I have to agree completely with my fellow Qt customers here. Trolltech, or I suppose now it's Nok9a, has really dropped the ball here in stating that their policy is to only support Mac OS 10.6 in the Qt 4.6 release. Qt 4.5 is the latest shipping version of Qt and as such it must support the latest OS releases, i.e. it must support 10.6. It's not acceptable for us to tell our customers that our apps won't support 10.6 for an unspecified number of months in the future (i.e. until Qt 4.6 is released). As such, we as your customers don't find it acceptable that you (by you I mean Nokia as a whole) won't provide official 10.6 support in Qt until 4.6 is released – which doesn't even have a release date and might not be until next year for all we know.

You5 policy should be that the latest released version of Qt (4.5) will support the latest OS releases. Anything less is unacceptable to us, your customers.

The good thing here is that by and large Qt does support Snow Leopard just fine – even Qt 4.4.3 (which is what I'm using) supports Snow Leopard very well. The visual artifacts are really just cosmetic annoyances thqt don't affect functionality. And best of all there is a fix available by Morten here:

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/08/31/qt-46-on-mac-os-106/

Also, Morten said that he would backport this bug fix to Qt 4.5.3. So hopefully this is all much ado about nothing.

Our hope as customers is that Nokia would realize that support for the latest OS releases is a top priority for us. As such we hope that you guys would make some effort to test and verify that the current Qt release properly supports the latest OS releases and quickly release any bug fixes for any compatibility issues that might be found.;

I think that if it was closed source the company would have made damn sure they supported Snow Leopard before it was released.

In this case Open Source made Trolltech lazy and has allowed them to shirk their responsibility.

And Ariya shouldn’t be allowed to speak on their behalf, he has done further damage to their reputation.

Well done Andy for taking a stand about this on such a visible blog.

I have to agree completely with my fellow Qt customers here. Trolltech, or I suppose now it’s Nokia, has really dropped the ball here in stating that their policy is to only support Mac OS 10.6 in the Qt 4.6 release. Qt 4.5 is the latest shipping version of Qt and as such it must support the latest OS releases, i.e. it must support 10.6. It’s not acceptable for us to tell our customers that our apps won’t support 10.6 for an unspecified number of months in the future (i.e. until Qt 4.6 is released). As such, we as your customers don’t find it acceptable that you (by you I mean Nokia as a whole) won’t provide official 10.6 support in Qt until 4.6 is released – which doesn’t even have a release date and might not be until next year for all we know.

Your policy should be that the latest released version of Qt (4.5) will support the latest OS releases. Anything less is unacceptable to us, your customers.

The good thing here is that by and large Qt does support Snow Leopard just fine – even Qt 4.4.3 (which is what I’m using) supports Snow Leopard very well. The visual artifacts are really just cosmetic annoyances that don’t affect functionality. And best of all there is a fix available by Morten here:

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/08/31/qt-46-on-mac-os-106/

Also, Morten said that he would backport this bug fix to Qt 4.5.3. So hopefully this is all much ado about nothing.

Our hope as customers is that Nokia would realize that support for the latest OS releases is a top priority for us. As such we hope that you guys would make some effort to test and verify that the current Qt release properly supports the latest OS releases and quickly release any bug fixes for any compatibility issues that might be found.

It’s the classic diplomacy case. A believes B should implement X. B never denies that X is fantastic (best thing since slice bread!), but due to numerous technical/business reasons, B can only promise Y, where Y < X. Obviously A is not happy. Now, if A goes on to write a dissertation and distribute pamphlets (with a big fat FAIL of course) on how the lack of X destroys his multibillion enterprise, that does not encourage a fruitful discussion on how to move forwards and bring Y closer to X. Imagine if A is your customer.

It does not need to be Qt vs Snow Leopard. Often while working on QtWebKit, our team gets flamed with something along the line that QtWebKit is completely a piece of junk if it can't implement . Most of the asked feature are valid, sensible, important, and necessary for many applications. I would have asked the same if I were in their shoes. We seldom disagree that we should not implement them. But decisions have to be made (there are only 7 days a week), which means sadly we can’t promise everything. It just breaks my heart when then people start to draw an unfair, extrapolated claims based on the situation. Or, in a term popularized here, “it does not win any support” from my side.

This is likely the last time I would bother to stand in the line of fire. I have my share of fun, but instead of resulting in the said fruitful discussion (making X and Y gets closer together), people seems to be happy to empty their steaming ammo on me and lecture me (repeatedly, as if I am deaf) on things I never disagree. I am just a lowly code monkey, I can’t afford to buy the state-of-the-art combat suit, and I can only take so many bullets from both parties.

Good luck.

I don’t think anyone is accusing you or the Qt team of dishonesty or bad faith. But Qt users such as myself are under great commercial pressure to support the latest release of OSes and there is an implicit assumption Qt will enable us to do that. It always has before. Frankly Qt isn’t very useful to commercial developers if it doesn’t.

I think that whoever decided your release policy made a serious error of judgement. But it isn’t too late to repair most of the damage e.g. a 10.5.x release for Mac in the next week with Morten’s two bug fixes would be a good step in the right direction.

The software needs to work on the latest version of Mac OS X — anything less is an embarrassment to those who use Qt in their products, and totally unacceptable to their customers.

It is, quite literally, “dropping the ball” — your users *need* any issues with Qt to be corrected well in advance of a new operating system release.

Pushing a fix out several months to a year later — and even attempting to justify that position — does not win you any support. You dropped the ball when you failed to fix outstanding issues with a major operating system release that was available to developers well in advance of its public release. You then proceeded to obliterate the ball by trying to justify your absolutely ridiculous position.

For example, if I were playing cricket and was on the bowling team, if my team mate dropped a catch – and therefore we missed the chance to take a wicket, he would have let down the team due to his failure.

Notice that this does not suggest that the person is, in general, incompetent or even prone to error – only that on this occasion, they have made an error which has had a negative effect on their team mates (or in our real world scenario, their customers).

I can’t comment on the reference to the ‘corporate schedule’ as I don’t know what the basis is, but I think ‘dropped the ball’ is a fair choice of term in this case.

What I challenge is his statement: “I think they have seriously dropped the ball here”. That is his opinion, which I fully respect. However, I am allowed to have my opinion, too. And here is mine: “No, we didn’t drop the ball”. Same with yours “they seem to be more focused on the mechanics of their internal corporate schedule”. I beg to differ, my opinion is “No, we are not blindly only focusing on our internal corporate schedule”.

And Andy, please don’t just bother to suggest me try looking at it from our customer’s point of view. Just reread my comments, I am explicitly allow you (and John, and others) to say anything bad about Qt. Write down a hundred big fat FAILs if you want, get angry, scream aloud if you need to, insult me if I am nearby. I would not feel annoyed nor upset. You are the customers, you have the right to do so, and I understand that. But the moment you state that we drop the ball, I would claim my right to have a different opinion (is it too much to ask to have a different opinion?): we don’t drop the ball, extrapolating the bug to the said over-the-top statement is unfair.

I hope I am better now at making myself clear.