FWIW, a starting point for further information on a comparison of Yosemite vs Mavericks can be found here.
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JJW
After my last post - Omni had sent me a PM with a refund offer - I went away to Things and I’m slowly adjusting to it, with a little locavore feeling, since they are headed in Germany, which I was not aware of before.
Now Omni even changed the title of my topic …
As I said: It’s all about a system - and a company - you can trust helping you getting your things done, and for me, that’s not about translucency.
And when I read the last posts blaming about the stubbornness of people resisiting to update to Yosemite although it’s free - this is a style of discussion I don’t like and I don’t need.
End of story: I deleted not only OF2 on my 3 devices, but also OO, OP and OG on my Mac.
Trust …
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I changed the topic title to reflect the content of your first post, and I’ve just changed it back again after you insisted on reverting my change. We are very glad you’ve found an app that you’re happy with on 10.9. I think this thread has run its course.
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Please tell me that the OmniFocus 2.1 update is not only for Yosemite (Mac OS 10.10) users? I’m on Mavericks (Mac OS 10.9), and would dearly love an upgrade to my OmniFocus 2.0.4, but my organisation will not support upgrading to Yosemite.
Is Omni leaving behind everyone except Yosemite users? We are more than half of all Mac users…
Sorry for the confusion! You’re correct - v2.1 requires OS 10.10. Customers on 10.9 can continue to use 2.0.4 just as they have in the past, then take advantage of the new features and technologies available in Yosemite when that upgrade makes sense for them. (In the meantime, they can still contact us for help, of course.)
It’s tempting to think of the decision to support an older OS as something that is cost-free, but it really isn’t. We learned a lot about the costs of an approach like that during the OmniFocus 1 days. For most of that product’s lifespan, it supported OSes all the way back to 10.4. (The final shipping version still goes all the way back to OS 10.6.)
In that time, we noticed that more and more often that bugs we reported or features we requested from Apple in one OS would arrive in the next year’s release rather than in an update to the OS we reported it against. They don’t really do release numbers like “10.5.12" or “10.6.8" any more. These days, they fix the most critical bugs, but most changes show up in the new OS. Once that happens, the bar is raised still higher for any other bugs that remain in the older one.
This means that deciding to pass on adopting a new OS means spending an additional year working around bugs we’ve already reported and which Apple’s already fixed. It means building more complex code that does the same thing in two different ways. It means more fragile code that has more bugs. If nothing else, it means doubling the testing that’s required before we can ship each update.
All that time and friction reduces the amount of time we can spend doing the thing that customers consistently tell us they want the most: new features. Beyond that, it means asking customers who can upgrade to pay an even greater cost; they have to wait an extra year to get the features we could build with the new APIs in the OS we’re not using. This is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree on, but that’s our take on it and the approach we use when working on our products.
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Great explanation, Brian! It made it much easier to accept that I can’t use the latest software from The Omni Group before I upgrade to the latest system from Apple.
So, no OmniFocus 2.1 (or any future updates) for the rest of us Mac users running Mavericks? That’s disappointing.
Well, I guess it’s finally the end of the road for me and Omni. It’s been an interesting — if expensive — experience.
So long and good luck!
A :)
Is mavericks no longer going to be supported on any updated apps going forward? If so, an announcement of such a move would have been nice when the newest numbered versions were released. I would have never have bought OF2 or OG6 had I know that Mavericks support was going to be dropped before OF3/OG7.
[edited to correct version #s for OG]
I’m not sure what you mean by OG4, but Omnifocus 2.1 will require Mac OS 10.10. I was also a bit disappointed, but the existing version of Omnifocus will continue to work well for us as long as we stay with Mac OS 10.9, and Mac OS 10.10 is after all a free upgrade with the same system requirements as 10.9. To me, this explanation from The Omni Group is fully reasonable:
Why can’t I use OmniFocus 2.1 on my Mac running OS X 10.9?
Yosemite was released October 16, 2014 - that’s a little bit more than 4 months ago. 4 months. Omni expects everyone that uses their apps to be on the next major os version in 4 months? That’s nonsense.
No, they don’t. They expect those who would like to install updates to their existing Omni apps to use the latest, free Mac OS version. If we don’t, for one reason or another, want to use the latest Mac OS, we could continue to use the Omni apps we have paid for for as long as we like - staying with the Mac OS the apps were built for should mean that the apps will continue to work fine.
Right. This is a MAJOR change from the way that Omni Group used to operate. And that is the point.
And they don’t work fine. Bugs are being fixed in latest versions. Promises for features that would “eventually” be released aren’t able to be realized by those that can’t upgrade to the latest OS X version at this point.
To put it another way, OmniGroup has a history of supporting not only the most recent version of OSX.
OF1 supported all the way back to 10.6, Mountain Lion when OF2 was released. (That’s 3 major OS X releases. )
OmniOutliner 3 to 10.4 (That’s 4 major OS X releases).
OmniGraffle 5 supported to 10.6 (That’s 3 major OS X releases).
etc
I understand dropping support at the beginning of a major release or after a huge amount of warning. But these latest releases are out of step with Omni Group’s history of support. Omni Graffle dropping Mavericks 2 months after 10.10 release and now with OmniFocus 2 - it’s not their normal operating procedure. Something has happened internally at Omni Group that should have been conveyed to customers before the latest major version number being sold. I’ve looked through the forums and I’m not the only one surprised by this change.
It would be different if Omni Group was a part of Apple, like FileMaker for example, but they aren’t - they are an independent company.
I can only guess that Yosemite was such a major dramatic change under the hood from previous Mac OS X releases. Omni was probably at a crossroads about development. Keep compatibility with older APIs and somehow maintain feature parity among all OS X releases. Or just start with a clean break.
This would be something similar to the Final Cut Pro X adventure. Final Cut Pro X was such a dramatic shock to video professionals and it caused an uproar. But after 4 years, Final Cut Pro X has actually turned into something that is worth using. There was a lot of growing pains at first but eventually we got through the fire.
There is a lot of growing pains as we try to delay our upgrades until absolutely needed. This is just one growing pain that we will all endure.
I’ve slowly transitioned from my old white MacBook 13" that is only capable of Mac OS X 10.7. I’ve gotten used to Mac OS X Yosemite + OmniFocus 2.1 and its new features.
We can contemplate all we want but the choice has been. OmniFocus will be Yosemite and later. Sure, we’d love a longer lead time in regards to the new announcement. But we can all see the writing on the wall when we’re talking about technology. I think Omnigroup didn’t take this decision lightly and they probably argued about it in their weekly meetings until their faces turned blue.
Here we come kickin’ and screamin’ into a new world.
Many developers are facing the crossroads of Yosemite and beyond. I saw this blog post from the creator of Carbon Copy Cloner and the issues he had to face. Carbon Copy Cloner version 4 is Yosemite only.
https://bombich.com/de/blog/2014/09/29/why-doesnt-ccc-3.5.x-run-on-yosemite
Here was something I saw on Facebook. Another software developer named Ohanaware has to face major challenges with Yosemite…
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