More Leopard Only Stuff: Panic
Filed under Apple, Software on October 23rd, 2007
Cabel, of Panic fame, writes in his blog that popular icon management application CandyBar 2.0 won’t play in Leopard and announces the upcoming, Leopard only release of CandyBar 3.0.
Now, CandyBar 3.0 sounds like a lot of fun, especially since it will be able to provide “[...] full support for the new mega-sized Leopard icons (up to 512 pixels in size), a number of new Leopard icon types, and significantly more robust icon restoration.” On top of this, CandyBar 3.0 “will offer the ability to customize some of the look of Leopard’s new Dock! “.
The only thing that’s missing are the specifics about what happens to all those people that bought CandyBar 2.0 (including myself). Are we stuck with a product that does not work on Leopard unless we buy the fancy new version?
Adobe got a lot of bad karma and complaints for not offering an Intel update to CS2, and forcing CS3 upon users wanting a Universal Binary. They, at least, had an excuse: CS is a huge and ancient codebase that would require major effort to patch for Intel use. Besides, CS2 would run fine on Intel machines under Rosetta emulation. The Candybar situation is worse, since it won’t run at all on our new Leopard-running machines.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully understand that people wanting the new version will have to couch up some cash for it. But why should an application we bought just a few months ago not run on the next iteration of OS X? Why can’t Panic issue a point update to CandyBar 2.0 to fix the compatibility problems? Will buyers of CandyBar 2.0 at least be offered some special upgrade price? Cabel’s post only states that “CandyBar 2 will be effectively discontinued upon the release of CandyBar 3″. Not very reassuring. Even if we rush out to buy CandyBar 3, how can we be sure that it wont be obsolete when 10.6 comes out (which could be as soon as a year away)?
Perhaps, I’m overeacting, after all this is a fairly cheap application, and not a essential one at that. Then again, this could set a precedent to other mac developers.
Perhaps, Cabel’s informal blog post does not thell the whole story. I believe they will do the right thing. After all, “What will Panic do” isn’t by chance a popular guideline.
P.S Oh, and by the way: Pixadex will also be Leopard only.
Update
Alright, Cabel responded to a similar complaint on his blog comments and resolved the issue. I quote:
We generally offer a free upgrade to customers who purchase our software right before major updates (within a specific time period). You should be covered. Full details will be announced when CandyBar 3 is complete. Thanks for your purchase, and sorry you’ll have to live without icon changing for a little while.. it’ll be worth it!
That’s something. I don’t know if this covers me, though, since I bought CandyBar around March ‘07.
