is (on a Mac PPC machine) a finished product (everything which appeard after 0.8.6i brought more problems then improvements).
If The videolan team stops developing for MacOSX 10.4.X (and even 10.5.x) but continues to develop the player for 10.6.x thats fine with me.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

As a VLC user with 3 PPC machines, 2 on Tiger, 1 on Leopard (due to system requirement issues), I am disheartened to hear this.

There are tons of users -- and machines out there that will be affected, the real extent won't be realized until the change to drop support is done (I would guess that the bulk of users here are more heavily invested in current hardware/software than the mac-vlc using population that isn't participating in these forum threads).

Luckily, the existing 8.6i is quite decent (though it crashes on FF or RW .flv files... and apparently has some security flaws being addressed in later versions)

Wish I could in the poll vote to add patches, but don't have the skills, so I will have to simply offer the unneded "moral support"

The thing is that you probably have to blame Apple for their new SDK, compatible with 10.6 but incompatible with 10.4...

Yeah for the very-open company Apple!

[NightRider]

I'm for dropping 10.4 support, since I've upgraded all my machines to 10.5. Wish I could add code, but I've been away from coding for too many years.

Best regards,
-Brett

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So far, the plan is to drop 10.4 on 1.0.0 and use llvm-gcc on 10.5 and 10.6

[nobody.loopback]

Quote j-b:
"
The thing is that you probably have to blame Apple for their new SDK, compatible with 10.6 but incompatible with 10.4...
Yeah for the very-open company Apple!
"

If you know the strategy of Apple for the past 20 Years, you will notice, that this kind of strategy is normal.
Apple likes to make something new and drop support for old things. This may have advantages but for a developer it is hard to follow the decisions of the company.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, not to troll or compare, but VLC works fine on WinNT 4.0 up to Windows Seven.
VLC 0.8.6 works from Win98 to Windows Seven too.

[nobody.loopback]

Right, thats what I meant.
If Apple makes a new OS they dont care about compatibility with older Software - This makes it easier to introduce new features, but people constantly have up upgrade soft and hardware and devlopers must change their Software. There was an excellent review in arstechnica which compared this strategy against Microsoft, which rather tries to be compatible for a longer term.
Windows Based Systems even run Applications wirtten for MS-Dos which is more then 25 Years old.
MacOS Systems wont even run somthing which was written in 2001 for OS9, and, beginning with 10.6 probably wont run any application which is linked to the Carbon Framwork.

[nikola23]

Have any of the developers (or users for that matter tried) running vlc on 10.6 yet? Any comments on how it works?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Have any of the developers (or users for that matter tried) running vlc on 10.6 yet? Any comments on how it works?

Pretty fine, but still very crashy, especially for the finder.

[ghoster]

Im on Tiger, my friends are on Tiger. Think 40-50% of all macs are on Tiger. Why i need Leo, bells and beauty ?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Im on Tiger, my friends are on Tiger. Think 40-50% of all macs are on Tiger. Why i need Leo, bells and beauty ?

Because Apple wants it.

[nobody.loopback]

[quote="ghoster"]Im on Tiger, my friends are on Tiger. Think 40-50% of all macs are on Tiger. Why i need Leo, bells and beauty ?[/quote]

VLC 0.8.6i is stable and plays everything, What features are you missing ?

[zacwest]

It's not 40-50% using Tiger, it's about 20%. Omni's statistics (in general) are skewed towards 10.4 because of the bundling with the OS, but their non-bundled products show the 80/20 split which Adium's statistics, along with pretty much anybody else who records statistics, sees. Tiger is dead.

The numbers went from about 60/40 at the beginning of the year to 80/20. People upgraded, got new machines, and are finally able to spend that final $100. If you're on a machine that won't run Leopard, you should probably either consider upgrading or be willing to accept using older software, because across the board you're being dropped.