While today's big news is that BitWise 1.0.3 Alpha 2 is out, the really big news is that there is now a version of BitWise for Mac OS X 10.2 (previously, 10.3 was required). What some people have asked over time is why this version has been so long in coming when BitWise has worked on OS X 10.3 for over 6 months. This has even led to some scathing criticism from time to time, "You can support Windows 98 from 6 years ago but not OS X 10.2 from two years ago?"
What people don't realize is how many hoops Apple creates for developers in order to develop for the Apple platform. For example, you cannot, in most cases, compile a C/C++ application on 10.3 and have it run on 10.2. This means that in order to release applications on 10.2 and 10.3, you must separately compile on two different machines. While 10.3 has a way to compile to "target" 10.2, this is not particularly reliable depending on what libraries your program uses.
The second major stumbling block regarding a 10.2 version was Unicode. OS X 10 (all versions) are fully Unicode capable. However, it was not until 10.3 that Apple had the good grace to include the C/C++ headers and libraries required to develop Unicode-capable programs using C/C++. Therefore, it is impossible to create Unicode-capable applications for OS X 10.2 using 10.2. As already described above, you can't compile on 10.3 for use on 10.2 either, so you're pretty much stuck without a paddle for Unicode on 10.2.
I guess it finally got to the point where I had waited long enough and read long enough to realize that a BitWise for 10.2 would never have Unicode, so I finally broke down and am releasing it without Unicode support. Considering that it's without Unicode or not at all, I think it was the right decision.
Anywho, I hope everyone enjoys the new alpha, especially the 10.2 users who have been [unintentionally] shut out for so long.