What will happen when Cork drops an old system version?

At some point, it will happen

I’ve been doing my best to keep supporting macOS version 13. In terms of SwiftUI, however, that version is ancient.

By keeping Cork on macOS 13, it’s missing out on a lot of SwiftUI improvements, such as Observation (which dramatically speeds up UI updates) and Swift Data (which can be used to persist data, like tagged packages, in a native way).

So, at some point, I will have to drop macOS 13. What will happen to Cork on that system when that happens?

Do not panic!

Dropping support for a system version does NOT mean that Cork will stop working on that version. Quite contrary.

All it means is that in the future, a version of Cork will come out for macOS 13, and that will be the final version for that system version. It will keep working indefinitely, in accordance with Cork’s license.

It will just not receive any further updates. That’s all there is to it.

So, when will that happen?

I’m not sure yet. Like I write above, I’m doing my very best to keep Cork on macOS 13, even if it means missing out on essential SwiftUI features.

However, I might implement a feature that’s just not possible on macOS 13. And if I don’t figure out a workaround, I’ll fix up as many problems in that version I can, and then release it as a “final“ macOS 13 version, so users still on macOS 13 will have as good of an experience with that final version for the system as possible.