How do I determine the OS version at runtime in OS X or iOS (without using Gestalt)?
cocoa, ios, macos, macos-carbon
Solution
On OS X 10.10 (and iOS 8.0), you can use `[[NSProcessInfo processInfo] operatingSystemVersion]` which returns a `NSOperatingSystemVersion` struct, defined as
typedef struct {
NSInteger majorVersion;
NSInteger minorVersion;
NSInteger patchVersion;
} NSOperatingSystemVersion;
There is also a method in `NSProcessInfo` that will do the comparison for you:
- (BOOL)isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion:(NSOperatingSystemVersion)version
Beware, although documented to be available in OS X 10.10 and later, both `operatingSystemVersion` and `isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion:` exist on OS X 10.9 (probably 10.9.2) and work as expected. It means that you must not test if `NSProcessInfo` responds to these selectors to check if you are running on OS X 10.9 or 10.10.
On iOS, these methods are effectively only available since iOS 8.0.
Problem
The Gestalt() function located in `CarbonCore/OSUtils.h` has been deprecated as of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. I often use this function to test the version of the OS X operating system at runtime (see the toy example below). What other API could be used to check the OS X operating system version at runtime in a Cocoa application? ``` int main() { SInt32 versMaj, versMin, versBugFix; Gestalt(gestaltSystemVersionMajor, &versMaj); Gestalt(gestaltSystemVersionMinor, &versMin); Gestalt(gestaltSystemVersionBugFix, &versBugFix); printf("OS X Version: %d.%d.%d\n", versMaj, versMin, versBugFix); } ```