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by rudd 5644 days ago
It seems like a number of apps will probably do this. For instance, I can't find Twitter for Mac outside of the app store, which is disappointing because I'm still on Leopard, stuck with Tweetie 1.2.8. I would say to be wary of losing your Leopard user-base, but being on the Mac App Store probably will give you enough exposure that you'll make up for it and more.
2 comments

I think there's not much benefit of staying on Leopard if you run an Intel Mac these days. The upgrade cost is pretty cheap, and the benefits do developers are quite heavenly.

I've been keeping Leopard support in TapeDeck because it's been pretty easy to do so, but with the work I'm doing on 1.4 right now, I've been tempted to hit that kill switch...(But I won't.)

I'm curious- If you're distributing through the AppStore only, and the App Store doesn't support 1.5, why maintain the code?
You mean 10.5, right?

I've got a fairly large install base, and I'd like to keep them happy if at all possible. In the future, when I have to get them to buy a v2 release on the App Store, then ideally I've made a good impression on my customers and they'll happily buy a license.

It's also not that big a deal to do. As long as the developer tools continue to let me target 10.5 from 10.6, I'll be OK.

Yes, I meant 10.5, sorry.

I hadn't thought about upgrades for existing customers, that makes quite a bit of sense. I was only considering that all New customers were 10.6+, so targeting 10.5 didn't make much sense.

Thanks for clearing that up!

Can someone email you the .app package, or are Mac App Store apps compiled to be Snow Leopard only?
If they email you the .app, it will be locked down to the purchaser's machine.

In terms of Snow Leopard-only, that's not necessarily true. However, it will be Intel-only.

The version of TapeDeck I submitted to the App Store had to be stripped of the ppc binary in order to pass validation. However, the version on http://tapedeckapp.com (the demo) is ppc/intel and 10.5-friendly.