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2.0 Will Require Leopard

In my last entry I mentioned that I am 90% decided on making TextMate 2.0 Leopard only.

R Lafourcade was quick to post a comment trying to talk me out of it, so let me elaborate a bit.

First of all, 2.0 is a free upgrade, so I won’t miss out on any upgrade fees from people that want to stay on Panther or Tiger.

Secondly, roughly 90% of my users are early adopters and have in all likelihood upgraded to Leopard within a few months of its release, so by keeping compatibility with older operating systems I am catering to less than 10% of my users.

Thirdly, it has a significant cost to stay backwards compatible, this price is paid in the form of:

  1. Time spent debugging (and sometimes making workarounds for) issues only present on the older OS version.
  2. Time spent implementing stuff that Apple offers for free on the new version of the OS.
  3. Not being able to make use of features only present on latest version of the OS when it’s too impractical to conditionally make use of them.
  4. Code complexity, because it needs to do different things on different versions of the OS.

Is eliminating those costs worth a 10% drop in sales? You bet they are! The reason why I have kept Panther compatibility for this long has nothing to do with additional sales and all to do with me just not liking to cut people off.

But by requiring Leopard I get all the Tiger stuff I have reluctantly ignored, all the new Leopard APIs which I look forward to use. I can render text with the faster CoreText which hopefully is free of the various ATSUI rendering bugs (like ignoring your drawn bold/italic font variant unless you flush your font cache regularly, or not doing proper anti-alias on bright text with a dark background), etc.

There is also Objective-C 2.0 with garbage collection, I don’t think anyone realizes how much work it is to manually unbind stuff from nibs when disposing them to avoid retain cycles (and thus memory leaks). There is a new Interface Builder with some much desired improvements — both of these things will require my stuff to run on Leopard, should I embrace them.

So to boil it down: things will be much easier for me and users should benefit from new features and me having more time to work on what‘s unique to TextMate.

Who are the losers in this? That would be people who leave comments like the below on my blog:

I like my Mac but I don’t give a damn about Apple and their stupid codenames and incremental upgrades. I won’t switch from Panther to Leopard just for the sake of giving you another 39 €.

But this is a chance for all of you to voice your opinion, leave your thoughts in the comments, but the more I think about what ditching compatibility means, the more I look forward to it :)

I should also add that I am taking 10 weeks of vacation starting the 29th of November (going hiking in New Zealand), so even if I didn’t drop backwards compatibility, I wouldn’t have a 2.0 release before Leopard.

categories General

232 Comments

I had never heard about the Core Text API, and now I am absolutely intrigued! What does allow you to do? My wee bit of coding is all focused on text, I am absolutely curious now…

Roll with the times, Allan. So long as 1.x works fine under pre-10.5 systems, I’m all for 2.0 being Leopard only. My newer apps are going to be - the improvements to the development frameworks and tools more than justify the move on this one.

I absolutely agree with you.

TextMate is a cutting edge text editor, with cutting edge users. I’m very happy to hear that you’re committed to that cause.

Now, more importantly. About that holiday, have a bloody brilliant time! I’m sure that most people who have seen how active you are on the multiple branches of development, and in the mailing lists would agree with me too :-)

Thumbs up from me. I certainly won’t be hanging around when Leopard is released. So it’ll make no difference to me one little bit. :)

09 November 2006

by Carl-Johan Kihlbom

I for one welcome our new Leopard overlords.

I think you’re absolutely correct in your arguments for ditching backwards compability. Go for it!

I’ll likely be upgrading to Leopard the day it’s released, so I say go for it, keeping up to date with current tech is always welcomed.

Also just wanted to say enjoy New Zealand, it’s a very beautiful place, I lived there for some of last year and early this year, decided to come back to the UK in the end, but for a holiday (or hike!) it’s very nice.

Fine with me, just make sure to keep the latest stable release for Tiger easily available for some time to come and we’ll be ok.

Textmate is a text editor for programmers and power users, if Leopard is going to bring massive improvements then you should have no worries cutting off 2.0 to Leopard only. It might irritate like 2 people for a month but any irritation will be put to one side from the awesome new features and speedier debugging when they eventually upgrade (Which they most certainly will because we are all mac users)

Too many people make the choice in the other direction making great sacrifices. I commend you for publicizing your thoughts and for your decision. As others said, as long as you leave the pre 10.5 compatible version around (which I certainly won’t be using), it sounds great to me.

Go for it. I’m really glad TextMate 2.0 will be a free upgrade, and it will be one additional excuse to move early to Leopard (as if I needed one ;-) ).

Anyone that won’t be obsessed about upgrading to Leopard probably won’t be obsessed with getting TextMate 2.0 anyway so go for it!

Fine with me, too. Welcome to the official “early adopters club”.

Another vote for ‘Go for it’.

TextMate is for programmers. And as my experience goes, most programmers upgrade their software. The price of Leopard is negligible if you code professionally. If you don’t, then you just have yet another good reason to upgrade.

The worst case scenario (not upgrading to Leopard): You have to use TextMate 1.5, which still is a darn good text editor :)

09 November 2006

by R Lafourcade

Well I’m probably in the minority of late comers. No iPod/Leopard/MacIntel for me, thanks. I have more productive/socially responsible things to do with my money.

“The worst case scenario (not upgrading to Leopard): You have to use TextMate 1.5, which still is a darn good text editor :)”

Yes I agree. I really like TextMate and I’ll stick with 1.5 as long as will be needed. It’s very good ans stable as it is and I use it only for HTML/PHP/JS/CSS anyway.

Allan, I won’t loose or miss anything, believe me.

I’m all for it :)

As you say, I think it’s pretty clear that TextMate is not serving casual consumers, but rather power users and software developers. These are the people that are practically guaranteed to upgrade.

If anyone gives you too much trouble, ask them if they think Apple will support Xcode 3.0 on anything other than Leopard.

Another vote for Leopard

Uh, so it won’t run on DOS anymore?

Good choice, Allan. Run with the Leopard! I’ll be using TextMate, no matter how the cat’s called…

Leopard and TextMate 2.0 - Yeah! Go for it. :)

I think that you are doing the right thing for the majority of your users.

And even then, I would be worth the €39 all over again.

I’m all for a Leopard only version if it is released with more, better features in less time. Upgrading Mac OS is not like upgrading Windows - here in my office the windows users hang on to Win2k because it works and we don’t want to risk breaking anything. OS X updates don’t cause massive disruption so apart from the (relatively minor) cost, there’s no reason to carry on using an old OS X. (On top of that, new version run faster as well as doing more.)

Plus if TextMate 2.0 is Leopord-only, I can tell my boss we have to upgrade next year :)

Go for it - I’m going to buy Leopard as soon as they open the pre-order page for it. Personally I can’t wait to try out Time Machine.

Thumbs up for me! I’m looking forward to it. Have you something like a TODO list to share with us in the meantime :-) ?

think about it this way: when you upgrade to Leopard, you get TextMate 2.0 as an added bonus! :-P

Yay! Go for it, Allan. It’s the right decision. Thanks for giving us TextMate.

09 November 2006

by Ben Perry

Go for it. I’ll be getting Leopard as soon as I can. Cutting edge is fine with me. BTW, enjoy New Zealand. I’m jealous, it’s a very beautiful country. :D

I know I don’t risk to break anything upgrading from Panther to Leopard (which by the way is just another name for the same animal, stupid Apple) but just like for 10.4, browsing 10.5’s feature list doesn’t make me drool.

Textmate made me drool enough to pay for it (and I use only FOSS) , whatever new functionalities planned for TM 2.0 have to be VERY cool to intice me to pay 129 € for the privilege to run it.

Don’t get me wrong, TM is very good for 39 € and I’m glad i’ve paid for it, but 129 €… way too much.

Now, I’m not a programer, just a graphic designer who wants to code.

Hi, yeah I say go for it too - Even if I wasn’t going to upgrade for a while, I would be more than happy using the current version until I do upgrade.

I live in Hamilton, New Zealand (central North Island) - You’re welcome to stop in for a coffee if you’re passing through! We also have nice fast wireless Internet. Tim @ http://bla.st/

09 November 2006

by Jacob Rus

R L:

The $130 you pay to apple goes toward making technologies that developers can use to make awesome apps, not towards end-user features. There will be a lot of kick-ass leopard-only stuff in a few months, and you’ll be drooling, I promise. ;)

This is a great decision. More programmers/companies should be as aggressively advancing with technology. Inventions and innovation will be much more progressive. Sure, there’s always a drawback, but Microsoft is the best example that “backwards compatiblity to the stone-age” sucks. Overall the 1.x series is a superb editing tool that will last doing a excellent job on Tiger and lesser beings for a long time. The free upgrade is also very decent act, thanks for that. And maybe you even decide making the 1.x code open source in a year or so. Either way, congrats for you decision, every developer should envy you.

I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m an occasional Cocoa developer and maintaining backwards compatibility is a pain even on simple apps. I’ll be buying leopard anyway, or at least convincing work to. I’m sure the new features will be worth it.

I hope you have a good time over here, I’m in Wellington if you want to drop me a line…

For what it’s worth, I’d happily pay the €39 upgrade to 2.0, even if it was Leopard-only. I’m certainly one of those early adopters who will be standing in a queue at the Apple Store when Leopard is released (well, I have been for both Panther and Tiger!) and I look forward to the exciting innovations you’ll have time to make with TextMate 2.0 by focusing on the core of the application rather than backward compatibility issues.

If I was happy sticking with Panther/Tiger, I’d probably be happy sticking with TextMate 1.5.x…

I will switch from Panther to Leopard just for the sake of giving you another 39 €! Even if it’s a free upgrade!

Oops, I wasn’t clear. I’m aware that 2.0 will be a free upgrade, but TextMate is such a major part of my daily life that I’d happily throw more money at you, just to say “thanks”! I doubt I’m alone – maybe you should charge for 2.0…

09 November 2006

by Matt Tavares

Allan, Core Text is avaiable on 10.4, but it seems to be something that apple just threw in their (loacted in ApplicationServices/Frameworks/CoreText.framework). Even though i have yet to class dump it, i can almost asure it uses the Core Graphics and Quatz text rendering, which is slower than ATSUI.

Go ahead! And I would be happy to pay another €39. Can’t wait for both 10.5 and 2.0 :D

great (unless leopard’s crap, but that’s separate, i hope unlikely, issue), don’t look back.

bad news, it confims that we won’t see 2.0 before spring 07. but 1.x has gotten very usable. so i can wait. and with allan’s vacation i don’t guess we would have seen it before then anyway.

have a good time in new zealand.

I agree with the vast majority… After Leopard TM 2.0 will be next first install!

This software is a joy to use… the swiss army knife of computing. I’d be happy to pay an upgrade fee but my hope is that Allan has so many paying customers he’s rolling in money :)

I am planning to buy Leopard as soon as it is available.

I say go for it too. Can’t wait!

I stopped reading at “2.0 is a free upgrade”.

Go for it!

TextMate should always be focused on being the most powerful, awesome to use editor, taking no prisoners on the way. It’s a tough equation for those not generating their income in some way from their use of TextMate, but for people that do - spending money on upgrades for the sake of your editor is probably the best place to spend it.

I mean, where else? Movies? ;-)

A.

Also, why is it free? Shouldn’t 2.0 require a pay upgrade?

Do whatever will keep you happiest and therefore keep Textmate awesome.

I was at the launch of Tiger and I will be at the release party for Leopard. I hope to have TextMate 2.0 that same day (please).

The less you have to re-invent the wheel (IE: use new Leopard only features) the more you get to focus on developing the actual features we care about.

It’s like web development browser compatibility. There’s a point when you just have to give up trying to make it work with IE5 and NN4. The people who really care will be on Leopard immediately. Everyone else will have to upgrade eventually.

With TextMate 2.0 being a free upgrade and Leopard being a paid upgrade, that’ll just make TextMate 2.0 a paid upgrade with Leopard as your free gift. Or both at 50% off * 2.

Allan, regardless of your choice to make TextMate 2.0 a free upgrade, I hope you realize that I and, hopefully, a lot of TextMate users are going to send you an extra 40 euros just because you’ve made our lives so much better.

Heck, if you require Leopard and put in all of the great new stuff, I’ll double that… :-)

09 November 2006

by David Brockman

Go ahead, we are all early adopters.

Sounds good to me!

09 November 2006

by Brian Landau

Go for it Allan! Leave Panther and Tiger behind you!

For those complaining about updating, I’ve never understood that. People can love the mac and not want the latest and great version of the OS? I know MacOS isn’t perfect but it only gets better, there’s no critical functionality you loose by upgrading, and it doesn’t cost that much.

As, for TextMate the whole idea is for it to be the best tool it can be, it should always stay cutting edge. I would be very disappointed if it didn’t take full advantage of Leopard even if that means losing backward capability. The current version of TextMate is great and if people won’t upgrade to Leopard they can keep using the great version of TextMate they already own.

Yessir, go ahead. And have fun in NZ.

09 November 2006

by Clayton Hynfield

I stopped reading at “2.0 is a free upgrade”.

Ditto. Free, requires Leopard. Couldn’t get any better.

I’m Clayton Hynfield, and I approve this message.

I agree with you. 2.0 requiring Leopard is fine.

Onward and upward…

I will upgrade to Leopard and look forward to TextMate 2 on any OS.

I’ll be using Leopard as soon as it comes out, and you’re also making 2.0 a free upgrade? Sounds good!

I had already planned to be at the apple store the day Leopard comes out. Make TextMate the best it can be; if this means Leopard only, than so be it.

Working only in Leopard makes Allan happy. Allan happy = more TextMate improvements. More Textmate improvements = everybody who uses TextMate happy.

Go for it!

09 November 2006

by Mike Taylor

I sense a trend here….I’m not one to buck it:-) Leopard ho!

09 November 2006

by Marshall Elfstrand

All of us using TextMate where I work will be upgrading to Leopard as soon as it comes out (iChat screen sharing alone is worth it for me, plus there’s a lot under the hood that is going to be great for users dealing with Windows networks on a daily basis), so I’m happy to see that TextMate will immediately start taking advantage of the new technologies. And I can totally see the draw of Obj-C 2.0.

So go for it! And enjoy your vacation! Thanks for such an excellent product that stays on the cutting edge.

You’re very right:

Your (heavily developer-oriented, and otherwise geeky) audience is early-adopter-dominated. This is obvious just looking at the nature of the app and the community around it, but you clearly have the numbers to back it up.

As a free upgrade, 2.0 is just gravy for your customers.

The likely massive productivity wins from just GC/ObjC 2 and IB2, alone, make this a worthwhile jump.

And there are many significant follow-ons to (3):

  • The more productive you are, the faster TextMate will develop for all of us.
  • The happier you are, the more time you’ll spend on fantastic, creative, and powerful new features.
  • The simpler the devtools are (GC is a big, big step for simplicity and productivity), the easier it will be to do things like richer extensibility (future “plugins” need not worry about complex shared memory management).

The list goes on.

In short, “here, here!”

(And, I just noticed, your comments have some strange CSS associated with ordered lists [<ol>])

Go ahead. I use all Intel Macs, so I can’t run anything earlier than 10.4 anyway.

See, for my part, I’d love an overview of what CoreText is, at least one that doesn’t break any NDAs. I have no problem with TM 2.0 requiring OS X 10.5 – the nerd in me is just really curious what 10.5 brings to the table that hasn’t already been announced. :)

Another vote for Leopard only.

And, seriously, you NEED to charge for 2.0. Absolutely. We’ll all pay again. You don’t have to give it all away for free. I paid 35 euro for an app I use all day every day–I’d gladly pay that price again for each major release (if not more).

Don’t be afraid to make us pony up again, you’re working your butt off and you deserve to be compensated for it.

Jay Allen wrote : Allan, regardless of your choice to make TextMate 2.0 a free upgrade, I hope you realize that I and, hopefully, a lot of TextMate users are going to send you an extra 40 euros just because you’ve made our lives so much better.

This is what I wanted to say : even if TM 2.0 is a free upgrade, i’ll buy a new licence when TM 2.0 will release, just to thanks you for your job ;-)

Thumbs up for Leopard here.

+1 for Leopard. But really, as TextMate goes so goes my MacBook Pro :)

09 November 2006

by Austin Taylor

Glad to hear it.

09 November 2006

by Dylan Smith

I couldn’t agree more, Allan. Great news.

I encourage you to take the more innovative path, with Leopard, this suits Textmate very well IMHO. It is this kind of thinking that drew me to Textmate.

I won’t be upgrading to Leopard for quite some time, so I’ll have to go without the 2.0 upgrade, but, I’d prefer that you ditch compatibility anyways. In my case, I use maybe 5% of TextMate’s power, and I rarely ever notice a difference between TM versions. It would be selfish of me to ask you to hold back on innovative new stuff on my behalf.

09 November 2006

by Roshambo

I completely support your decision on this, and understand your reasons for doing so. Keep up the great work, man.

It’s too late to change your mind now, but you really should have charged for the upgrade. At least like a quarter of the initial cost or something. Then you could afford to pay us bundle developers ;)

09 November 2006

by Tim Buchheim

Allan:

Thank you for adopting Leopard features and making TM Leopard-only. As an ADC Select member, I know how cool Leopard is and can’t imagine not wanting to take advantage of Apple’s hard work. Especially on an application like TextMate which is so heavily focused on exactly the sort of user who is going to upgrade immediately (or already have a Leopard seed, like me).

Watts:

Sorry, I don’t think any of us can say much about Core Text, other than that it is the future of text rendering on Mac OS X. The fact that it is present in Tiger should tell you that it is in use already today (and used more than you might think), and is a stable, mature framework on Leopard.

Matt:

Core Text is faster than ATSUI (at least in Leopard, I can’t say for sure in Tiger). Apple isn’t stupid. Sorry, I can’t say more. If you care, then buy an ADC Select membership ($500) and take a look at WWDC session 137.

I am totally fine with requiring OS X 10.5 “Leopard” for TextMate 2.0. Not a problem or even an inconvenience. And if TextMate 2.0 is a free upgrade, but 1.5 remains available, this should actually be universally true.

In that case, for the end user, the math is exactly the same. Their 39 Euro gets them an outstanding text editor, supported on their operating system of choice. If they’re taking their time with Leopard, TextMate 1.5 is still totally worth 39 Euro, and they’ll get TextMate 2 when they’re ready for 10.5, at no additional cost (for TextMate).

I’d also like to add my support to the “charge for the upgrade” crowd. I genuinely look forward to the opportunity to send you more money, because it’ll mean I’m getting a new version of TextMate with groovy new features.

If you still decide to make 2.0 a free upgrade, please make it the last free upgrade for a good long while. You’ve definitely provided a lot more value than 39 Euro to all of us TextMate customers, and deserve to be rewarded for that, but it would also let you add more infrastructure to make sure MacroMates continues to hum along (support staff, additional developers, the folks who make the bundles so valuable, documentation, a second application, etc.).

Speaking of second applications…can I convince you than all existing email clients suck? ;-)

Alan,

I agree totally. Do it.

TextMate is already expensive in that you have to buy a Mac to run it on, so having to upgrade to the last OS to get the latest TextMate is no big deal.

Like you say, TM users are early adopters and therefore will most likely buy getting leopard early anyway.

For those who are not early adopters but still like a rock solid text editor, they’ll still have their current version.

PS: about the free upgrade - very nice and noble, but I’m sure most of us would be more than happy to fork out a little for such an upgrade. Maybe setup a way we can donate if you absolutely do not want to charge for this upgrade.

09 November 2006

by Joe Ruby

So, what IS planned for TextMate 2.0?

09 November 2006

by Mark Wardle

I have to agree. I use TextMate almost all day, every day. Do not worry about backwards compatibility; the majority of users will be upgrading to Leopard anyway.

I would happily pay for the upgrade, just as many others have indicated. Please do consider setting up a voluntary upgrade option.

Have a great holiday.

P.S. Discovering TextMate has made me as productive as I used to me with my previous favourite editor, TurboText on the Amiga. Happy days!

09 November 2006

by Jan Erik Breimo

Just want to say that I agree as well.

And I’d like to add that I’ll gladly pay another €39 if the editor were to gain the same kind of auto-indentation for C and Objective-C that Xcode has.

Just another +1… I think it’s a fine idea.

09 November 2006

by JBrickley

Agreed, I say, Fork it! Take the 1.5 version and keep it around for a long while. i.e. fix bugs but no new features.

Move new production changes to a 2.0 branch and let fly with all the Leopard glory that is to be had!

If you decide to charge for 2.0, I too would buy it. I would not even have to think about it, I be reaching for my credit card as fast as possible! Heck, you should at least accept donations!

Leopard. 2.0. Definitely.

I will upgrade to leopard some weeks or month after the first official release and I see no problems why not making textmate 2 leopard only. the 1.x version runs perfect on pre systems and if the upgrade for textmate is free, where is the problem. for me as student I like software which gives me the chance to upgrade free or for a really low price. and I love textmate, I am only sad about the fact, that I didn’t find out about textmate one year ago ;) where I hat do code a lot of stuff in different languages with hundred different IDEs :-D

thanks a lot for the edu discount. I love textmate

09 November 2006

by Bill Curr

I am a little worried about the HARDWARE requirements of Leopard, and if I will be able to run it on some time honored machines and laptops I have now, that are doing well with Tiger. I guess worst case scenario is I keep TextMate 1.5 on those machines. Do you think updated and newly created BUNDLES would be cross-version? Also, here is a thought… if Textmate 1.5 will be frozen, perhaps at a later date (year or so?) you could make the 1.5 version FREE to the less cutting edge, to seed another generation of Textmate users, or perhaps the curious. I see a lot of developers giving away OS 9 versions of the software for free. thanks for the free 2.0 update, but I would be willing to pay for an upgrade too, even though I pay with it out of my own pocket and not with “the boss’s money.” Of course there will be leopard to pay for and then new hardware to perhaps run it sigh And even though developers are on the cutting edge, their clients are often not. I still have clients who want me to test code in IE 5 for the Mac on OS9. Oh yeah, they are out there!

As a relatively new TextMate user, I’ll also voice my assent to Leopard + TextMate 2.0. It’s always a good thing for a developer to be working from the best available platform. And I certainly don’t envision myself going too long before upgrading to OS X 10.5. Only regret? The possibility of the kid who’s just getting into code, toting an old PowerBook running Panther, missing out on TextMate because he couldn’t give it a try. So whatever you do, be sure to consider keeping the 1.x version available for the less advantaged among us.

I’m happy for you to make 2.0 Leopard-only as long as it’s Universal. I’d be very unhappy if it mandated Intel.

Simon

09 November 2006

by Jerry WIlcox

I’ve looked at TextMate on and off and think it is about time to take another look. I have no problem with 2.0 being Leopard only as long as

(1) a stable 1.x version is available for a considerable amount of time.

(2) 2.0 does not require Intel.

On my sandbox machine, I’m an early adopter and am an ADC member, so it will be Leopard soon (but not Intel).

My production machine will stay on Tiger until I am very sure that Leopard is stable and works with all the apps I need to use regularly.

I’m currently trying to plan for an upgrade to Intel-based Macs, but cost consideration will probably delay that for a while yet.

Indeed a good decision. Looking forward to the new version :)

You just convinced me to upgrade to Leopard. :)

My concern is like Wil Shipley said, you survive on upgrade revenue. I’m sure sales are strong but really, you already spent how much of your life going from 1.5 to 2.0? You really need to charge an upgrade fee next time (I understand it would be hard for this time because you already proclaimed it).

I believe that Wil Shipley or someone else said at the “Evening at Adler” event, backwards compatibility is not worth it because most of the customers for new software are those with the latest OS X.

Since you’ll be forefeiting a significant source of upgrade revenue, let’s get this thing localized before the 2.0 release for Japanese. Depends on the workload (number of strings involved) but I’d be happy to help a little with Japanese localization before it ships and I’m sure others who’ve been waiting for CJK will be glad to contribute as well.

At first I had planned to write that I didn’t think a text editor needed to be so fancy that it would require Leopard - I like TextMate because it is very powerful without being bogged down with useless eye candy. Then I read the post and saw that you’re really trying to clean up the underlying code, not make it some kind of 3D, bloated thing. I suppose I’ll buy Leopard now, if only to keep current in TextMate!

Stop in and say hi Allan, we’ll buy you a beer.

Forget about v2.0 and Leopard, I would pay you if you gave me “block undo” feature right now.

If Leopard offers features that you’re currently incapable of including, I think you should definitely move ahead with your plan. As you say, TextMate is built specifically for early adopters and other geeky types, and they will upgrade.

I would, however, like to see you keep bug fixing version 1 and keep it available for purchase/download (perhaps even at a reduced price) for people who haven’t upgraded their OS yet. Then, if nothing else, they won’t feel wholly abandoned.

I suspect the folks who will get hurt most by this are the developers who work in corporations that don’t permit rapid upgrading. At my company, we are only just now upgrading to MacOS X at all! While I think we’re an exceptionally slow upgrader, we aren’t entirely unrepresentative of corporate America.

10 November 2006

by chadseld

You will not be the only one going leopard-only. There are a lot of new developer API’s (like core animation) that will entice others to follow you. You are not the only developer in this position.

Sadly, I will not be an early adopter. My Mac is provided by my employer, and they’re rather slow in upgrading operating systems – Heck, we just got Tiger in July.

I’m glad 2.0 is on the horizon, even if it’ll be some time before I’ll have the pleasure of using it. My only request is that you please, PLEASE keep a Tiger-compatible version available for download and purchase. I’m slowly converting my co-workers to the joy that is TextMate (they all currently use BBEdit), and they’re in the same boat as me regarding OS. Not having the program available for them to download and purchase would make converting them all but impossible.

Anyway, thanks for the pure, undiluted awesome that is TextMate!

I’m looking forward to what leopard and the next textmate have to offer. I’m even more excited that it’s a free upgrade!!! Textmate has been one of the best apps on the mac and I’m glad to know it will be utilizing the latest concepts available.

textmate 2.0 would be the one and only reason for me to switch from 10.3.x to leopard …

I for one am all for cutting off backward compatibility, particularly with an audience such as “developers” where being on the cutting edge is so necessary anyway.

I hope you enjoy your time here in New Zealand. We have a group of Mac enthusiasts and a group of Rails enthusiasts here in Wellington that meet regularly; if you’ve got a dead evening here I’m sure both’d love to see you :)

+1 Vote for TM2.0 Leopard only. I want you to have unhindered development of the best text editor out there.

10 November 2006

by Daniel Peebles

I support Leopard-only TM 2.0! I’m excited at better CJK support, and more wonderfulness. I started using TextMate two days ago and bought a license yesterday, cause it was so good :P and I’m so glad I won’t have to pay for an upgrade :)

Rock on 2.0

Go with Leopard!

10 weeks! grrr…er..mmm.. have a great time!

loepard only is OK. textmate rules the world.

I heard about an app call musicmate while reading an article in macdevcenter. is there a link to musicmate?

11 November 2006

by Marcus Brenneman

It’s been said many times, I realize, but I also want to voice my support for your decision regarding TextMate 2.0. Even if it weren’t a free upgrade, I’d pay for it all over again; TextMate saves me far more than it’s cost in my productivity. Thank you, Allan, for the best text editor anywhere.

Belatedly dropping in to say: I agree, make the leap and don’t look back. It’s not like the older versions will stop working.

12 November 2006

by Greg Harewood

I’ve bought every previous version from the public beta onward. In fact, I made the public beta my main OS from day one because it fitted my needs so much better than MacOS 9.

However - I’m seriously loathe to drop Classic. I understand that Leopard will not include Classic, even on PPC machines, and I not sure that I am ready to give up the convenient accessibility to documents in old formats.

Why would Apple do this to us? Will someone fill in the gap?

12 November 2006

by Dan Kelley

It’s boring to agree with the crowd, but I do. Go for it, Allan. (And charge us for 2.0 if you wish. Charge half price for current users, if for some reason you still suggest 0% of the cost, whereas so many users suggest 100% of the cost.)

I’ll adopt Leopard as soon as it’s released, I wonder what developer using TM won’t do that as well. Go for it, speed up development and focus on what makes TM 2.0 the best text editor for OS X!

Enjoy your days off, cheers from Sicily!

That’s a shame, because Textmate will use a lot of customers. I don’t plan to update my system anytime soon, and that would pain me to see that I could use an updated version of Textmate.

I’m fully in favour of this decision, for what it’s worth. From what people have been saying, it sounds like Leopard is going to be a pretty exciting release technically, and I can hardly wait to see both the new tech included in it, and the way in which people start to exploit it.

Here’s to TextMate leading the charge!

And speaking of charging, I would happily pay the going rate per release, in fact I’d happily pay more than that. I make money every day with TextMate. I look forward to sitting down at my Mac to write code because it’s always such a pleasant experience, thanks in part to Allan’s blood, sweat and tears. I’d part with mad coin for that. Mad.

Colleagues of mine (cartographers) use packages every day worth around AUD$10k, and yet it’s uninspiring software that they have to fight with. Software that knows how to be your friend is rare and precious.

go for it mate! I fully understand where your coming from and am always pushing my clients and friends to ditch backwards compatibility and “evolve” as it were.

have fun in NZ, its quite beautifull.

Make it Leopard only. Please!

Yet another for to go with Leopard only!

I am an early adopter of Vista, Leopard and other new technologies. I encourage the dedication of the TextMate developers to deliver a stable, but feature-filled developer’s editor, and am completely aware of the advantages of ditching backwards compatibility.

The Core technologies and inclusion of better debugging technologies which are not centric to just assembly programmers pave the way for a better editor capable of doing anything you want with regards to text manipulation, while still being lightweight and capable of extensibility. Objective-C 2.0 with Garbage Collection will make applications faster, less bug-ridden, and will give developers extra time to make programs more shiny, integrated, and more useful.

The word “free” is quite a big deal, it saves many of us 40-50 dollars which we can use on Leopard. I have already evaluated iChat4, XCode 3, and absolutely love Spaces and Time Machine, and would look forward to some sort of integration of TextMate with Spaces. Apple likes TextMate, if your award is any indication, and with this free upgrade path, I’m sure Apple will give you props for helping them further propogate the next great release of Mac OS X.

Does this mean getting japanese support will be easier for you to do? I’d choose Leopard + japanese support over backward compatibility any day!

Think of all those Ruby developers in japan looking for a decent text editor! That alone should underwrite TM2.0 development!

Leopard! The way to go.

Greetings from NZ! Visit me when (if) you are in Christchurch.

As long as TM 1.5 still works in Tiger I don’t see the big deal in requiring Leopard for 2.0. If it means developing TM will be faster in 10.5, and give us more options, by all means do it.

Yea, I agree with Allan.

Time is precious - spend it wisely and go with Leopard only

15 November 2006

by Scott M.

Another vote for Leopard only! Can’t wait!

I am wholly supportive, although I’d be happy to pay for the upgrade.

I’m nervous about your generosity - I’d rather have you fat and happy and thinking about nothing but TextMate. I suggest you make the upgrade price 20 € but optional. I think you’d be surprised. It’d be a fun experiment anyway.

I was on the fence about purchasing TextMate. Nothing wrong with the app, and some of the features are very nice (I’m still in the learning curve) but historically have been very happy with XCode. However, two things about your recent post make me certain that I will buy it–

2.0 is a free upgrade. This lets me buy it now, and short circuits my evaluation cycle. I know textmate is good enough for me now, and making 2.0 a free upgrade removes the “but is it worth the cost of buying it twice?” worry.

Making 2.0 Leapard only puts me over the top as well. As someone who has worked on Cocoa applications, I know how frustrating it is supporting multiple OSes. For typical shareware your decision might be a problem, but given your core audience, I think this is not an issue… and as a software developer, having you focused on features and using the latest and greatest from Apple is a big advantage for TextMate.

So, three cheers for your decision. Enjoy New Zealand, its one fantastic country.

15 November 2006

by Jonathan Grenier

I’m a registered user and I would say just go with 10.5. People using TextMate are mostly developers and these people will likely get 10.5 within a month or 2 after launch at most.

Personally, I’m already running the ADC seed of 10.5 on a test Mac and will almost certainly upgrade the day of release so I absolutly don’t mind.

Consider this another vote for a Leopard only TextMate 2.0.

Also, those of us that want to send more money Alan’s way, why not buy a college student (or another developer) an official license for TextMate in lieu of the upgrade fee? The money still gets to Alan and the TextMate community gets larger.

If I am not mistaken, the Core Animation API in Leopard will finally allow TextMate to include a native fullscreen text display. Given the number of people who have requested such a feature in TextMate, it’s nice that Allan may be able to take advantage of Apple’s API to make it easier to implement. Core Text will probably allow for some nice features but I just am unable to imagine their application in a text editor. It seems like Pages and Keynote will benefit the most from that API.

As a writer who uses TextMate for my drafts, I am really looking forward to 2.0 and the possibility of a Leopard-enabled fullscreen mode.

This is a good decision. And… another reason to switch to Leopard ;-)

F

Just to add my $0.02… I’ll be one of those idiots camping out at the Apple store when Leopard is available, so your plan sounds good to me.

If you feel that this decision will significantly benefit TextMate development - then I support it 100%. I want TextMate to be the best code editor it can be.

Leopard++

Leopard + TextMate all the way. Not only because I’ll be upgrading, but also because I want to see TextMate leap ahead in usability and features. I’m grateful to hear it’ll be a free upgrade, especially considering I bought a license just recently. Thanks!

Allan,

Thanks for a wicked editor - and if 2.0 is Leopard only - that’s just dandy. Save yourself some grief, ditch the backwards compatibility, and have an awesome time in NZ.

15 November 2006

by Jorge Asch

Go for it. Altough I would like to ask for something to be added to the wishlist. The only thing that makes me switch back and forth with BBEdit, is the ability BBEdit has to work directly with a FTP server to open and save files, keep bookmaks, and such. I would love for Textmake to work with other things besides local and network folders.

+1 for pushing forward.

I maintain backwards compatibility in my WordPress plugins as long as it is “free” or very very cheap. But if the newest version allows me to do something that I couldn’t do in earlier versions, stragglers will be out of luck.

I won’t be upgrading to Leopard out of the gate… but I’ll upgrade once Leopard starts shipping on new MacBooks. I figure I’ll ditch the G4 PowerBook and Tiger all at once.

Apple usually ships new OS X updates to your door exactly on release day, so that’s when I’ll have Leopard. I do not give a crap about backwards compatibilty.

What is this “backwards compatibility” you speak of? TextMate 2 and Leopard all the way, baby!

FWIW, CoreText is in 10.4 It works fine to boot. A lot of the cocoa stuff was rewritten/reworked to sit on CoreText in 10.4 along with ATSUI/general font stuff.

CoreText in leopard is basically CoreText 2.0. This is all stuff I independently found out when tiger was released to the masses, FWIW.

CoreText! CoreText! CoreText!

I say go for it! Especially if it gets us users split text panes sooner! ;-)

I’m a PHP / Ruby / SQL developer but also maintain a little Cocoa app for use in our company, it’s a irritating not being able to use Tiger only Cocoa features because some staff won’t upgrade. But hey, that’s the userbase I have to work with… sounds like yours has spoken!

16 November 2006

by Sean Murphy

I really believe you’re doing the right thing here Allan. This will result in a better product, the ability to tap into new and exciting APIs, and allow you to focus on innovative features unique to TM.

I am ready to go for 2.0!!!

Let us not forget fsevents on leopard as well…

Another “Go for it!” from a happy TextMate user. :)

17 November 2006

by Abhi Beckert

Every hour spent making a product backwards compatible is an hour that could be spent elsewhere. ;-)

I’m glad to see another developer who doesn’t listen to all the idiots who think an OS upgrade is about flashy new UI elements.

Good of you to be so open. People shouldn’t forget that if they stay with 10.4 (as many will when their machines run out of horsepower) that their current Textmate won’t work any the less well. They’re getting their value. For those who move to the new OS then a shiny new Textmate will just be part of the fun.

I agree with you. Textmate is mostly used by developers. I do not think a developer will not upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5. New OS appears, then developers has need to test there newest software on the most current OS platform. On the other hand, if some one just use TextMate for some simple tasks, in some manner. Or they have no need to move to new OS to develop new softwares. I think they also do not need the new features of textmate 2.0. Current version textmate is so good already. Isn’t it?

19 November 2006

by Ryan Allen

I’d be happy with that. Almost all Apple people I know upgrade their OS as soon as the new one comes out. I’m still running PowerPC so I hope it’s universal :)

19 November 2006

by Donnacha

Okay, after all these people begging you to take their money, how about this for a different twist:

After introducing 2 as a free upgrade, astonish everyone by re-releasing 1.5 as free, non-time-limited software.

Apart from giving you reams of free publicity and massively expanding your basic userbase, you’ll get a lot more sales; Textmate is clearly software that people, once they’ve experienced it, are more than happy to pay for and, frankly, very few regular users will be able to resist the temptation to upgrade, especially if it means they get to unleash all that extra Leopard goodness.

Good work deserves to be rewarded, we all agree with that, but it doesn’t necessarily have to mean charging each individual more - better to have more people paying the same price. This jump to Leopard provides the perfect opportunity to pull that off.

19 November 2006

by Mike Roselius

I support this 100%. And I know you aren’t even suggesting this as a possibility - but….if Leopard only = more time for new features - perhaps that would translate to a Windows version?? Some of us have to go to work - and live on non-mac systems. I think most of us pray for the chance that someday a windows version might appear….just a though.

Most importantly - thanks for asking! Even if your mind is made up - it’s a very generous gesture to ask for the input.

I can see your points, but I have an older powerbook running Tiger. It’s already running slow and I think Leopard will kill it.

I use TextMate all the time. I understand why you would want to dump support for it, but I really hope you carry on support for us Tiger users.

As I’m an early adopter too, I don’t mind either way. If making it 10.5-only improves the “overall quality”, maintainability etc., that’s probably a good decision.

What I write with TextMate are Ruby programs and blog entries, which both are quite OS-Version agnostic anyway.

20 November 2006

by Luke Scott

I can understand not supporting Panther and before. But is supporting Tiger really that big of a deal? Tiger is made for the Intel Macs…

I could care less about Panther… But if Tiger has CoreText, as mentioned previous, would it be possible to keep support for Tiger at least?

I just don’t have $100-$150 floating around. I will be upgrading, but not right away. Especially lately with my trouble with work… I’m just having a hard time affording stuff lately.

I used TextMate for the full length of the trial and I seriously had to buy it because I needed to keep using it. Usually I’m on my PC using Dreamweaver (for the editor, I hate the WYSIWYG stuff), but I’m on my MacBook 99.99% of the time now. I can say that with TextMate + Cyberduck, it has given me a hard push to switching to Mac. Nothing compares…

If you can’t support Tiger at all… I’m content with 1.5 for a while. If you can make bug fixes to it every once in a while that would be cool.

Thanks all for the very supportive words! This has certainly made it much easier for me to take the full step and forget about supporting less than Leopard.

To address a few issues raised:

CoreText is just one of at least half a dozen things I want to use.

TextMate 1.5 will remain available for non-Leopard users, as for the price, it is generally a bad idea to pre-announce that your software becomes free after a given date, and it would ruin the suggested surprise ;)

2.0 being free: yeah, probably it is not the smartest business move, and I do have some long-term plans of hiring people, but sales are good and not slowing, and I expect 2.0 will give rise to a lot of new sales. Also, I have actually had on the license policy page that 2.0 will be free for a year or so (as I initially expected this to come much sooner, but my ambitions keep rising).

Leopard for just an editor (comment mostly seen elsewhere): probably 80% of the code base is not directly related to text editing, but is doing work for the supporting application. This is where many of the new Leopard features will come into play. Much though will also be just to make things easier for me, not everything will translate to new features per se.

21 November 2006

by Luke Scott

Just a suggestion: You should make the license based on a yearly plan where after a year a customer has to renew their license to obtain any upgrades. After it expires they can only obtain the version out just before it expired.

I just bought TextMate and I am very happy with it. I would not be happy if a few months later 2.0 came out and I had to buy it again. However, if I had it for an entire year I would gladly “renew” it to support your work.

A few features I want to mention that would make TextMate even better:

Tabbed interface like FireFox where you can have either multiple windows or a single window with tabs in it (or two windows with different tabs, etc).

Line number next to each line. At the moment I can use Apple-L to find a line, but if I was working in a general area it would be neat.

Built in FTP: To me this is an extremely important feature (being able to edit files on an FTP server). I currently use Cyberduck for this, and it certainly fills the void. Not saying you should put FTP into TextMate at all, but it would be neat if they could integrate something into TextMates interface some how so when you hit save it would tell you the progress and have a file menu in a retractable side bar or something. Just throwing stuff out there.

My last question/suggestion: Do you have a message board? If not Invision Power Board is a very good board to use. I know that some of the developers use TextMate.. That’s how I found out about it :)

Go for a Leopard-only version. I’ll surely upgrade to Leopard within a few weeks of its release anyway.

Keep up the great work with the app! Thanks.

TextMate 2.0 is reason enough for me to buy 10.5 for my home computres and demand my company upgrades my Macintosh there. I’ll follow TextMate to whatever OS X you bring it.

@ Luke Scott. I’m not sure if I’m miss-reading you at this late hour but it seems to me you’re looking for features that already exist.

[b]Tabbed interface[/b]: drag/drop a folder on to TextMates dock icon - you can then right-click on any items in the drawer and choose “Open in New Window”. If you drag a folder form the drawer to TextMate’s dock icon it will open that folder in a new window with a new drawer.

[b]Line number next to each line: [/b] In the view menu, under gutter, choose “line numbers”. Alternatively pressing Command + Option + L will toggle the display of line numbers in the gutter.

[b]FTP Integration:[/b] Replace CyberDuck with Panic’s excellent Transmit. There is a preference to have double-clicking a file open it in TextMate. Saving changes to the file will re-upload the file displaying progress in Transmits standard upload queue.

As for a discussion forum: click the community link in the menu bar of this site. There is a standard mailing list (which tends to be a more developer-ish way of discussing software), a wiki, and an IRC channel.

Well I’m a Powerbook user and will continue to do so for a couple of years, I will be upgrading to leopard only if there is a speed improvement for G4 systems, otherwise I’ll stay with Tiger. But I believe you should concentrate on making TM2 for leopard. The TM 1.5 functions do the trick for me :).

22 November 2006

by Fredrik Åslund

Yes! Go for it! As you say, I think most of the people using TextMate are early adopters and they will get Leopard when it hits the shelves (I know I will). Keep the good work up!

22 November 2006

by Luke Scott

@Colin: Ah! There they are! Thanks :D!

The FTP Transmit does not work for me at all. I used it for a brief period, but for some reason when I upload a folder and choose “Merge” files that get replaced some how get mutilated (Where some php code is printing to the buffer). Cyber duck does not do this to me, and I like the outline feature.

The Project Drawer feature is neat, but is there a way to use tabs without using it? Any other way to open the “Project Drawer”. Would be neat to use the tabs regardless of their location. And how would you do this with files on an FTP server?

22 November 2006

by TheBoyKen

Hi Allan,

Another vote for the “go for it all your users are early adopters and/or developers in any case” opinion.

Enjoy NZ, make sure you do some of the following if you get a chance:

South island: go Bungy jumping in Queenstown (where it was invented), check out the Fox / Franz Joseph glaciers, Milford Sound, whale watching in Kaikoura

North island: see the volcano and Maori settlement in Rotarua, check out the beaches on the Coromandel and Bay of Islands.

The buses over there are excellent… the drivers even give you a tourist spiel as you pass interesting places and let you stop for photos etc! Everyone’s very welcoming, wish we were more like it here in the UK…

TheBoyKen

This is exactly why I love TextMate. Go for it, Allan!

Keep up the good work :)

24 November 2006

by Eugene Ray

10.5 is inevitable as any OS upgrade. So, I say welcome to the 2.0 :)

Hi, I’m a new customer (I register my Textmate last night).

You have your reason to make “only leopard” version and i think those reasons are very good. Too complex code can bring many problems to customers (US!) too.

I will upgrade to 2.0 when I upgrade to Leopard, before that I will use 1.5 version. It works very good and I like it.

Ofcourse people who dont have leopard can use (and buy) old version, right?

damn, ten weeks of vacation! That must be nice!

27 November 2006

by Art Schumer

Yes, charge more (if you have too) depend on Leopard and build the bestest, coolest, Mac only text editor in the world. Forget the few that whinge about having the update to Leopard. These people are not the majority. We want to move forward and embrace the new technology. Go for it man! Go for the greatness. Ten weeks of vacation… you deserve it. Have a great time and come back refreshed and ready to CODE!

Thanks for the recommendations TheBoyKen!

Wow. I am absolutely blown away by how many people seem to think that moving to Leopard ONLY is a good idea at this time, given that Leopard isn’t even out yet, and won’t be for some time. I guess “early adopters” don’t care about everyone else. ;-)

Are all of you able to willy-nilly upgrade your OS without a care as to your existing tools? Come on! As a serious developer, there is a -huge- cost to upgrading my development machine(s), and I do not do it lightly. Especially with web development these days, where each development machine is essentially a server with the added ability to edit files. Major system upgrades can mean days of work upgrading all the respective server-side software (if versions are even available!), and then upgrading all our code due to compatibility issues with the new server software.

I have no problem in general for cutting off support for older OS versions, but most responsible developers continue support for at least the one single previous OS version. Otherwise you’re giving no time to migrate their OS, and dis-incenting new users who will be coming to check out your 2.0 product and are not already running Leopard.

By the tone of the users above, I guess I’m in the minority - just find it so hard to believe the percentage of people who seem to not care about Tiger, which btw, is still the cutting edge OS today, and will be for the near future.

An aside, as a developer for 30+ years, changing editors is a Big Deal, and this is the first product in many years that looks like it will make me change. Yes, it’s that good (with the one incomprehensible flaw of no block-undo; please please please fix that, if only as an option!!)

Oh, and regarding the lack of block-undo, could you pretty pretty please fix that in the 1.5 codebase? Since there’s no chance I can upgrade to Leopard in the near future? ;-)

From what I’ve been reading, I’m not the only one who wants/needs this ability. Its the one thing that’s holding me back from making the change (and ponying up).

30 November 2006

by Rick Gigger

Two points:

1) I will be buying and installing Leopard the day it comes out. 2) I finally made the switch from windows back to the mac for all my software development after I found TextMate. Before that there just weren’t any good code editors.

So given that I was willing to make the switch from windows (back) to mac just to use text mate I sure would make the switch from Tiger to Leopard even if I wasn’t already planning on doing it anyway.

Seriously I spend about 80% of my dev time in my editor, I want it to be as good as possible. That is my biggest concern.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about Leopard, based on its features I wouldn’t pay Apple $5 for it, much less $129. It annoys me a little when developers assume end users are as fanatic about getting on the upgrade treadmill as they are, when average users frankly have much better uses for $129 than “innovations” like Spaces. But given TextMate is targeted at developers, this is a unique case. I’m perfectly happy with TextMate 1.5 and OS X 10.3 so I’m not complaining if 2.0 is 10.5-only.

All for a 2.0 that is Leopard only. Especially since you have mentioned that this is a free update for existing users. If it can cut down on complexity, which will save you time to do other cool stuff with TextMate I wouldn’t even have to think about it. Go! :)

Drop pre-Leopard support. It’s the right thing to do. For those who don’t upgrade their machine/OS… If you are going to skimp on hardware and your OS and have it frozen in time, that’s fine. But don’t expect new apps to cater to you. If you’re not happy being left behind, there is a perfectly good copy of TextMate 1.x available for use that should keep you satisfied.

The caveat here is that you should keep a 1.x version around for these users, and try to keep it as “bug free” as possible for as long as possible (I think a year after the 2.0 release is fair).

just for the record, I’d pay $129 for textmate…who cares about leopard. :)

16 December 2006

by Brad Oliver

As I understand it, the fully-functional TextMate being sold with the MacHeist bundle does not have a free upgrade path to 2.0, so you will miss out on some upgrade fees from those owners who do not move to 10.5.

Definitely go Leopard only. There are just so many great new things that Leopard introduces that you can take advantage of, that backward compatibility with Tiger will be such an annoyance. Also, as you said, most of your users are tech-savy and will most likely upgrade to Leopard pretty much as soon as its released; I know I will.

Excellent decision. I think most people don’t realize how high the cost for backwards compatibility is for the developer. But luckily many if not most TextMate users are developers themselves and (obviously) fully agree with you. Leopard looks like a fantastic upgrade for developers. Have fun in NZ! It is an amazing place. Definitely try to go on some multi-day hikes. If you are into that kind of thing.

As a developer, I’ll be moving to Leopard as soon as the ADC sends my disc. The latest OS and TextMate are crucial to my digital life, so I keep all my machines up to date with both.

I would suggest make the last pre-10.5 available at a reduced rate to those who won’t update, they can always pay the difference later to move on with the rest of us. Whether they are buying a regularly updated version of TM or not, it is still the best editor out there.

All the best - hope you’re enjoying your vacation!

29 December 2006

by Rick Robino

Any hope for modal addicts? It would be a dream come true to have a vi style editor outside of a shell context, something like ViLE. emacs is well represented in Mac editors, but nobody seems to be able to do vi - I’m sure that the demand is there.

Mmmmm…every coders dream. Ditch backwards compatibility. Salivating thinking about ditching compatibility for IE6 web developing :) Sounds good…go for it!

No problem with your decision.

But I’m seeing a drawback of non-OS software here: If textmate was free (I wish it was!), the Panther and Tiger fans (or the people which have a Mac but no money left - are there any?) could form a team and maintain the older 1.x versions, trying to include features from 2.0 as best as they can. You wouldn’t have to support it any more, and the supply would follow the demand automatically until everyone is on Leopard.

Any chance of making the 1.x sources free after 2.0 is out? :) I guess not. But I’m still proposing it.

I WILL NOT update to 10.5 Leopard. Why? Just because Apple wants to change there syntax and DESTROY the links between the version of OS X like they always do in a cheap and sleezy way to make you update your system. I am a PyObjC developer, so until that is updated, I won’t update. I can live without an overpriced Text Editor who just HAS to update because Apple wants them too.

02 January 2007

by Gargoyle

2.0 is gonna be Free!?!

Thank you Allan, Hope you are enjoying your holiday.

@Furies: Happy new year. Cheer up, dude.

@Gargoyle: It’s going to be a free update. Which still is pretty amazing.

02 January 2007

by Dataplume

I say go for it. Part of the reason I’m a Mac user is because Apple is cutting edge! I only expect the same from its 3rd party developers. Hell to be honest I expect more! Its not like your developing an operating system or anything! ;)

Keep the good stuff coming!

02 January 2007

by Dataplume

One more thing, I’m hoping to see an iTunes like interface improvement with a bluish side bar instead of a drawer. Is this a high priority for me? Not by a long shot. Textmate is a remarkable product and thats just one of those cool little interface changes that is being ushered in by Apple that I like but by no means makes or breaks the product.

Just to add to the chorus of voices saying, Leopard only TM2 is just fine with me. The less time you spend coding for an outdated OS, the more time goes into moving things forward, and that’s great.

Okay, so it’s probably already a done deal, with all the positive votes for making TextMate Leopard-only, but for whatever it’s worth, here are my two cents: I really want it to be Leopard-only, because I want it to be as good as possible. I love TextMate as it already is, but I don’t want to turn down new features or stability or speed of release, just to support old versions of OS X. I want the best possible editor, and I don’t want to fussing with backwards-compatibility to hinder that.

Well I know most folks are apparently upgrading right away, I’m not. I’m a power user/developer and I’m fine as long as the current version of TextMate is still supported and not abandonded just because OS X has an upgrade. I develop software as well, and the last thing I want to do (even if only 10%) is to forget the customers who have paid for my product. I’ll typically support the “new” version and one previous version of my products. So again I don’t really care how many people upgrade right away, some of us don’t. Just keep TextMate 1.x available with some support, after all it should not have many users since most are going to OS X 10.5.

Lately, I’ve been shaking trying to drop the cash for an ADC Select membership to get Leopard more quickly. XCode 3/Xray/IB 3 are worth the upgrade cost right there.

In terms of needing to get Leopard for TM 2.0, I think the chances are that I’ll be comfortably upgraded for a while before it’s released. Bring it on. Holding on to the past is for HP-UX users.

01 February 2007

by milkfilk

I’m in the “yay camp”. Leopard might also provide per-app Time Machine versioning. Undo after save or local SCM type stuff.

02 February 2007

by AnalogFile

Leopard will have many nice new features for the users, but most importantly it brings in BIG news for developers. The new Objective C alone (expecially the GC) would justify the decision of targeting Leopard only. Therefore go ahead.

However I’d suggest you to be carefull on a fiew details:

1) keep the app universal: many PPCs will be in wide use for a lot of time even past Leopard is out.

2) do not totally discontinue supporting Panther/Tiger: keep a pre 2.0 version online and even keep updating it (maybe not feature wise, but in the bugfixing sense).

3) “auto-update” smartly.

In other words, go for “Leopard only TextMate 2.0” but invest at least part of the time and effort this will save you into continued support of TextMate 1.x.

I can absolutely understand your decision to make TextMate 2 Leopard only and I have absolutely no problem with this at all. Looking forward to TextMate 2!!

15 February 2007

by Chris Griffin

I envy you! :-) Those of us that program for other markets are more a slave to older systems. Being a developer I will of course be on Leopard before is ships. I have used BBEdit for years. Maybe a decade, or maybe it just seems like that. I like BBEdit but I have come to like TextMate more. As I learn more about it’s capabilities I enjoy it even more. If I were in your place I would go for the Leopard features in a heartbeat!

Although I can agree with you and I will have no hard feeling, I am torn with the idea of leaving those who can’t upgrade behind. I develop on a Mac but it belongs to the company I work for and I don’t think they will be approving my upgrade anytime soon or even soon after Leopard comes out. So I guess I will have to stick with 1.5X until I can afford to buy my own Mac.

Thanks for a fantastic piece of software non the less!!!!

If FTP can be built in to 2.0, that’ll be a big incentive for me to buy Leopard.

I like to tweak my web pages directly on the server and still use Textwrangler for this. Get FTP sorted and I’ll be able to put some flesh on the last of those Bare Bones!

Good to hear. This means the development cycle will be a lot quicker and that’s something we can all look forward to.

Yes. You wouldn’t have to support it any more, and the supply would follow the demand automatically until everyone is on Leopard.

09 April 2007

by William J

“CoreText which hopefully is free of the various ATSUI rendering bugs (like ignoring your drawn bold/italic font variant unless you flush your font cache regularly, or not doing proper anti-alias on bright text with a dark background), etc.”

Don’t count too much on that :(

21 April 2007

by Bill K

Couldn’t agree more. I support your decision!

28 May 2007

by Matthew

TextMate is a fantastic product already.

People who choose not to upgrade aren’t losing any functionality.

They still have the best text editor on any platform at any price.

Since I somehow doubt you’re going to erase all previously existing copies of TM from our machines, I think it’s ok to move forward. Those of us who aren’t bleeding edge will catch up eventually.

Go for the garbage collection :) I understand your choice as a developer :D

Go with Leopard. As a cocoa developer, make your life a little easier. With that time you gain I would love it if you added to usability and the interface.

I’m a student and I will get myself a Mac when I graduate this spring. By that time Leopard and Textmate 2.0 will be out. :-) Go for Leopard– I’ll be purchasing your product!

First reason I’ve seen that makes me want to upgrade to Leopard. Well written. Keep up the good work.

Agreed mate - I’m totally onto leopard and most of my mates who use textmate are also going to be in a shop at 6pm to pick it up. Here’s to dropping backwards compatibility!

(wish I could do the same with my websites though :p)

Hi first off I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to make TextMate compatible with anything older than Leopard. But I have a quick question, will you be keeping a copy of TextMate 1 around for some of us who still have systems with Tiger?

Myles: At least that would be the sensible thing to do :)

Any teasers for us on Textmate 2? :D

16 November 2007

by Harvey Swik

“There is also Objective-C 2.0 with garbage collection, I don’t think anyone realizes how much work it is to manually unbind stuff from nibs when disposing them to avoid retain cycles (and thus memory leaks). “

Check out NSViewController if you haven’t already. I think you’ll find it does this for you without forcing you to move to GC.

If you are “lame” for not being backward-compatible with Panther/Tiger, I am doubly lame because I don’t even like to test my web designs outside of Safari. (I like it better for rendering, etc.) Keep up the good work (coming from a day one early adopter of Leopard: http://wd2.darkroastwebs.com/?p=37).

TextMate is for software developers mainly, so your clientel should understand why your “Leo only” approach is the right way to go. I certainly do.

I would upgrade to Leopard for TextMate 2.0, it’s that simple.

I would go even further, If I would be a mac developer, I would buy a Mac just to use Text Mate, it’s that simple.

I say go for it. I ‘upgraded’ to Leopard (Leper) and stuck it out as the patches came out (and still do).

Making TextMate 2.0 Leopard only will make 2.0 that much better. It’s a non-issue, you have to do it.

b/.

24 April 2008

by brad.tittle

Ignore anyone who whines

Anyone whining has never spent three days trying to figure out why a straightforward call to a straightforward function in the API didn’t work, only to find out that you have to coerce the handle. The handle was already the right type, but if you didn’t coerce it overtly in the call, it tanked.

I saw one person whining about not being able to use tab to indent multiple columns and having to learn command-[. I embraced TM because of everything else it gave me. Command T and Command Shift-T alone make it worthwhile. I admit it took me 4 or 5 “Tab, oops, Command-Z” before I started using Command-[, but I got over it.

I look forward to Version 2.0. I have upgraded to Leopard, but I did it for Time Machine and other cool features. Time Machine makes up for many of my bad programming habits.

29 April 2008

by Carlos

Any news? When will be the 2.0 Leopard version available? Which new features provides?

Yes, Why only for Leopard? Make sure your have a good reason.

Forget about backward compatibility, that’s a non-issue for an app like TextMate, but please… by the time TextMate 2.0 comes out, make sure it’s compatible with 10.6… or 10.7? ;)

Cheers on this decision. 1.x will always work on 10.4. I hope you enjoy the new tools in 10.5- we can’t wait to see what you do with them. I wish more apps would adopt this strategy!

Forget about Tiger! Lets move forward…

Great work! Good work!

Any updates on TextMate 2.0?

I think Leopard-only is totally reasonable, and even “Snow Leopard”-only if there is a benefit (say, use of multiple processors). There is no reason why you should support OSes that Apple no longer supports.

Make the older version available for users of the older OSes.

I know you have announced that you will not charge for an upgrade, but I think you have every right to… you are putting a lot of effort into support of the existing program, and the update and redesign of the new program.

I agree. You should charge for the upgrade to 2.0. You deserve it, man. What an awesome editor!

And screw backwards compatibility. The TextMate you make today should be for systems out today. The TextMate you made yesterday covers the systems that were running yesterday.

04 September 2008

by Still Waiting

Still waiting for more news on 2.0!

I am very excited for an improved Textmate as the current version is showing its age. But I cannot help but wonder if Textmate 2 is vaporware?

This article above was written 2 years ago and Textmate is only a text editor. There is no reason to justify such a long development schedule for such a simple application when there are so many thousands of developers eagerly waiting for an upgrade. Many of whom are waiting with credit cards in hand.

I really hope to see a Textmate 2 before the competition offers up something better. It would be a shame to see Textmate 2 eclipsed by a competitor. Come on Alan, don’t let them beat you to the punch.

Thumbs up on Leopard only!

I just did a web search for Textmate 2.0 hoping to hear news about it. I wasn’t really expecting to stumble across a 2 year old artcle talking about it.

I love Textmate, and I desperately want it to be upgraded, particularly to introduce a remote projects (over FTP) feature. I would pay a good amount for Textmate+Remote projects.

Look forward to hearing any news on development.

for the remote projects do this :

get sshfs and MacFUSE - and install reTextMate.

(or transmit using TM as external editor works well too)

06 November 2008

by Michael Flynn

So is version 2.0 vaperware? It seems that version 2.0 is MIA. I see that BBEdit keeps upgrading but nary a word from textmate. I was looking forward to version 2 and all of its features 2 years ago.

19 December 2008

by Daniel Wood

Michael Flynn:

Google returns 10600 results for “Textmate 2.0 vaperware”. I think its safe to say that it may be just that. Over 2 years with no release?

Sigh!

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. I remember when I jumped on the machiest deal for this, hoping 2.0 would be around the corner. Look where we are now.

30 December 2008

by Michael Kumm

Chunked Undo is what I am waiting for most of all - until then I use BBedit even though I have a paid version of Textmate just sitting there…. waiting… How about an early release candidate? You can send it to me, I won’t tell :)

Just googling textmate 2.0… could you possibly blog about when we can expect 2.0 or at least about what’s happening?

Just a few words like: I don’t have the time right now; it’s proving more difficult than expected, I’m waiting for more people to move to Leopard, etc.

Most importantly “2.0 may be another X months/years away. So check back then.”

Frank: For now there is the TextMate 2.0 FAQ.