New Kicad versions MAC OS vs Windows versions

Hi. I’m on an “old” version of Mac OS (Catalina) as my machine is old. I wonder why new OSX versions of KiCad requires newer versions of MAC OS while it seems like similar KiCad versions for windows works way back there (At least to Windows 8.1). Thanks.

Apple.

That’s why.

Apple intentionally (or perhaps, incidentally because they just don’t care) makes it more difficult to make newer builds of macOS built on newer versions of macOS software work with older versions of macOS. And the KiCad team only has a single individual with the time and skillset to deal with macOS packaging so, we can only provide downloads for the newer versions of macOS.

Microsoft on the other hand has never been in the business to sell more hardware with planned obsolescence so things remain compatible for much much longer, often detrimentally, and eventually software chooses to break compatibility before the OS does.

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Ok thanks, too bad, let’s buy new hardware which is not needed once again :slight_smile:

There are a couple of patcher tools available which can be used to get around the roadblock you’ve hit.

I’ve successfully used this to resurrect a 27” 2009 iMac to run Catalina. With maxed out memory and swapping the HDD to an SD drive it runs pretty well. Sure, not as snappy as my MacBook but perfectly usable. As always, YMMV and, as per the linked article, make a backup. That being said, I had no problems at all.

Also, even though KiCad may not be “supported” on earlier versions, it might run OK.
I’m running V6.0.9 on Mojave, and it works fine.

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