Re: When does Carbon completely?

On Oct 9, 2009, at 3:10 PM, Shawn Erickson wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:24 AM, Eric Gorr <[email protected]>  
> wrote:
>
>> Take a guess - even if it is baseless.
>
> If something is marked as deprecated it could go away as early as  
> the next major release of Mac OS X (aka 10.7).
>
> True, but I don't think anyone would predict that Carbon GUI apps  
> will completely cease to function / become un-executable in 10.7   
> ( ~18 months from now ). If someone would make such a prediction, I  
> would find that fascinating and wonder what their reasoning (if any)  
> is.
>
> So, what would your prediction be?
>
> Apple dropped booting PowerPC with 10.6 after only having one full  
> major release of an OS that supported Intel (aka 10.5, early support  
> in 10.4.7/8 IIRC).
>
> Apple is pushing for folks to go 64b for all applications under snow  
> leopard. The APIs you see when compiling/running 64b is a very good  
> indicator of what Apple plans to support going forward. Apple likely  
> wont be putting much effort into 32b only APIs and would likely want  
> to remove those from the OS as early as possible to reduce testing/ 
> maintenance overhead.
>
> As I said the deprecated 32b APIs, etc. could go away as early as  
> the next major OS release (10.7). That is your baseline, earliest  
> time frame to work from. To me the wise thing to do is plan to be  
> ready by that time frame until you know otherwise.
>
> if you really want me to guess... based on the realities of the  
> market, etc. 10.7 at the earliest and 10.8 at the latest.

Interesting analysis. Thank you.