0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

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Derekasaurus Rex
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0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

From the 0.9.2 announcement:
Mac users take note: this release is only compatible with Mac OS X Leopard, 10.5.
Does this seriously mean 10.5 is the only supported Mac OS for 0.9.2 an beyond? Have Tiger users been hung out to dry?
nightstrm
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by nightstrm »

The GUI is Leopard-only.

EDIT: Sorry, I misspoke.

Upgrade to Leopard. :D
Last edited by nightstrm on Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

Ouch. That stinks. I rather like the GUI and I was really looking forward to some of the bug fixes in 0.9.2. Now I have to start over and learn a whole new way of doing things to take advantage of them. This seems like a really drastic decision given that a relatively small proportion of boxes are running Leopard in the wild.
GMcDowellJr
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by GMcDowellJr »

The future waits for no man! (or woman)
baggss
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by baggss »

At this point, with a few exceptions, there is no real reason not to upgrade to Leopard.
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

I hear you, but as a developer I can't imagine dropping support for all my customers except those that purchased a new computer or upgraded their OS within the last four months! Of course I know Mac isn't the only supported platform, but still, this is harsh. The CLI is useless for me because I really depend on the GUI for setting some parameters, like cropping. And while HB is cool, it's not going to persuade me to buy Leopard. I guess I'm glad I kept my XP license and bought VMware Fusion when I switched to Mac, as I'm going to need them. :-)
nightstrm
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by nightstrm »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote:I hear you, but as a developer I can't imagine dropping support for all my customers except those that purchased a new computer or upgraded their OS within the last four months! Of course I know Mac isn't the only supported platform, but still, this is harsh. The CLI is useless for me because I really depend on the GUI for setting some parameters, like cropping. And while HB is cool, it's not going to persuade me to buy Leopard. I guess I'm glad I kept my XP license and bought VMware Fusion when I switched to Mac, as I'm going to need them. :-)
If all of the developers have upgraded, and its an open-source and free project, what's the harm? They don't have "customers" to appease.
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

baggss wrote:At this point, with a few exceptions, there is no real reason not to upgrade to Leopard.
Except in my case Leopard really doesn't have anything I need or want. I use Leopard at work so it's not a matter of ignorance; there just isn't $100+ of value for me, especially since I have several Macs to potentially upgrade. But that's all beside the point. Most Macs in the wild are not running 10.5, no matter how great early adopters think it is, how stable it's becoming, and how few reasons there are not to upgrade. And 10.5 won't be the dominant Mac OS for a long time, so I would think pre-1.0 software would benefit from reaching the most users possible. Apparently HB disagrees. I'm not really cheesed off or anything, just perplexed.
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

nightstrm wrote:If all of the developers have upgraded, and its an open-source and free project, what's the harm? They don't have "customers" to appease.
If you can't see the harm of leaving many loyal users in the lurch for the convenience of a few developers, then I can't explain it to you. Mind you I'm not saying they aren't with their rights. Naturally they can do whatever hey want. That's not even a property of free/OSS software. Adobe could declare that Photoshop will be Linux-only from now on. That's certainly their right too, and if they don't want to make money from Photoshop anymore, what's the harm? By your implied definition it seems no software company can ever harm any user.
baggss
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by baggss »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote:
nightstrm wrote:If all of the developers have upgraded, and its an open-source and free project, what's the harm? They don't have "customers" to appease.
If you can't see the harm of leaving many loyal users in the lurch for the convenience of a few developers, then I can't explain it to you. Mind you I'm not saying they aren't with their rights. Naturally they can do whatever hey want. That's not even a property of free/OSS software. Adobe could declare that Photoshop will be Linux-only from now on. That's certainly their right too, and if they don't want to make money from Photoshop anymore, what's the harm? By your implied definition it seems no software company can ever harm any user.
You are missing the point here. The devs are working the project because they want to, not because of the end users. The end user is simply a byproduct of their work ,not the goal of their work. Adobe makes money from their users so it is in their best interest to make them happy. The HB devs are not making any money of the project and can do as they please with zero consequences for themselves. In the end, it is completely up to them what happens. If you don't like their decisions, that's fine but it's also tough luck.

In the end you have a few simple choices. Stick with 0.9.1, upgrade to Leopard or find another converter. None of these options are the concern of the devs, period.

For those of you whining about switching to Leopard, STFU and switch already you pansies.
GMcDowellJr
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by GMcDowellJr »

baggss wrote:For those of you whining about switching to Leopard, STFU and switch already you pansies.
BTW... for those who can't tell, that's what we call sarcasm... and truth of course! :lol:
jbrjake
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by jbrjake »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote:
nightstrm wrote:If all of the developers have upgraded, and its an open-source and free project, what's the harm? They don't have "customers" to appease.
If you can't see the harm of leaving many loyal users in the lurch for the convenience of a few developers, then I can't explain it to you. Mind you I'm not saying they aren't with their rights.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

First off, since we've all upgraded, we can't *test* in Tiger. We can't *support* Tiger since if users come with issues we have no way to *reproduce* them and fix them. Why would you want us to release untested and unsupported code?

Second, open source projects live and die by their developers, *not* their users. As a quite relevant example, I cite you eddyg, the genius who brought us the AC3+DPL2 in MP4 feature that is the main attraction of this latest release. He is one of the *prime* reasons dynaflash and I decided it was time to move to Leopard. He had stopped contributing to the project as soon as he upgraded to Leopard, because as long as the project was stuck on Tiger it wouldn't even run! If we compile the 3rd party libraries so they'll run in Tiger, they will *not* run in Leopard. If we compile the 3rd party libraries so they'll run in Leopard, they will *not* run in Tiger. The choice was between watching HandBrake wither and die from a lack of developer attention or see it thrive. Why would you want us to choose the option where the project slowly asphyxiates?
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

jbrjake wrote: You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Mature. *sigh*
jbrjake wrote:First off, since we've all upgraded, we can't *test* in Tiger. We can't *support* Tiger since if users come with issues we have no way to *reproduce* them and fix them. Why would you want us to release untested and unsupported code?
Yes, you are right. It's completely inconceivable to support 10.4 and 10.5 simultaneously. What was I thinking? Please, you may have your reasons for dropping 10.4, but don't put words in my mouth. I never suggested releasing untested or unsupported code.
jbrjake wrote:Second, open source projects live and die by their developers, *not* their users. As a quite relevant example, I cite you eddyg, the genius who brought us the AC3+DPL2 in MP4 feature that is the main attraction of this latest release. He is one of the *prime* reasons dynaflash and I decided it was time to move to Leopard. He had stopped contributing to the project as soon as he upgraded to Leopard, because as long as the project was stuck on Tiger it wouldn't even run! If we compile the 3rd party libraries so they'll run in Tiger, they will *not* run in Leopard. If we compile the 3rd party libraries so they'll run in Leopard, they will *not* run in Tiger. The choice was between watching HandBrake wither and die from a lack of developer attention or see it thrive. Why would you want us to choose the option where the project slowly asphyxiates?
I appreciate your reasons and thank you for taking the time to explain. I never doubted that there were reasons. That doesn't make the situation suck less for Tiger users. And again, where did I say I want the project to asphyxiate? Geez.

Since you seem to know a lot, any suggestions for decent Handbrake alternatives, free or otherwise? Just like you can't support Tiger, I can't support Leopard at this time. Any recommendations welcome.
Last edited by Derekasaurus Rex on Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
jona
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I don't think that CLI 0.9.2 works in Tiger

Post by jona »

I'm still on Tiger and am not bothered about the new version requiring Leopard. I'll upgrade one day, and I'll just keep on using and loving 0.9.1 in the mean time.
Thanks for all the continued hard work!

One question though, I get a Bus error when I try to use CLI 0.9.2 ... so I just wanted to confirm that the GUI and the CLI are both Leopard only.
Otherwise I'll have to figure out why I'm getting a bus error.

Thanks.
nightstrm
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by nightstrm »

Yes they are both 10.5 only; sorry if you read an inaccurate post by me earlier in this thread.
bdkennedy1
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by bdkennedy1 »

I agree it's kinda harsh to get all the users to upgrade to a new OS to use this, but I have to side with the open-source developers. Volunteers aren't equipped with numerous machines to test HandBrake with various versions of OS X.

Besides, I do believe some of the fixes that were required in Handbrake were things that only Leopard could provide.
Peter Morris
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Peter Morris »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote: Since you seem to know a lot, any suggestions for decent Handbrake alternatives, free or otherwise? Just like you can't support Tiger, I can't support Leopard at this time. Any recommendations welcome.
A recommendation? Yes and an enthusiastic one. HandBrake 0.9.1

Pete
dynaflash
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by dynaflash »

It is worth noting that on a previous release, all of the dev's had switched to tiger, so we kept merrily testing and developing and working along for two month's. We released ( I think it was 0.8.5 ) and showed compatiblity on the website as Panther and Tiger. It wasnt until the first panther users downloaded it that we found out the gui totally didnt work. So after the fact we had to go tiger only. We had the same complaints then, but worse because we had advertised as panther compatible.

Any analogy to Adobe is ridiculous to be honest. We are a handful of folk doing this on our own time. We use our own equipment and work with what we have. Frankly there was no one during development to check and keep tiger compatibility even if we wanted to. Companies have departments and teams of devs with the sole job of keeping x platform compatibility. We do not, so we develop with the tools we have.

One last note on Leopard: Unlike the move from Panther -> Tiger, the Tiger -> Leopard transition brought with it a major change in the Apple Developer Tools (Xcode and IB3) as well as new core technologies which are leopard only, which basically means you should plan on seeing more and more Mac OSS projects going leopard only.
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

dynaflash wrote:It is worth noting that on a previous release, all of the dev's had switched to tiger, so we kept merrily testing and developing and working along for two month's. We released ( I think it was 0.8.5 ) and showed compatiblity on the website as Panther and Tiger. It wasnt until the first panther users downloaded it that we found out the gui totally didnt work. So after the fact we had to go tiger only. We had the same complaints then, but worse because we had advertised as panther compatible.
Sure, if you develop on one version of the OS but never test on another, naturally it's likely there will be problems. That certainly makes sense.
dynaflash wrote:Any analogy to Adobe is ridiculous to be honest.
It was intentionally ridiculous in the context of the comment I was replying to. You misunderstood if you thought I was seriously comparing a small OSS project like HB to Adobe. :-)
dynaflash wrote:One last note on Leopard: Unlike the move from Panther -> Tiger, the Tiger -> Leopard transition brought with it a major change in the Apple Developer Tools (Xcode and IB3) as well as new core technologies which are leopard only, which basically means you should plan on seeing more and more Mac OSS projects going leopard only.
I get that too. At the end of the day what caught me off guard is that I've been lurking in these forums for a long time and reading that solutions to bugs that have been vexing me will be fixed in 0.9.2. I didn't encounter any warnings that upgrading to Leopard would be required, so naturally I was disappointed to learn I would not get these fixes. (I can't upgrade to Leopard because other tools I depend on don't support it yet.) It was just completely surprising to see my platform dropped with the bump of a patch number and no advance notice, though I certainly understand the reasons in hindsight.

Honestly what I had hoped for was that new development would branch using Leopard-specific technologies, but glaring OS-independent bug fixes in common code might be propagated to the legacy Tiger branch. That way Tiger users would at least get some bug fixes, if no new functionality. It it was just a matter of resources I'd volunteer my own time and hardware to keep building and testing HB on Tiger, but if there's really no interest from the developers, it would be a pointless uphill struggle.
dynaflash
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by dynaflash »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote:
dynaflash wrote:Any analogy to Adobe is ridiculous to be honest.
It was intentionally ridiculous in the context of the comment I was replying to. You misunderstood if you thought I was seriously comparing a small OSS project like HB to Adobe. :-)
Fair enough :) Trust me, there was a lot of angst over this decision and it was not made without considerable debate. In the end it just came down to resources. Hopefully the Tiger users will be able to upgrade soon enough as it certainly was not done *intentionally* to ace them out.

Hindsight being 20/20 we probably could have posted this on the forums when the decision was made, however I can only imagine the controversy that would have caused. Darned if you do and darned if you don't. :)
jbrjake
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by jbrjake »

Derekasaurus Rex wrote:I didn't encounter any warnings that upgrading to Leopard would be required, so naturally I was disappointed to learn I would not get these fixes. (I can't upgrade to Leopard because other tools I depend on don't support it yet.) It was just completely surprising to see my platform dropped with the bump of a patch number and no advance notice, though I certainly understand the reasons in hindsight.
It was heavily discussed. I don't know how you could miss it, unless you choose ignore all development discussion:
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3972
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3749

There's even a sticky in the dev forum about how you need to use Leopard for it to compile these days. *shrug* If you ignore development discussion, don't be surprised if you aren't aware of the state of development.

HandBrake has an extremely transparent development process. We don't hide anything. It's all available to anyone who's paying attention, right down to real-time logs of everything we say on the IRC channels. There's even an unsupported, unmaintained patch that might be able to build a Tiger compatible version in Leopard:
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4041
Aldarion
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Aldarion »

Hi Dev's.... with all the [Censored] going on I just wanted to say THANK YOU for making an amazing product! I just DL 0.9.2 and am looking forward to trying out the new features. I use HandBrake all the time to prepare my movies for my AppleTV. You guys do a great job and it's certainly appreciated... especially by those of us who did upgrade to 10.5 :D
CoderBrown
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by CoderBrown »

I'll second Aldarion's THANK YOU for a great application. My two favorite non-commercial applications - HandBrake and MetaX - have now released for 10.5 only, which prompted me just today to finally upgrade to 10.5 because I can see the writing on the wall that many other app updates will be releasing for Leopard only, especially with the new version of the Apple Developer Tools. I was hesitant to upgrade my iMac G5 to Leopard but it's time to bite the bullet and just do it.

I also agree with Dynaflash's "Darned if you do and darned if you don't," however I think it would have been nice to make a general announcement either in the forums and/or on the main web page announcing the next release would be Leopard only (and explaining why - new version of the developer tools, developers are all on Leopard, etc. - to keep the complaining down). Even though the development process is very transparent and the update was openly discussed in the developer forums, I would guess that many HandBrake users (myself included) are not developers and would not frequent the developer forum (I hardly ever read that section) and therefore would not be aware of the upcoming Leopard-only update. (This is not a criticism, just a suggestion.) Keep up the great work and I'm looking forward to future updates! 8)
Derekasaurus Rex
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by Derekasaurus Rex »

I third all the thank-you's to the developers.
jbrjake wrote:It was heavily discussed. I don't know how you could miss it, unless you choose ignore all development discussion
I chose to ignore the development discussions for the same reason 99% of HB users probably do, which is that most of the topics are completely meaningless to me as an average user. It's not willful ignorance; just staying out of forums I know nothing about.

P.S. Thanks for the link to the unsupported Tiger patch. I'll definitely look into it.
Last edited by Derekasaurus Rex on Thu Feb 21, 2008 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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s55
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Re: 0.9.2 *only* compatible with Leopard?

Post by s55 »

@Derekasaurus Rex - Just FYI, I also posted in numerous posts in this Mac section of the forum as well so it wasn't entirely restricted to development.
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