Developing Windows only plugins

[VariKusBrainZ]

We can still run 20 year old VST plugins on Windows.............

[DPhil]

Just saying the Apple designers which sat together and decided to put big magnets right besides screw holes on macs are truly geniuses. That's the design you pay much money for... Anyways didn't want to go offtopic. I think you should just start coding. Release it for Windows and see if you feel good enough to support another platform. Just use your time and don't give too much what's written here. What works for one doesn't have to work for the other. IMO it's smart to not start Mac developing right now when they're in the mids of changing big time.

[syntonica]

For what’s it’s worth (which apparently is nothing since I am not currently an audio plugin developer) my Lenovo thinkpad that I use for dev is truly one of the worst laptops I have ever used, for exactly the reasons listed above. It’s a company laptop, so it’s no skin off my back, but even my manager who delivered it to me was laughing at how bad it is. But they are not going to shell out for the nice-to-work on Mac. And since they are tight with security, I can only work on the computer they give me. Understandable on both counts, but not a pleasure to use.

I used to use an HP for work when I worked from home. Everything I did was virtualized, so I had to tunnel in each morning with a phone app to generate the magic code etc. etc. While the security was a pain, it wasn't the worst laptop I'd ever used, but then again, I had my own keyboard, mouse and monitor that I had plugged in.

I don't think I've ever used any laptop as handsome and well-built as my current MBP, and that includes previous MacBooks, iBooks, and generics. If I wasn't freezing this one on Mojave, I'd probably get a new MBP and repurpose this one for Windows.

[Urs]

this sort of thing is worrying at best and reputationally damaging at worst.

Agreed.

Gotta say, the effort one has to go through to figure out why notarisation fails is comedy gold. It shouldn't affect anyone who starts out now, but if you maintain old stuff...

[AndyMusician]

If you want hard data, for one of my apps:
Windows: 89.4%
Mac: 9.17%
Linux: 1.43%

For my plugins:
Windows: 79%
Mac: 15%
Linux: 5%

Thank you! That's the kind of answer I'm looking for. Plus, it's different from what other devs are experiencing.

[AndyMusician]

One thing I noticed with the answers from actual audio plugin developers, is that the data is not always clear because both Win/Mac formats are bundled together when sold. How can they know for sure the % of Windows vs Mac users if they don't sell the format separately?

Google Analytics, if set up properly, can tell you everything you need. The % of paying customers divided by platform, the amount they spend, and so on. That's how we know that we have slightly more Apple customers and that they pay more.
You can also count downloads of course (who would bundle Win/Mac formats together?) but this doesn't give you the number of real paying customers, unless you have separate download links for demo and full version.

Interesting, so in your case, you're dependant on mac users to make your business successful. I don't think that focusing on Windows would be a good idea for you then. I'll try to look further into the type of plugins that are more interesting to Mac users than the general PC user base. There are probably differences, that would explain the different numbers I get from devs.

[audiothing]

Interesting, so in your case, you're dependant on mac users to make your business successful. I don't think that focusing on Windows would be a good idea for you then. I'll try to look further into the type of plugins that are more interesting to Mac users than the general PC user base. There are probably differences, that would explain the different numbers I get from devs.

There are several other variables to define a business "successful", but yes, Mac users are definitely a very big share of the revenue from our store. Focusing on Windows is also definitely a good idea, why should we lose that market share? We are talking about 30% of the revenue.
I don't have any detailed data from our distributors though, so this is only related to our own store.

Another thing, as others have also pointed out, macOS versions are also rarely cracked, at least since we implemented better copy protection. The latest crack I can find is from 2017, and it's buggy

[audiothing]

IMO it's smart to not start Mac developing right now when they're in the mids of changing big time.

From a business point of view, it's actually a very good opportunity. Probably not as big as the switch to Intel, but still...

[AndyMusician]

IMO it's smart to not start Mac developing right now when they're in the mids of changing big time.

From a business point of view, it's actually a very good opportunity. Probably not as big as the switch to Intel, but still...

I agree if you're one of the first to offer plugins for the Apple ARM processor, you're going to get a nice sum of money since the competition will be very small. However, from what I've seen on Twitter (@Chris_Randall), it's not an easy task.

[Paree]

But if you're super partisan about Mac OS, then please, do not make a plug in for Macs, then spend all your time here posting about how much you hate Mac OS. It just gets really old to sift through all that nonsense.

I also don't want to develop for Linux and Android. Did you notice no one is bothered by that?

Most linux (or even android) users do not ask because we know that the answer will be "there is no market, so no" and honestly we have many good plugins and DAWs to work with like U-He stuff, Surge, Bitwig, Waveform etc. Also most windows plugins work fine in linux through wine and hence its easier to just use that.
Meaning we are just used to developers saying there is no market and there wont be linux support soon, and it kinda makes sense why that is the case, but like the other person pointed out, 5% market share isn't that bad. I'm also sure that most people producing on linux have atleast 1 plugin from U-he, so there is a niche. Also smaller markets are easier to get into as competition is pretty less.

[EvilDragon]

However, from what I've seen on Twitter (@Chris_Randall), it's not an easy task.

It REALLY depends on how your codebase is structured and if it relies heavily on x86 intrinsics or, worse yet, inline ASM, etc. Although there are libraries out there that map them to ARM (like simde).

[DPhil]

IMO it's smart to not start Mac developing right now when they're in the mids of changing big time.

From a business point of view, it's actually a very good opportunity. Probably not as big as the switch to Intel, but still...

I agree if you're one of the first to offer plugins for the Apple ARM processor, you're going to get a nice sum of money since the competition will be very small. However, from what I've seen on Twitter (@Chris_Randall), it's not an easy task.

I wrote this because I am a beta tester and I was in good contact with the devs. I know that Mac early adopters often get punished for that in the sense that Apple decides to do stuff one way over a long beta time but suddenly changes stuff big time right before the release. I would wait until there's at least a final draft or even release before jumping head over heels into Mac development.

[syntonica]

However, from what I've seen on Twitter (@Chris_Randall), it's not an easy task.

It REALLY depends on how your codebase is structured and if it relies heavily on x86 intrinsics or, worse yet, inline ASM, etc. Although there are libraries out there that map them to ARM (like simde).

For me, it will be flipping the switch from X86_64 to ARM before clicking the Compile button. <shudder>

Rosetta 2 should cover everybody quite sufficiently until they can get their codebase updated. I'm not sure who uses inline ASM anymore, but both GCC and clang compilers are so efficient, it's not really necessary anymore. A clean C/C++ algorithm should be substituted.

Regarding SIMD, rolling your own header to remap your inlines/macros to Intel and ARM should take less than a week if you can't find one extant. To all those panicking: Remember, iPad and iPhone have been ARM for _13_ years now. The resources are out there.

[JCJR]

That's pretty much why I don't want to offer macOS plugins. I'm sure that the Windows version didn't require as many updates as its macOS counterpart.

You really have to love Apple to give them all these hours of work. Or you do it solely for business reasons.

Is wonderful if one can get rich doing only what one loves. However, "playing the odds" the best chance of making bux programming is probably to find a non-musical, commercial niche specialty which is insanely difficult and mind-numbingly dull, which only masochists would take on. The less fun it is, the less competition and the higher-demand for your services.

If you want to make a living having fun, I personally think it is possible with windows-only music software but could be wrong. Making money is maybe a different skill set than coding.

But if you do lots of non-fun stuff just to make a modest living, that would suck. If non-fun is programming non-Apple, then stick with Apple only. If non-fun is programming Apple, then avoid Apple. Life is too short. Enter a market where the work is "interesting and fun" fully aware it won't make the same paycheck as some deadly-boring but higher-paid non-fun specialty, then torture yerself half of the work year doing a platform that ain't fun. How does that make sense?

Some folks are platform-agnostic and the "fun" is working on the plugin or the music app, and the platform doesn't matter. Different strokes.

I did 6502 and Z80 8 bit programming in the early 1980's. Maybe as late as 1988. Other than that, Mac-only music programming from 1986 to 1995. Then about 50/50 Mac and Windows from 1995 til 2014 retirement. I was real Mac-chauvinistic early-on. Later got tired of Mac and would have gone windows-only in the early 2000's except the company I worked with made too much money to quit doing Mac.

I should have quit programming Mac when I got tired of it because it was pure torture to my tastes for about half every work-year, for about a decade. The company paid good. Nice folks. Got no complaints. But would have been happier if I had quit programming Mac when first got tired of it, even if it meant finding a new company or going solo again.

Tis a matter of taste. Some folks got the opposite orientation. They just hate programming winders and love Mac. Thats fine too. Takes all kinds.

When I first started Winders in 1995 was so Mac-chauvinistic that I expected to hate Windows programming. But found Windows more fun. Just sayin, if you HAVEN'T tried programming Mac, then you really don't know. Maybe you would turn out to prefer Mac programming after you try it. It just worked the other direction for me. Every year I liked it less. Hard to predict future states of mind.

So far as hardware, I've had LOTS of Mac desktops and laptops since 1986 and LOTS of PC desktops and laptops since 1995 and in general I liked the PC hardware better. Never had a Mac laptop I liked very much. Subjective matter of taste.

[lorcan]

Zebra had several complete UI overhauls, it went from PowerPC to Intel (and now to Arm), from 32 bit to 64 bit, from gcc to MS Compiler to Clang, from C++99 to C++2017, from hand coded abstraction of filesystem to boost to std, from AU to VST2 to AAX to VST3 to AUv3 and so on and so on...

I'm curious as how you managed to use std::filesystem on macOS.
XCode complains that using it requires a 10.15 deployment target, which is not something most could afford now. It's the same with variant and other handy C++17/20 features unfortunately.