Apple has an unfortunate practice that is apparently a way to indirectly force users to upgrade: using certain C++ library features requires a macOS version released as recently as 2019. This is making it more difficult to develop LibreOffice as developers have to constantly keep these special cases in mind.
The cases known to me are:
- some aspects of the variant, optional, any and visit libraries require at least macOS 10.14 Mojave (released in Sep 2018).
- the filesystem library requires at least macOS 10.15 Catalina (released in Oct 2019)
I would like us to gradually start raising the minimum requirement, which for the latest LibreOffice 7.2 is 10.10 Yosemite (2014). This is what I came up with:
- LibO release in Feb 2022 → 10.12 Sierra (2016)
- LibO release in Aug 2022 → 10.13 High Sierra (2017)
- LibO release in Feb 2023 → 10.14 Mojave (2018)
- LibO release in Aug 2023 → 10.15 Catalina (2019)
There is no reliable market share data for versions 10.15 and newer due intentional changes by browser vendors, but fortunately there is data for the older ones. The current share of versions 10.10 to 10.14 is 20,25%. A year ago it was 38,88%. The current share of version 10.11 is 2.01%.
What do macOS users think of this plan?