Sources: Symantec to halt development of Norton Utilities for Mac

Mirroring a move made on the Windows software side, and reflecting a long-term corporate strategy, Symantec has internally declared an "end-of-life" (EOL) to Norton Utilities for the Macintosh, sources tell AppleInsider.

There will be no future version of Norton Utilities for Macintosh and all development of the software has been shelved, according to sources close to the company. Instead, Symantec will reportedly focus its development resources towards future consumer and corporate versions of Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Internet Security.

In the months leading up to the decision, Symantec was reported to have employed only a single software engineer for the further development of the Macintosh disk utility suite.

Heather Haas, Public Relations Specialist for Macintosh products at Symantec, would not immediately confirm of deny the report, but did inquire on AppleInsider's plans to make the information public.

According to sources, Symantec may release future versions of SystemWorks for Macintosh, but will not be updating Norton Utilities beyond what is absolutely required to support its current customer base.

Norton Utilities was first introduced for the Macintosh in 1988 and remained a leader in the industry for over a decade. In recent years, the Norton suite has fallen second best to Micromat's TechTool Pro and Alsoft's DiskWarrior disk repair packages for Mac OS X.