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

gridsagegames.com

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

#71

Post by soneil »

olliej wrote: post #31

Seriously, OS X went 64bit 12 years ago. X86 has been 64bit for longer. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is developers refusing to actually move forward. It’s especially galling given game devs are the group that most prominently complains about OS X being behind the times. As for “needlessly” dropping 32bit: if your poorly written 32bit app starts up you necessarily force OS X (and the user’s machine) to pull in 32bit…

The number of 32bit intel macs is surprisingly small, too. Core Solo/Duo models ran from January to November 2006 (bar one mac mini model that survived into 2007).

I'd be very surprised if there's a 32bit mac that'll run their game acceptably well. I'd be surprised if it's ever actually supported 32bit macs. So why was it 32bit in the first place?

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

#72

Post by pippy »

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.

Completely agree. The developer account is a great way to disincentive malicious apps from being made. I would accept the following for not supporting MacOS:

* lack of vulkan support * porting code to the apple SDK * cost/benefit for small indie titles

pointing out how many people logged bugs doesn't mean that the OS is buggy. it simply means you've written shitty code. Another odd point with OP is that he's made the effort to start supporting it. Dropping support is always more expensive than simply fixing some issues, as you've already made the investment.

Most developers seem to have rational decisions behind their support. This post seems like they're jumping on the Apple hate bandwagon.

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

#73

Post by cwyers »

soneil wrote: post #71
olliej wrote: post #31

Seriously, OS X went 64bit 12 years ago. X86 has been 64bit for longer. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is developers refusing to actually move forward. It’s especially galling given game devs are the group that most prominently complains about OS X being behind the times. As for “needlessly” dropping 32bit: if your poorly written 32bit app starts up you necessarily force OS X (and the user’s machine) to pull in 32bit…

The number of 32bit intel macs is surprisingly small, too. Core Solo/Duo models ran from January to November 2006 (bar one mac mini model that survived into 2007). I'd be very surprised if there's a 32bit mac that'll run their game acceptably well. I'd be surprised if it's ever actually supported 32bit macs. So why was it 32bit in the first place?

It's a Windows game. People are asking him about the possibility of a Mac port.

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

#74

Post by judge2020 »

CrendKing wrote: post #61
floatingatoll wrote: post #60

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…

The argument from the article is that in non-Apple ecosystem, the ongoing fee is 0, which is smaller than all 3 of your listed examples. Also, as opposed to "simple command-line build scripts", in non-Apple ecosystem, there is no script required to release versions. I don't see the argument weakened, but rather strengthened.

If Windows also required code signing as a deterrent to malware being distributed, we'd see similar prices (depending on the code signing reseller, currently cheapest is $59/year for 3 years). Instead, we have a huge third-party antivirus market that only deals with malware after the fact. Notarization is Apple's approach to pre-screening applications and will certainly be constantly improving its detection.

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

#75

Post by olliej »

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)

Notarization takes minutes and is presumably automated, so why wouldn’t chrome do it?

You’re doing a great disservice to the engineers at google if you think the actual release work is so short that a few minutes for notarization is a problem.

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

#76

Post by olliej »

cwyers wrote: post #73
soneil wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of 32bit intel macs is surprisingly small, too. Core Solo/Duo models ran from January to November 2006 (bar one mac mini model that survived into 2007). I'd be very surprised if there's a 32bit mac that'll run their game acceptably well. I'd be surprised if it's ever actually supported 32bit macs. So why was it 32bit in the first place?

It's a Windows game. People are asking him about the possibility of a Mac port.

Ok, but if the game is only a few years old why didn’t it compile for 64bit?

I recognize MS insisted on screwing the market by selling 32 vs 64 bit as separate versions of Windows for many years, but even then surely most windows machines have been running 64 by default for a decade?

But seriously: if you make a new piece of software in the last 15 years that only works in 32bit, then you made a choice to target an obsolete platform with worse performance (again, game developers complaining about perf while only building 32bit so throwing away 10-20% perf for no reason strikes me as hollow)

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

#77

Post by olliej »

soneil wrote: post #71
olliej wrote: post #31

Seriously, OS X went 64bit 12 years ago. X86 has been 64bit for longer. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is developers refusing to actually move forward. It’s especially galling given game devs are the group that most prominently complains about OS X being behind the times. As for “needlessly” dropping 32bit: if your poorly written 32bit app starts up you necessarily force OS X (and the user’s machine) to pull in 32bit…

The number of 32bit intel macs is surprisingly small, too. Core Solo/Duo models ran from January to November 2006 (bar one mac mini model that survived into 2007). I'd be very surprised if there's a 32bit mac that'll run their game acceptably well. I'd be surprised if it's ever actually supported 32bit macs. So why was it 32bit in the first place?

I occasionally wonder why Mac/ia32 existed as well.

My conclusion has been that when Mac’s first switched to intel there was a combo problem - intel’s mobile chips were still mostly 32bit (remember intel dropped the ball on 64bit), and more importantly while ppc mac’s were capable of 64bit (the G5 cheese grater) the majority of the desktop was iffy, coupled with things like flash, etc that were 32bit.

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

#78

Post by kalleboo »

olliej wrote: post #31

Seriously, OS X went 64bit 12 years ago. X86 has been 64bit for longer. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is developers refusing to actually move forward. It’s especially galling given game devs are the group that most prominently complains about OS X being behind the times. As for “needlessly” dropping 32bit: if your poorly written 32bit app starts up you necessarily force OS X (and the user’s machine) to pull in 32bit…

> That aside, Apple manages to do this

Also pretty much everyone else - I just checked the status of all the apps present on my Mac (System Report) and the only 32-bit apps on here are QuickTime Player 7 (long-deprecated) and a bunch of garbage Adobe background update processes.

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

#79

Post by rs23296008n1 »

As someone who recently worked in game dev I'm not sure why 32 bit was even a factor as 64 bit is likely your default target anyway - has been for awhile. So, killing 32 bit is not a real issue.

Notorizing can be seen as just another cost of targeting a platform. So do it. You will need at least one machine anyway to do basic testing on. So use that. Get the cheapest imac or whatever you require. So, mac hardware isn't a real issue.

I found the statistics a bit strange as well. Sales were 2% linux, 4% mac, 94% windows. Yet support was divided 30% linux, 50% mac and 20% windows. This suggests linux is more problematic per sale than mac. Yet he has no issue with linux. If this was me, I'd be wanting to know exactly why linux/mac was generating so many tickets. The answer will likely help the overall product.

Personally, you need to jump through so many hoops to release software that none of these thus far mentioned should be big enough to stop you. The real reasons should be: is there a demand in this target market; will that demand generate sufficient profit?

As I'm starting my own journey on this I see all the platforms and app stores have various issues. Everything has tradeoffs. The article's author needs to come up with better arguments. I just don't see his reasons as relevant in comparison to the other much larger costs associated with development.

I'd actually recommend targeting multiple platforms just to force bugs to come out. Different platforms / compilers see and expose different issues in your codebase. So far I'm quite happy to have cross platform support even when i don't necessarily release on those platforms yet.

I find art, sound and game assets are more expensive than an apple dev account or even a mac computer. Others have written in more detail on this. Even generic business costs exceed the subscription/computer costs he's stating as being barriers.

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

#80

Post by plorkyeran »

Despegar wrote: post #13

64-bit support first arrived in Leopard in 2007. Everyone has had plenty of time.

Also, there was only ever one set of macs released in 2006 which had a 32-bit Intel processor, as the transition to 64-bit happened only a year after the Intel transition. We're not merely long past the point where you have no excuse for not supporting 64-bit; we're long past where it made any sense to support 32-bit. Even in 2010 if you started a port to macOS and decided to target 32-bit you would be making a bad decision.
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