OS X Apple using games to push OS X upgrades

[tbuddha]

I tried to download Sid Meier's Railroads (ver 1.0.1) from the Apple App Store, but it wouldn't let me, because it said I was still running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8), and I needed to have at least OS X 10.7.5 to run the game. I found the same version of Railroads, ver 1.0.1, on Amazon at the same price, and it works just fine. The Amazon download specified that OS X 10.6.8 was the minimum.

Am I wrong in thinking Apple is over specifying the necessary OS X just to make us think older versions are less useful.

 

[Mackilroy]

It's probably a limitation the developer imposed when moving the product to the App Store. Stuff like that happens on occasion.

 

[antonis]

I don't think Apple is the one that decides the h/w and s/w requirements of every single app on their store. It is most probably submitted by the s/w author.

Besides, what's the use ? 10.7.x is also old (i.e. not sold on app store). If they really wanted to benefit that way, they'd push people to download 10.8.

 

[Cougarcat]

In general, it's because Apple essentially abandons older OS releases except for the occasional security patches, and many games rely on the latest graphics drivers.

Railroads sounds a bit different though, perhaps eddieduck can chime in. It might have to do with sandboxing, all apps need to be sandboxed now and 10.6 doesn't support it.

 

[Wardenski]

If Apple won't support its own OS then why should developers?

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

I tried to download Sid Meier's Railroads (ver 1.0.1) from the Apple App Store, but it wouldn't let me, because it said I was still running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8), and I needed to have at least OS X 10.7.5 to run the game. I found the same version of Railroads, ver 1.0.1, on Amazon at the same price, and it works just fine. The Amazon download specified that OS X 10.6.8 was the minimum.

Am I wrong in thinking Apple is over specifying the necessary OS X just to make us think older versions are less useful.

Yeah it's an App Store thing, example, Otto Matic there requires OS X 10.6.6 Intel, whereas it came preinstalled on my old 1GHz G4 10.2 Jaguar iMac.

 

[Nermal]

Otto Matic there requires OS X 10.6.6 Intel

Well to be fair, that was the first version of OS X to actually have the App Store in the first place. If you're running an earlier OS then you wouldn't have access to the App Store to download the game.

 

[edddeduck]

I tried to download Sid Meier's Railroads (ver 1.0.1) from the Apple App Store, but it wouldn't let me, because it said I was still running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8), and I needed to have at least OS X 10.7.5 to run the game. I found the same version of Railroads, ver 1.0.1, on Amazon at the same price, and it works just fine. The Amazon download specified that OS X 10.6.8 was the minimum.

Am I wrong in thinking Apple is over specifying the necessary OS X just to make us think older versions are less useful.

It's nothing to do with Apple modifying min specs. For Railroads! we launched with 10.7.5 as the min OS due to a bug with Apple's HD3000 in 10.6.8.

As Mac App Store users usually don't read the small print you can get bad reviews from users who buy the game on unsupported cards even if we include the information in the game description. So we set the min spec to 10.7 as this OS is not effected by the issue.

For other stores post release we relaxed the rules and allowed users to install on 10.6.8 (but mentioning the HD3000 as unsupported) as it is easier to contact customers if they have issues, the Mac App Store we have no way of contacting customers to give them solutions to help with problems we just frustratedly look at bad reviews knowing if they only emailed us we could fix the problem.

Related to this other stores we can have a min spec listed on their sites but allow users to buy (and play after a warning) on an older OS, due to Apple's rules on the App Store the min spec once set means you cannot purchase the OS on older Mac's even at your own risk.

However that all said if you want to play games 10.6.8 is now getting too old to be supported, it's not because we don't want to it is just lacking many required OpenGL features and bug fixes that have been added to the OS in the last 2 to 3 years since 10.6.8 was the latest OS available.

Edwin