First off, in order to get the latest XCode 4 development software you must be running Lion. I have written here before about XCode 4 and at this point, while still not necessary, it seems like its going to eventually be a "must have" for app development - particularly in light of iOS 5 being released this fall.
Secondly, many applications which you know an love do not work under Lion. I suppose this is so we can have a nice, organized iPhone-like desktop under Apple's control on our $3K USD MacBook Pros.
There is a site called www.roaringapps.com that provides a link to people's experience with Lion. As you will see, surprise, surprise, only Adobe CS5 and later works under Lion (so CS2, 3, and 4 will be headed for the dumpster after this release).
Developers in general have to be careful because as OS X has progressed its use of all things 64-bit has increased. Unfortunately most older intel macs doe not support 64-bit apps so its easy to create things that are not backward compatible without realizing it given the developer settings in XCode.
Some OS X release-date history:
10.0 - March, 2001 (?)
10.1 - September, 2001
10.2 - August, 2002
10.3 - October 2003 (Panther0
10.4 - April, 2005 (Tiger)
10.5 - October, 2007 (Leopard, Intel)
10.6 - August, 2009 (?) (Snow Leopard, Intel 64-bit)
10.7 - July, 2011 (Lion)
So all and all it looks like a major release is good for about two years even considering significant changes like the move to 64-bit.
Hardware-wise Lion requires Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3/i5/i7, or Xeon CPU to function - without one of these its a no-go. This basically limits you to machines built since the end of 2006 or so.
Personally I keep around older machines with older major releases on them as backups should something come up that does not work in the latest OS X. Sadly there is not other good way to reliably access the past state of affairs.
For me the "past state of affairs" is the hideous mess of PDF output options multiplied by the various CS versions and PDF drivers. Generally these do not work consistently from OS X major release to major release.
(With each release things like font embedding, various color schemes, nitty PDF details of how patterns, images and other PDF goodies are defined all change. Downstream software that does things like validate or check files or perform operations on them then can fail leading to a cascade of upgrade misery. Most of my customers run very old software that is kept off-line form the internet - that way it continues to work regardless of upgrades. The worst thing in the world is that some poor operations sap hits an "upgrade" button and brings down an entire manufacturing line because now the software is occasionally popping up a "do you want to download the lastest version of X" dialog and hanging a machine.)
Generally my customers like consistency - that is every day when the come in to work to run their manufacturing lines they want the same file save formats to be available. This allows manufacturing processes tied to those file formats to work reliably. My customers often have millions of dollars tied up in their manufacturing and they get unhappy when for no other reason than a simple upgrade things stop. (Now its far worse on the Windows side, but that's another story...)
Today's Apple upgrade mania is driven by iOS and the desire by Apple to "do away with the file system."
This is so your iOS device acts like a dumb device - say a flashlight. God forbid little Jr. figures out how to access the underlying file structure and does something stupid.
When I end up upgrading to Lion I will no doubt be stuck turning off the features that make it look like an iOS device.
Nice!
iOS devices don't allow "programming" or "downloading of code" - which of course is the antithesis of what I, a software developer, does.
Fortunately the "jailbreak" folks are around to keep Apple honest by putting some "back pressure" on their schemes.
"Jailbreaking" is an interesting phenomena in its own right - granted legitimate status in the courts - as a way to say "I bought this, its mine to do what I like with it."\
The one thing that's interesting is that, given some 15 million iPads in the "wide", for example, Apple does not remained focused on what's in the "past" - leaving a trove of devices available for various things that run outside the current "Apple dogma". Jobs and Apple care little about version 1 iPads, or version 3 iPhones, or what people do with them.
I predict that this will eventually come back to haunt them.
Why?
Because as everyone (like HP, Samsung, etc.) and their brother trot out new "tablet devices" the market will become saturated. This will make the upgrade justification harder - my iPad 1 does the job I need - I'd like an iPad 2 but what is the cost-benefit of doing it. This does not figure into the equations when you buy the iPad because its new - there was no previous version to worry about.
Similarly Google and Android are out there today with more new activations that iOS.
Android has its problems but eventually the big boys like HP will get devices out there that have corporate apps and features that will hurt Apple.
I myself have thought about using Android devices but they are still too new (not that Apple's development environment is all that great as compared to, say, .NET). But that's changing.
And the one thing that Andriod does not do that Apple does is "restrict" what you can do to save "battery life".
iPad 1's will be come like old toys - pick one up cheap, jailbreak it, do what you will with it - the cost will be so low it won't matter if it breaks. And with 15 million spares floating around you can afford to have fun...
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