Hello Snow Leopard, Good Bye Panther

DssW launched an update to Power Manager today. This update improves a couple of bits and pieces, but nothing too significant has changed.

The biggest change is our dropping of Mac OS X 10.3.9 support. With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.6, the time is right. We have supported Mac OS X 10.3, aka Panther, for four years.

Panther was the first generation of Mac OS X that could support Power Manager. Earlier generations of Mac OS X did not include the underlying functionality we needed.

It feels sad to say good bye to Panther. Going forward the decision makes sense; our efforts can be better directed, and new critical path technologies are calling that Panther can not emulate.

Supporting multiple generations of Mac OS X is not always easy. Each generation of Mac OS X introduces new technologies, methodologies, and quirks that demand a deep understanding of Mac OS X’s implementation.

That effort to support multiple generations of Mac OS X with one binary often results in a much more stable product.

I was pleased to note that Snow Leopard required no specific changes to Power Manager. Instead, we used the allocated time to improve the Login Window notification mechanism and port our process management to launchd.