Lazy developers exposed by Apple M1 transition (lack of native updates)

[v1o]

Read the reply by Aleksey from Melda, an actual developer with lots of plugins to port to M1.

Also x86 has been around for 5 decades now by my count:
1980s = 1st decade
1990s = 2nd decade
2000s = 3rd decade
2010s = 4th decade
2020s = 5th decade

Let's stay fair though. ARM for home computers has only become a thing very, very recently. And, actually, only on Apple computers. It's practically non-existant on Windows machines. Probably has a market share of 1-2% on Windows, if even.

let's be super fair tho, apple has been using RISC (PowerPC) for about the same time as X86. (1990-2006 - 16 years) And Alexey actually made PowerPC plugins up until 2011.
x86/CISC was 2006-2020 - 14 years.

And lets also be more fair, apple has been doing their own chips since iphone 4 (2010) so the M1 is more like 14th gen chip than 1st gen or "bleeding edge".
First gen iphone was out in 2007, so technically apple has been using RISC from 1990 to 2020s, 4 decades!
And iPads are, for all intents and purposes a "personal computer".

Now if we're done being obtuse here, can we stop pretending that compiling for 1980s DOS-based systems has anything to do with developing in 2020s?

AFAIK the PowerPC and the Arm instruction sets are very different. Also the CISC vs RISC thing is a different argument - more for the people that design processor architectures. Most software nowadays is written at a high level and the underlying metal is abstracted away from programmers.

And I think you're missing the point. It's going to take more than a year and a half to port the massive amount of software out there. I was there for the transition from PPC to Intel Macs, back then there were far less plugins and the code was much simpler, but it still took a few years for all the software to make the transition.

[Ploki]

AFAIK the PowerPC and the Arm instruction sets are very different. Also the CISC vs RISC thing is a different argument - more for the people that design processor architectures. Most software nowadays is written at a high level and the underlying metal is abstracted away from programmers.

And I think you're missing the point. It's going to take more than a year and a half to port and then fully test the massive amount of software out there to Apple Silicon. I was there for the transition from PPC to Intel Macs, back then there were far less plugins and the code was much simpler, but it still took a few years for all the software to make the transition.

Oh i understand the point, i just don't buy the common arguments such as "it's a big financial workload for small devs, it's a big endeavour for large catalogues" and similar bs, because the opposite is true in reality, where smaller devs are native and big devs aren't, and sub-less vendors are native, and subs aren't.

[waltercruz]

one curious note: Melda is already M1 compatible - and Melda developer is very upfront about not really liking to support the constant Apple changes, but even he did. The burden seems to be really in the big developers.

[Ploki]

yeah - since March no less.

[MitchK1989]

I dunno about "lazy" but it definitely exposes which devs have tech debt and which ones have their DSP and GUI codes nicely packaged up into uniform update-able formats so that updating 30 plugins for a new OS or chipset is no more work (other than testing for edge cases) than updating 1.

NI doesn't even re-use stuff like patch browsers in a uniform way across their line, let alone core GUI fundamentals, plugin interface API stuff, etc etc.

[masterhiggins]

(Nothin)

[masterhiggins]

Eh…edited for off-topicness.

[CrystalWizard]

I guess you didn't read or glossed over my previous post where i commented that it's the bean counters not the developers? Izotope, perfect example, taken over by vulture capitalists.

I always shudder when I read stuff like that. Primarily because of the political message (seems to be totally normal these days for a scaring amount of people to hate on the "capitalist" system), secondarily because of the fact that even the biggest companies in the business are just as big as 4 or 5, maybe even 10 of the biggest companies in my 20.000 souls one-horse town. There is no "big" in this industry, and, most if not all of the companies in the business have been founded by musicians.

The industry's clients really know nothing about "big". Or about having to compete on a small, but competitive market, and making sure that you can exist long term.

Vulture Capitalism (a nick name for Venture Capitalism) does not equate with capitalism per se. Perhaps a bit of research is called for. Also i'm not using either word in a political sense, i'm using them to describe financial systems. I'm saying large in the sense of this tiny business of music softwre (i've been involved in big, this is miniscule). Still there's a huge difference between independent developers and VC funded developers (as there is in bigger cos.). It's not how big they are it's who's controlling the finances. Yes, most of these companies were founded by musicians, and the more run by "bean counters" they get the less likely they still are.

[chk071]

Vulture Capitalism (a nick name for Venture Capitalism) does not equate with capitalism per se. Perhaps a bit of research is called for. Also i'm not using either word in a political sense, i'm using them to describe financial systems.

Should be "social market economy" then.

Anyway, let's really stop it there. This is not HPC, and I really don't want to discuss politics in music forums.

[CrystalWizard]

I take a look into coding every now and then, and, frankly, I'm stunned that people take that amount of work and learning at all. Especially as things move so lightning fast these days. Well, not just learning the programming languages, but also gathering the knowledge about DSP from god knows where (I wouldn't know where to start, TBH).

Just saying that most people surely underestimate what a massive task all this is. They put 150 € on the counter, and then ask "Where's my M1 native plugin version" after half a year of owning it, and call the devs lazy, if they don't provide it ASAP.

Anyway, I guess you can feel entitled as a customer to a certain degree, but, calling people lazy and stuff just won't do.

I agree, hence my comments to the troll OP calling "some" devs lazy. Sure they're out there but they a great minority. most devs i know either through personal relationship of just through reputation are far from lazy, basically overworking themselves. I'd be curious to see a list of all the devs on or related to KVR and see what kind of hours they put in.

[jamcat]

I'd be curious to see a list of all the devs on or related to KVR and see what kind of hours they put in.

Lots. If you’re talking about posting on KVR, anyways.

[CrystalWizard]

No, i meant the ones who work hard, i don't get the sense that many of the posters here on KVR are actual developers. Obviously some are but most are "armchair" developers (my guess, prove me wrong KVR).

[SeBaer]

[...] This is not HPC, [...]

What's HPC? Do you mean ?

[chk071]

I mean this.

[fmr]

AFAIK the PowerPC and the Arm instruction sets are very different. Also the CISC vs RISC thing is a different argument - more for the people that design processor architectures. Most software nowadays is written at a high level and the underlying metal is abstracted away from programmers.

And I think you're missing the point. It's going to take more than a year and a half to port and then fully test the massive amount of software out there to Apple Silicon. I was there for the transition from PPC to Intel Macs, back then there were far less plugins and the code was much simpler, but it still took a few years for all the software to make the transition.

Oh i understand the point, i just don't buy the common arguments such as "it's a big financial workload for small devs, it's a big endeavour for large catalogues" and similar bs, because the opposite is true in reality, where smaller devs are native and big devs aren't, and sub-less vendors are native, and subs aren't.

I would love to see developers charging the "M1 whiners" for this Apple BS. Maybe then the Macoids would realize that the one to blame for is Apple, not the developers. Apple is always making (a lot of) money out of their "technological advancements" while the third party programmers take the burden of keep updating (most of the times, FOR FREE).