OSX Catalina vs OpenGL vs ProTools 10

[HSum]

Based on the behavior of the majority of their kind, I too think apple users are idiots Anyways I couldn't care less about them and there's no need to tell'em all the time.

We use Pro Tools in our studio and we recently upgraded fully to windows (it was created long before my time when people thought Apple products were superior). We still have some old mac systems with Pro Tools prior to version 10 installed which we'll need at least for some time for compatibilty with our archive.

For your problem: I'd rather stay with an old system (if it ain't broken no need to update) instead of breaking backward compatibility and using software that introduces new bugs and errors due to fundamental rework. We just can't allow that in our daily business.


edit:

And supporting it may for example mean that Apple would make a layer on top of Metal (if they love it so much), that would emulate OpenGL. Instead they say "f*** you developers, you do that". And they do that over and over again.

IIRC exactly that existed as a freelance project for some time but got shut down by Apple or miraculously doesn't work anymore.

[MeldaProduction]

For your problem: I'd rather stay with an old system (if it ain't broken no need to update) instead of breaking backward compatibility and using software that introduces new bugs and errors due to fundamental rework. We just can't allow that in our daily business.

I agree, but it's a double-edged sword, at some point things will be different... (if we are lucky then Apple won't exist or have a different leadership )

And supporting it may for example mean that Apple would make a layer on top of Metal (if they love it so much), that would emulate OpenGL. Instead they say "f*** you developers, you do that". And they do that over and over again.

IIRC exactly that existed as a freelance project for some time but got shut down by Apple or miraculously doesn't work anymore.

Really? Somehow I'm not even so surprised

[v1o]

You are probably aware of this idiotic Apple's nonsense now, but what are we going to do? At some point people will start buying new machines with this crap preinstalled, so...

Not a big fan of developers who feel the need to insult their customer's purchase decisions. I am an Apple user and do not mind if a developer makes the decision to not support that platform. The market is saturated and there are alternatives for everything. But the constant bitching is annoying. Please make up your mind so that I know if it makes sense to purchase your products or not.

This comes across as a bit insensitive. Apple users vent their frustration on forums all the time. Personally I can understand the developer frustrations. Indie developers, many of which are one man shops with limited resources, get hit the hardest whenever Apple breaks all their software in one single swoop with these annual updates. And I don't think that keeping on top of all changes that Apple makes is a trivial process.

[fmr]

This comes across as a bit insensitive. Apple users vent their frustration on forums all the time. Personally I can understand the developer frustrations. Indie developers, many of which are one man shops with limited resources, get hit the hardest whenever Apple breaks all their software in one single swoop with these annual updates. And I don't think that keeping on top of all changes that Apple makes is a trivial process.

I'd like to know what these users would say if the developers would charge them the many developer hours and resources wasted in solving the mess Apple creates annually. The way they talk it seems developers have the obligation to serve them and support whatever rabbit hole Apple decides to take from the hat.

[lorcan]

edit:

And supporting it may for example mean that Apple would make a layer on top of Metal (if they love it so much), that would emulate OpenGL. Instead they say "f*** you developers, you do that". And they do that over and over again.

IIRC exactly that existed as a freelance project for some time but got shut down by Apple or miraculously doesn't work anymore.

Not sure what GL over Metal emulation layer you're referring to here,
but MoltenGL (commercial, closed source) does exactly that and been around for some time now.

[mgw38]

This comes across as a bit insensitive. Apple users vent their frustration on forums all the time. Personally I can understand the developer frustrations. Indie developers, many of which are one man shops with limited resources, get hit the hardest whenever Apple breaks all their software in one single swoop with these annual updates. And I don't think that keeping on top of all changes that Apple makes is a trivial process.

I'd like to know what these users would say if the developers would charge them the many developer hours and resources wasted in solving the mess Apple creates annually. The way they talk it seems developers have the obligation to serve them and support whatever rabbit hole Apple decides to take from the hat.

Nobody puts a gun to the developers head forcing them to develop for the Mac platform. There are plenty of developers who don't do that. As customer all I ask for is consistency. Either develop for the Mac or don't, I don't care either way. But I do not like to buy into a plugin platform and then being insulted by the developer for not sharing his opinion.

Apple's strategy always has been to move the market with them. It is their way of dealing with threats of technological disruption. That in particular means to anticipate the end of life of certain technologies and acting on that before everybody else does. This is not something that happened over night. Every developer who develops for this platform has known this since literally forever.

Speaking as a regular consumer, Apple's strategy has so far served me well. But there is no reason to believe that must continue that way forever. That is equally stupid. I am therefore more than interested to learn how developers think about Apple's strategic moves. But if all you are doing is insulting me, I simply cannot take you seriously anymore. Not as a business person, and as a result of that also not as a developer.

[Forgotten]

I agree with mgw38 - you seem incapable of separating your dislike of Apple’s strategies from personally insulting people who use their products. There really is no one forcing you to develop for the platform so either do it or don’t, but you’re applying all kinds of labels to end users because of your assumptions about them - not once did you ask for an opinion, you just vented your uninformed prejudice.

I guess this thread was never about treating your customers well, it seems to be much more about lumping Apple and its customers together to make throwing out insults more convenient to you.

[Hanz Meyzer]

To clarify, I insulted you, not Vojtech did. Since I am really tired of your braindead arguments. Only because you lack of deeper technical insight, you come to these nonsense conclusions. Even worse, Apple treats their customers very badly, and that is not a niche opinion anymore. In my opinion the EU should have restricted Apple already heavily years afo, forcing them to allow 3rd party repair, offer multi browser just like in Windows (not making safari as default), suing against illegal and yet very common repair practises etc. Strangely Apple always gets a extra friendly treatment from the governments.

I also know that Apple used to behave much different back in the days. For example they OPEN-SOURCE developed webkit, even chrome still is based on that - unthinkable today. They cared for cross-compatibility and openminded ideas. They made OpenCL crossplatform. Not surprisingly just in that period macOS made its most advanced technical jumps, too. But now mostly only nagware, mandatory cloud nonsense and slowdowners are added to this mess of an OS. Apple is not so wealthy because their software quality anymore, but because of the way how capitalism works. It turned into just another global evil and almost obsolete vampire company, actually now preventing development.

But I see you really deserve each other.

[Forgotten]

To clarify, I insulted you, not Vojtech did. Since I am really tired of your braindead arguments.

Ad hominem much?

[MeldaProduction]

We have seriously deteriorated from what was this thread about, anyways I'm pretty sure by now the whole music industry knows not to upgrade OSX, so we'll see a few months from now how it all ends up.

To sum up something about Apple, since some people here like to put "words into my mouth" so to speak:
- I honestly hate Apple and their attitude towards developers. They needs us, but we don't need them unless enough market uses their devices, so they control us through the users.

- Apple has become an dictatorship, and they do whatever they want, because they know their followers will follow.

- I do NOT think Apple users are idiots (as someone implied here), but I believe many of them take Apple as a religion. A computer should be a tool, not something that represents you.

- Big part of audio industry is based on Apple because some time ago it was all about "if you are a pro, you need Apple". Now many of the guys from various studios say "I don't really like Apple, but I need it here, because then I can basically charge more, because the people recording here expect the Apple logo...". So the religion again.

- Apple customer support is horrible. All they are about is getting money. I get it, we live in consumerism-driven capitalistic world, but still we have a choice. I for example have a high-end DELL notebook. It was cheaper than MBPro15 with the same configuration, plus it has a touchscreen (which Apple cannot give you, since you wouldn't buy ipads), much higher resolution, much bigger m.2 SSD, replacable etc. Then I sort of violated the headphone connector . I asked the support, 2 days later a guy came to my house, took him 15 minutes to replace it, no questions asked, no charge. After nearly 3 years from buying this laptop, it started restarting when closed after disconnecting power. I asked the support, they said it will probably be a mainboard, 2 days later the same guy came, in 30 minutes changed the mainboard and CPU, no charge. Can you honestly imagine anything like that with Apple?

- I generally don't care what the customers use, but I expect the developer of the OS to be reasonable. Apple developers are idiots, who make mistakes all the time and us, developers, pay the price by fixing it. In years I didn't need to change anything for Windows support, except for adding HDPI and touchscreen. In Apple, all we do is implementing the same thing again and again, just because they are too lazy to provide backwards compatibility.

So there you have it. As I said, I'm not insulting you, but I'm absolutely horribly insulting Apple, and they well deserve it.


mgw38: I get the "strategy" stuff, but this is not strategy. Strategy means you are planning a few moves ahead, like in chess. What Apple does is <i>a manager comes and says we need something brutal to demonstrate how secure we are, it doesn't need to work, it just needs to look like it. A dev probably says, but this will break backwards compatibility, should we make a layer for that? And manager says, no, that would cost us money.</i>
Microsoft regularly adds new features to the OS, but the old ones are still available, and they sure as hell never force you to change programming language! Sure OpenGL for instance is old, but you can still make a backwards compatibilty layer. In last 2 decades Apple changed the GUI SDK 2x! Just because they designed it so poorly, they couldn't live with it . So that's not a strategy, that's plain stupidity. Windows SDK contains various stuff that sometimes seem outdated, but they are actually very well designed with the forwards thinking, and that's strategy. They knew, they will need to add new features, and they prepared themselves. Apple didn't.

Forgotten: I'm insulting Apple, absolutely, because they well deserve it, and ask every honest developer, he will confirm. Microsoft has made me mad a few times too, but there it is more like an exception, with Apple it is a general practice. Anyways the fact that you take it personally says something about you. If you'd tell any Windows user that Windows suck and take it a step further and say "everyone who bought a PC is an idiot", they would seriously laugh . Maybe you should take it easy as well .

[omiroad]

Stay away from developers if you never want to hear someone vent about things you like. Speaking from experience :p

[Hanz Meyzer]

But yes, maybe MoltenVK is the only choice you have now, if you want to keep (custom-made) GPU acceleration?

There are other thread(s) here about it already:
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=521827

Sadly you don't know if Apple will actively prevent the usage MoltenVK with the next OS update. You never know - and exactly that is the problem with Apple. Almost all software devs of the software I care for lately started to think loudly about quitting support for macos. Since at some point the workload does not pay anymore, plus planning is impossible.

[MeldaProduction]

But yes, maybe MoltenVK is the only choice you have now, if you want to keep (custom-made) GPU acceleration?

There are other thread(s) here about it already:
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=521827

Sadly you don't know if Apple will actively prevent the usage MoltenVK with the next OS update. You never know - and exactly that is the problem with Apple. Almost all software devs of the software I care for lately started to think loudly about quitting support for macos. Since at some point the workload does not pay anymore, plus planning is impossible.

Well said.

[telecode]

Interesting thread. Glad I am not a developer. You guys now making me want to get a MS Surface touchscreen. :-0

[quikquak]

I received a email from NI asking their users NOT to update to Catalina. Looks like it's headed to get some noise from audio devs

Just got the same thing from fxpansion, to wait until they're sure everything is compatible.