Filed under: Odds and ends, Internet Tools, Leopard, Developer
TextMate 2.0 will likely be Leopard-only
In what would seem, on the surface, to be an odd move for a text editor, Macromates has stated that TextMate 2.0 will almost certainly be Leopard-only. Allan Odgaard gives some good reasons as to why, though. And it's not just because the Halloween icon will look better with Leopard's resolution independence!Rather than paraphrase him, I'll paste what he's already said quite well:
First of all, 2.0 is a free upgrade, so I won't miss out on any upgrade fees from people that want to stay on Panther or Tiger.
Secondly, roughly 90% of my users are early adopters and have in all likelihood upgraded to Leopard within a few months of its release, so by keeping compatibility with older operating systems I am catering to less than 10% of my users.
Thirdly, it has a significant cost to stay backwards compatible, this price is paid in the form of:
- Time spent debugging (and sometimes making workarounds for) issues only present on the older OS version.
- Time spent implementing stuff that Apple offers for free on the new version of the OS.
- Not being able to make use of features only present on latest version of the OS when it's too impractical to conditionally make use of them.
- Code complexity, because it needs to do different things on different versions of the OS.
Is eliminating those costs worth a 10% drop in sales? You bet they are! The reason why I have kept Panther compatibility for this long has nothing to do with additional sales and all to do with me just not liking to cut people off.
I think Allan defends his decision quite well. Much better than Adobe does, in regard to Soundbooth's lack of PowerPC support. There's more to Allan's statement, but you should hop over to his blog to read the rest of it and let him know your thoughts on the issue.
To balance any potential backlash, Macromates will surely win a few hearts and minds by the free TextMate 2.0 upgrade. Any other TextMate users out there have an opinion on this?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
joe said 7:51PM on 11-15-2006
As long as he leaves the 1.x version available for Tiger users, I don't see anything wrong with it. Sometimes backwards compatibility will just hold you back too far.
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Peter said 7:46PM on 11-15-2006
I use TextMate enough to justify upgrading to Leopard just to use it.
Seriously.
Peter.
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MacMental said 7:58PM on 11-15-2006
I use TextMate everyday. If only I could mate everyday! I will be standing in line for Leopard the day it's released; so, I'm all for it. Can't wait to see what goodies they have for us. Time Machine has some intriguing possibilities used in conjunction with a text editor.
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Matt White said 8:09PM on 11-15-2006
I basically bought a Mac to use TextMate (not entirely, but it was a large factor), so I'm definitely cool with the Leopard-only bit. I think Allan deserves a big "Good on ya" for the fact that he cares enough about the technology to be putting it to use right away. That means we're all getting the best product possible.
Heck, I'd even pay for a 2.0 upgrade. But I'm glad I won't have to ;)
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Pete said 8:35PM on 11-15-2006
Best editor ever, bar none. I think the big story here should be 'TextMate 2.0 will be a free upgrade' more than anything else -- lots of applications will go Leopard-only, just as quite a few were Tiger-only just after its release.
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Scott Stevenson said 10:17PM on 11-15-2006
I don't think this is at all surprising. Leopard makes development easier, and TextMate users are (practically by definition) early adopters and power users.
TextMate is a ridiculously good value at $50, and is even more impressive given that 2.0 will be a free upgrade. It leaves plenty of room for an OS upgrade. Given that Allan writes the core application himself, adopting APIs that make things easier is an obvious choice.
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Ruby on Rails LiveCD said 11:16PM on 11-15-2006
I agree with most of the above. My Leopard DVD will still be warm from the disc reproduction process when I insert it in my Mac. And TextMate going Leopard only won't phase me a bit. Unless--- he releases TM2 before Leopard :)
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Thijs said 2:49AM on 11-16-2006
Agreed. As long as he keeps bug fixes for 1.x going.
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hoberion said 5:51AM on 11-16-2006
move forward..
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carlo said 6:52AM on 11-16-2006
Textmate is an awesome text editor.
Developers, web designers/developers who are the people that use textmate are Im sure all looking forward to using Leopard and will move over very quickly.
This move shows Allan is keen to integrate the new technologies in leopard to make a better end product for us end-users.
So Im all for it.
And to think that its a free update to version 2.0, thats unbelievable.
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sriracha said 8:25AM on 11-16-2006
I'm totally fine with this -- I'm solidly in the upgrade-to-Leopard-immediately camp, so I'll definitely appreciate the free TM upgrade.
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kevin said 9:07AM on 11-16-2006
I can't imagine anyone who uses this product not upgrading to Leopard, except That Guy who doesn't upgrade because "Tiger does everything I need so NYAH!", so I applaud him for dumping Tiger once it's old news. :)
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pixelslut said 10:43AM on 11-16-2006
Fine with me. I dont know if Ill adopt leopard early or not.. depends on my cash flow and my motivation, but whe i do ill grab the upgrade, and if not i can use the current version. no biggie.
Oh and jsut to keep it going... TextMate is PURE CODING BLISS.
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Steve said 11:47AM on 11-16-2006
The only problem with this is for those of us slaving at corporate jobs where the IT departments are loathe to update OSs right away. For this reason, I'm still working on Panther, even though my home machine is Tiger (and will go to Leopard).
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Reg said 6:41PM on 11-16-2006
While I understand the move, it will limit TextMate's overall appeal. Even if a developer's own system is cutting edge, they're often required to work on other machines which may not be.
For instance, say you are a top gun JavaScript coder and you visit a client who has contracted you to "web 2.0'ify" their HTML pages built on a their network of iMacs, which they bought 6 months ago and have no intention of upgrading from Tiger to Leopard.
You plug in your iPod with your favorite apps to edit the code with and - OUCH! - TextMate won't launch. So you end up editing in Apple TextEdit or struggle with Dreamweaver, etc, and miss all the collapsible codebreak, function popup goodness of a proper editor.
I've been using BBEdit since, well, forever, and its backward compatibility AND forward compatibility (it was one of the first Universal Binary apps I ever saw, coming out basically a week or two after the Intel Pentium 4 developer systems shipped) have been superb.
There's no way BBEdit would ever cut off the previous OS, so I'll be continuing to favor it over TextMate.
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Peter Hill said 6:50PM on 1-02-2007
Best plain text editor out there.. I use it daily. I use it more than any other "word processor"
I will be upgrading to the new Mac OS on day one.. so backwards compatability is not an issue with me.
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Coda said 10:40PM on 1-02-2007
Reg, if you're a contract ninja, you're going to bring your own laptop with you. Secret stash of apps on your iPod? C'mon. I'm not going to knock you for valuing backwards compatibility or BBEdit, but the scenario you described seems unrealistic.
Corporate captives with stubborn IT staff and slow software purchase orders? That, sadly, is who's gonna take this on the chin.
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Shane said 3:08AM on 1-04-2007
I would buy a Mac just so I can use TextMate. Personally, upgrading to Leopard is not an issue.
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Rhywun said 12:40AM on 1-10-2007
The quality of TextMate shows in that there are at least two Windows programs coming out that are nearly exact copies of it.
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