14 DAY TRIAL // A debate playing out in the Mozilla planning forum reveals that the company behind the popular web browser for Mac, Linux and PC is likely to drop Tiger support in the versions following Firefox 3.5.
"I'd still like to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 in Gecko 1.9.2, I don't want to be worrying about 10.4 until 2012," Mozilla's Josh Aas writes, adding that this would put Mozilla and Apple in sync for Safari support. "I think dropping 10.4 support in 1.9.2 will allow us to make the most efficient use of our resources and focus on quality and performance for the vast majority of the users we'll have in 2011," he says.
The Register cites one user who objects to the proposal, telling he's missed out on new features before because of Apple's upgrade policy. The upset user argues that Firefox is still supporting XP, which would translate into Apple's OS X 10.4 Tiger. "Suffice to say, I will be very disappointed if I can't upgrade to Firefox 3.6 or Firefox 4 next year," he shares.
However, The Register continues, Firefox's Daniel Veditz poses an interesting scenario – "Is that a Firefox problem or just what you get when you buy Apple?" He also suggests users can "always load Linux on that box when Apple stops supporting it." Oh, that's so helpful, isn't it...?
The report goes on to offer comment coming from Mozilla's Mike Connors, who chimes in saying, "Overall, I think there's a lot of technical reasons why 10.5 should be a new baseline, and the number of users is small and diminishing in any case, so I definitely support this from the Firefox side." Admittedly, "Users will be pissed off," he adds. "That's just the way it works, but a huge number of apps seem to be 10.5-only these days anyway, so we're just another tree in the forest, and not even for another year or so."
How many of you are still using Tiger? Are you disappointed to hear that Firefox will become Leopard-only in the nearby future?