KVR Audio

adammonroe · Post by **adammonroe** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 2:42 am

Has anyone applied to the Universal App Quick Start Program in order to get the Developer Transition Kit?

https://developer.apple.com/programs/universal/

Part of me thinks it would be nice to get a jump start on things this time around with Apple Silicon and Universal 2 Binary coming at us and the other part thinks it's weird to pay apple $500 for a loaner computer I'll just have to give back. What are the odds of approval for lowly plugin developers? Do you think the industry is going to be prepared this time around, or will there be massive failures and confusion with the transition, as per usual?

joshb · Post by **joshb** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:10 pm

I did, and I'm a pretty lowly plugin developer as well.

The DTK arrived, I booted it up, installed the Xcode universal beta and built my plugin without changing a single line of code...and it works in MainStage and Logic.

Pretty anti-climactic...especially for all the Apple-haters out there. Cheers.

adammonroe · Post by **adammonroe** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:55 pm

joshb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:10 pm I did, and I'm a pretty lowly plugin developer as well.

The DTK arrived, I booted it up, installed the Xcode universal beta and built my plugin without changing a single line of code...and it works in MainStage and Logic.

Pretty anti-climactic...especially for all the Apple-haters out there. Cheers.

Sounds like it's might not be worth the $500 then. Maybe I'll withdraw my application.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 5:04 am

dev.apple.com wrote: Developer Transition Kit Tech Specs

Processor
Apple A12Z Bionic

Memory
16GB

Storage
512GB SSD

I/O
Two USB-C ports (up to 10 Gbps)
Two USB-A ports (up to 5 Gbps)
HDMI 2.0 port

Communications
802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 5.0
Gigabit Ethernet

Looking at the IO is a bit of a surprise.
Am I right this is like a lunchbox pc?
So if a dev has laptops only, you need to buy a screen & keyboard.

Dunno why, I kinda was expecting it to be laptop format, like McBookAir or so.

joshb · Post by **joshb** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 5:18 am

It's a MacMini.

Zaphod (giancarlo) · Post by **Zaphod (giancarlo)** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 9:02 pm

We got the kit and it works pretty good. Rosetta's better than I expected. To balance opinions, we have a lot of work to do on the porting. We're not going to die for it, it's a job we're going to do, but it won't be easy or short. Obviously the difficulty of porting is related to the complexity of the plugin, to the use of libraries related to Intel and especially to the protection mechanism of the software, which very often is very low level.

It is not easy for everyone, but everyone knows what to expect. If you use pure system frameworks and pure standard c/c++ projects and maybe a very simple protection it is a click

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:40 pm

Rosetta indeed works pretty well, that's good news. And while porting requires some work if you use third party libraries and/or low level optimizations, it seems to be less painful than expected so far.

However the main issue for our customers is that this whole thing means the absolute end of 32-bit builds. "Super fat" binaries (32/64 Intel + ARM64) are technically possible, but not practical, since it requires different versions of the compiler and SDKs to build the binary - quite difficult to maintain.

FigBug · Post by **FigBug** » Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:42 pm

I dropped 32 bit builds a while ago. Users can still download old versions. I haven't received any complaints.

Apple's Universal App Quick Start Program - Anyone Apply?