Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

gridsagegames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 118 posts

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#51

Post by rcruzeiro »

judge2020 wrote: post #45
olliej wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or: you don’t codesign and users ignore your app in favor of the one that doesn’t require rebooting to recovery mode to disable core platform security features, so that chrome, etc can break your machine. Longer term I imagine that OS X will simply have an non-overridable sandbox that tightly restricts what any unnotarized app can do. Eg if you aren’t notarized you get access to your own container and no other part o…

Analogy falls apart for Chrome since it's safe to assume Apple either gives scaning priority to Google or has outright whitelisted their account (since Chrome updates so frequently and there's opportunity for Google to throw money at Apple)

Does chrome releases multiple builds a day? Scanning usually takes less than 1 hour.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#52

Post by swatcoder »

gridspy wrote: post #32
gok wrote: post #23

Yikes. If you can't figure out how to make your code 64-bit safe, or how to make code signing work, you are effective requiring your users to give you root access. Completely unacceptable for a game.

1. You also need to pay apple a subscription, update your hardware, change your build process. I think there is also a review step during the build. 2. All the existing tooling (not the game, but the build process) will need to be 64 bit to run on this new hardware. So the build needs to be re-worked 3. People on Mac require more support, which is harder because dev is not a Mac user.

The developer has every right to support or abandon whatever platforms they want.

But there’s some FUD here:

1. There is no review step. Notarization is an automated process that takes about an hour. It doesn’t require a substantive change to your build process. You just submit your build, get a notary receipt file back from Apple about an hour later, and “staple” it to your build using a single tool. It’s not burdensome.

2. The system requirements for preparing a build for notarizarion are pretty liberal if you look at actual hardware usage. Of course some machines fall off the bottom, but it’s not like they’re trying to drive revenue with this. It’s like a teardrop in the ocean.

3. All of this is even less burdensome on developers who follow any kind of process for testing. You would already have a capable machine being used for testing, and would already be seeing delay between your builds being prepared and your distributions going out. Apple’s part of notarization could happen while testing is in process, meaning zero delay. If this doesn’t apply to you, fine. But it probably means you weren’t treating the platform all that seriously in the first place.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#53

Post by Aeolun »

povertyworld wrote: post #39
gridspy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You also need to pay apple a subscription, update your hardware, change your build process. I think there is also a review step during the build. 2. All the existing tooling (not the game, but the build process) will need to be 64 bit to run on this new hardware. So the build needs to be re-worked 3. People on Mac require more support, which is harder because dev is not a Mac user.

Do these guys complain this much about releasing games on consoles too?

That’s a fundamentally different platform I think.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#54

Post by Aeolun »

gok wrote: post #23

Yikes. If you can't figure out how to make your code 64-bit safe, or how to make code signing work, you are effective requiring your users to give you root access. Completely unacceptable for a game.

Isn’t this every game ever until a few years ago? The only OS where I’ve ever been bothered by ‘this code isn’t signed’ has been OSX.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#55

Post by dunham »

jchw wrote: post #12
dexter0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay the $99/yr to be in the developer program, to access to the notarization service.

Also I heard that you need fairly new Mac hardware to actually use the notarization service. Now try to integrate it with your CI, because the feedback that the notarization is complete is sent via email. (FWIW: I don’t have first-hand experience, though I still have an Apple developer license. Probably won’t renew.)

I've scripted this for work, but it does have to run on a mac (for me a late 2013 Macbook pro), which would make it difficult to do in the cloud.

There is a utility (written in Java) that you run through "xcrun" that can upload, check status, fetch and "staple" the result. It usually turns around within 15 minutes for me, but I haven't measured the exact time. (I'm just polling every five minutes.) Check the "log" file, because it can successfully notarize and then report in the log that your signatures are all screwed up.

Details here if anyone needs to do this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_y...

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#56

Post by Aeolun »

swatcoder wrote: post #52
gridspy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You also need to pay apple a subscription, update your hardware, change your build process. I think there is also a review step during the build. 2. All the existing tooling (not the game, but the build process) will need to be 64 bit to run on this new hardware. So the build needs to be re-worked 3. People on Mac require more support, which is harder because dev is not a Mac user.

The developer has every right to support or abandon whatever platforms they want. But there’s some FUD here: 1. There is no review step. Notarization is an automated process that takes about an hour. It doesn’t require a substantive change to your build process. You just submit your build, get a notary receipt file back from Apple about an hour later, and “staple” it to your build using a single tool. It’s not burden…

> It’s not burdensome

As defined by who?

  1. Submit build
  2. Wait an hour
  3. Retrieve notary receipt
  4. Staple to correct build
  5. Upload build
Sure sounds more burdensome to me than:

  1. Upload build
Edit: Lol, people arguing with reality. It may or may not be a good thing, but arguing that it doesn’t add any burden to the developer seems hard to me.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#57

Post by jchw »

dunham wrote: post #55
jchw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I heard that you need fairly new Mac hardware to actually use the notarization service. Now try to integrate it with your CI, because the feedback that the notarization is complete is sent via email. (FWIW: I don’t have first-hand experience, though I still have an Apple developer license. Probably won’t renew.)

I've scripted this for work, but it does have to run on a mac (for me a late 2013 Macbook pro), which would make it difficult to do in the cloud. There is a utility (written in Java) that you run through "xcrun" that can upload, check status, fetch and "staple" the result. It usually turns around within 15 minutes for me, but I haven't measured the exact time. (I'm just polling every five minutes.) Check the "log" fi…

I’ve long given up on supporting macOS.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#58

Post by rcruzeiro »

swatcoder wrote: post #52
gridspy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You also need to pay apple a subscription, update your hardware, change your build process. I think there is also a review step during the build. 2. All the existing tooling (not the game, but the build process) will need to be 64 bit to run on this new hardware. So the build needs to be re-worked 3. People on Mac require more support, which is harder because dev is not a Mac user.

The developer has every right to support or abandon whatever platforms they want. But there’s some FUD here: 1. There is no review step. Notarization is an automated process that takes about an hour. It doesn’t require a substantive change to your build process. You just submit your build, get a notary receipt file back from Apple about an hour later, and “staple” it to your build using a single tool. It’s not burden…

Your last point pretty much sums it all up. The dev seems to be basically looking for an excuse to drop the platform.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#59

Post by yardie »

trothamel wrote: post #9
kgarten wrote: post #4

So the major points are dropping 32bit support and Apple forcing you to sign your executable? The author claims that you need to pay Apple for the signing. as far as I know this is not true. You just need to pay for being on the application stores ...

You have to pay for the signing. You also have to wait several minutes for the notarization process to finish, and submit every program to Apple.

I paid hundreds of dollars for a Windows codesigning certificate. The Apple developer program is a relative bargain. If $99/year is stopping the developer this developer I’m not really sure what to say.

Re: Sorry macOS users, but Apple has gone too far for some of us devs

#60

Post by floatingatoll »

This article fails to address two key points that could significantly weaken its core arguments if answered. Those points and the questions that arise from each are:

1) Apple charges a flat rate of $100/year for notarization access. Steam and Mac App Store take 15-30%. What additional percentage of Mac sales (either subscription and/or one-time) is being spent on this annually by this developer?

$100/year & 100 units/year = $1.00/unit

$100/year & 1000 units/year = $0.10/unit

$100/year & 10000 units/year = $0.01/unit

EDIT: Steam indicates that this game has sold 0-20,000 units (max 168 concurrent players), between May 2015 and September 2019, so using a straight flatline average of the best-case scenario for sales, the cost to date per unit is:

$500/5y & 23000 units/5y = $0.22/unit

2) Notarization can be added to command-line build scripts and Makefiles and third-party processes, so that it is simple to ensure that builds are notarized as part of releases to Steam. What, if any, engineering obstacles in the developer’s build process blocked this integration? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_y...

Post reply on HN