[CocoaApp isThisTiger]

[Bill Cheeseman]

on 2007-10-24 6:07 AM, Alastair Houghton at alastair at alastairs-place.net
wrote:

> IMO, checking the Mac OS X version is normally the wrong thing to
> do.  It may sometimes be a necessary evil, but usually there are
> better ways to get things done.

I think that statement is too general. It's true as to specific, individual
features, but not when the entire product is aimed at technology introduced
in a particular version of Mac OS X.

One of my commercial products went through major revisions for Tiger, adding
many new features based on techniques that were introduced in Tiger. My
other commercial product was written for Tiger, and some of its core
features require techniques introduced in Tiger. I didn't have the time
required to make sure every feature either worked as expected or was blocked
in Panther and older, and that wouldn't have made any sense for one of them
anyway because it was designed for Tiger-specific technology. I decided to
make both products require Tiger or newer. Code testing for Tiger was
therefore necessary. (I used the Gestalt selectors and some nice code that
is floating around on the lists to make sure the test works correctly all
the way pack to Jaguar (or Cheetah?).

I'll be doing the same thing for Leopard.

--

Bill Cheeseman - bill at cheeseman.name
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
www.quecheesoftware.com

PreFab Software - www.prefabsoftware.com