macOS: Adding support for M1 and removing support for 10.11

It has unfortunately come to the stage where FrozenPlain must cease supporting macOS 10.11 “El Capitan” or older. If you still need a macOS 10.11 download link for a product that you previously bought, you can send me an email. However, new products will not have this support, and will require macOS 10.12 or later.

This change comes along with a good thing – a pledge to fully support M1 machines and macOS 11 “Big Sur”. Updates to both Mirage and Obelisk will be coming soon with this.

The choice to drop 10.11 support is a result of assessing where I should spend my time. With the new M1 Macs and Big Sur, there have been changes that make it harder to support < macOS 10.12 as well as the newest systems. Namely, code-signatures generated on a Big Sur system will be ‘invalid’ on < 10.12.

You might be thinking why not simply use an older version of macOS for development then? Well, this issue is compounded by the introduction of M1 machines that FrozenPlain will now support. Testing and running on this new architecture requires Big Sur, so the solution would probably have to involve somehow getting my hands on another older mac machine, and offering 2 Mac download links (one for old systems, and one for new) for each product. The time-cost for doing this would stack up very quickly considering that there frequent Mirage updates and new products every few months.

I hope that this change affects you as little as possible. The positive is that it allows me to continue spending time on making new products, updates and offering timely support. Please get in touch if you have further questions.