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

[fmr]

I think you would last one week in business with that model
rsp

I agree - I was just answering, but I'm aware no developer can afford not to support both platforms, and in the past those (few) that split licenses didn't succeed.

That doesn't prevent us to discuss the burdens and losses imposed by each platform builder policies.

[Ploki]

That's a myth. Maybe there are more piracy in Windows (something that remains to be proven - I am really not an expert as apparently you are), but that's most probably due to the fact Windows is immeasurably more spread than macOS.

But the losses due to the mess Apple is constantly creating, those are very measurable and real.

Piracy is my assumption, what aleksey said is probably numbers from his sales.
I guess he can measure his own sales just as much as he can measure migrating to M1.

I'm not sure I saw you in the VST3 thread. Maybe Cubase/Steinberg users should also be charged extra?

From my experience, Mac delivers a higher customer support overhead (while the OS is classy/shiny and everything, it's practically not as user-friendly as it is advertised). But despite having much smaller installed computers base, Mac users buy plugins about 75% more frequently than Windows users.

Sorry alexey for pulling you out like this, but I'm not too fond of fmr's nonsense here

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I think keygens and cracks as an influence over sales is similar for both Mac and Windows. I'm sure that Mac users use keygens as much as Windows users do. Mac specialises on "creative class" hence we get more sales per website visit/installation. But it does not mean Mac users are unlikely to use "cracks", they have a similar human nature.

Beta macmini M1 cost $500, contract obliged to return it, so even at this level, M1 adoption has a cost. There's also levels of third-party libraries, which are not necessarily free and may impose costs to get M1 compatibility; and the implicit costs of stopping current projects trying to get older code working on M1.

[fmr]

I think keygens and cracks as an influence over sales is similar for both Mac and Windows. I'm sure that Mac users use keygens as much as Windows users do. Mac specialises on "creative class" hence we get more sales per website visit/installation. But it does not mean Mac users are unlikely to use "cracks", they have a similar human nature.

Beta macmini M1 cost $500, contract obliged to return it, so even at this level, M1 adoption has a cost. There's also levels of third-party libraries, which are not necessarily free and may impose costs to get M1 compatibility; and the implicit costs of stopping current projects trying to get older code working on M1.

There you go... Quod erat demonstrandum

[Ploki]

Touché!
Still, there’s less cracks on mac. I.e most of iLok stuff isn’t cracked on Mac so you can’t do else than buy if you want them

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Touché!
Still, there’s less cracks on mac. I.e most of iLok stuff isn’t cracked on Mac so you can’t do else than buy if you want them

I can't tell much about this, I'm hesitant to download and install "cracks" in this day and age. But a webserach of "<something> mac crack" brings quite a lot of results. If you do not use cracks yourself, it does not mean "risky" people are not using Macs. A similar story was about Mac's "strong" protection against viruses. But then Apple introduced notarization (aka centralized anti-virus check). In fact, the same story will happen with Linux if it ever becomes mainstream and "virus-worthy". Keygens, cracks, and viruses.

[audiothing]

They should also account for all the lost sales due to piracy - much more prevalent on windows (because its simply easier to crack)

That's a myth. Maybe there are more piracy in Windows (something that remains to be proven - I am really not an expert as apparently you are), but that's most probably due to the fact Windows is immeasurably more spread than macOS.

But the losses due to the mess Apple is constantly creating, those are very measurable and real.

Just to offer a different perspective on this, that's not a myth for us. We have not been cracked on Mac for several years now, and it's not due to the fact that Windows is more spread than macOS.

No losses here due to "the mess Apple is constantly creating". 64bit, notarization, opengl, and silicon porting were not a big deal here. Sure, there are occasional hiccups with the notarization, but nothing major. Also worth noting: we have more Mac customers than Windows, and they spend, on average, 3x more.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Implementing M1 compatibility for Voxengo plugins was peanuts having practical experience with cross-platform code. But, as my prior comments note, that may not be the case for most Mac software developers. E.g. I've read that several indie game developers ditched Mac support completely, starting with OpenGL deprecation, notarization, and I think more so with M1 introduction.

[polarsky]

when I clicked on this thread I was expecting to see pics of lazy developers exposing themselves, suppose it was only a matter of time until cracks started appearing

[FigBug]

It's not a matter of being lazy, it's hard work to port to M1 and get all the weird bugs and edge cases. It's been over a year and even Apple doesn't have everything working correctly. There are two options: port your apps and release them and let the users find the bugs. Or actually do testing and release things when they are stable. Apple who designed the hardware, had a head start still hasn't released a version of Logic that can play on Apple Silicon without getting stuck notes.

Latest word from them is:

I can confirm that this is a known issue on Apple Silicon in the Smart Splitpoint processing code. Sorry about that. We obviously want to fix this, but I can’t provide you with a date.

Great. So now all our users come to us yelling that our plugin sucks because it has hanging notes. And everybody who hasn't upgraded their plugins and lets them run under Rosetta has working plugins and happy customers.

No matter what you do, you're wrong.

[kidslow]

And everybody who hasn't upgraded their plugins and lets them run under Rosetta has working plugins and happy customers.

No matter what you do, you're wrong.

Sorry I disagree.

I can only speak for this customer, but I would be much happier to see a buggy M1 version than a Rosetta version. Heh, maybe the bug affects some other poor user. If there is a native port of at least one product, I know the developer is trying. If all they have are "working on Rosetta 2" versions of their plugins, there is no reassurance that they will ever end up being native ARM. A single post on Facebook saying that native silicon apps are coming is no reassurance either (Boz I'm looking at you).

[Ploki]

Agree with kidslow.

@figbug who do you work for?
Edit; oh its tracktion. Thats cool

[FigBug]

@figbug who do you work for?
Edit; oh its tracktion. Thats cool

Among other companies. I'm a contractor and the last year and a bit has been mostly doing Apple Silicon work for people. The biggest issue is dependancies. I got my Developer Transition Kit pretty much right away, but then some of my dev tools wouldn't install. So I waited for those to get upgraded. Then I got to work. We user Intel Performance Primitives for things like Fast Fourier Transforms. That was obviously never coming to Apple Silicon, so had to find for a replacement. Then wait for it to get updated. Luckily found SIMD Everywhere which made porting the rest of the processor specific code a lot easier. But not everything in SSE has a NEON equivalent. Then had to wait for Zplane to update Elastique time stretching. There are libraries that still haven't gotten an update, so we had to drop features on Apple Silicon like REX file support and Automap.

Apple likes to make it sound easy, change one compiler setting and it builds for Apple Silicon! Yeah, maybe if it's a simple project. But the reality is always more complex. And there is always something upstream you are waiting for.

[kidslow]

No losses here due to "the mess Apple is constantly creating". 64bit, notarization, opengl, and silicon porting were not a big deal here. Sure, there are occasional hiccups with the notarization, but nothing major. Also worth noting: we have more Mac customers than Windows, and they spend, on average, 3x more.

Hi Audiothing, perhaps you can shed light on part of the darkness here. When I look at your catalog, of which I own a good percentage, I see about 40% still non-native. I know you've been making continuous progress week by week. Definitely not calling you lazy. But afaik all of Voxengo has been ported. Your friend at Audiority has but a handful left.

How should your customers interpret the wide ranging status of Audiothing products that have not yet been ported? Are they in the pipeline? Are they in danger of being deprecated? Are they in line for a major new release like Fog Convolver and thus taking more time? Are they relying on third-party libraries for some of them that are not yet ported? All of the above? From the outside, quite a few of your plugins appear to use the same underlying framework, like why are Valves & Speakers native but not Reels? You waded into this, so it does invite these questions.

[audiothing]

Hi Audiothing, perhaps you can shed light on part of the darkness here. When I look at your catalog, of which I own a good percentage, I see about 40% still non-native. I know you've been making continuous progress week by week. Definitely not calling you lazy. But afaik all of Voxengo has been ported. Your friend at Audiority has but a handful left.

How should your customers interpret the wide ranging status of Audiothing products that have not yet been ported? Are they in the pipeline? Are they in danger of being deprecated? Are they in line for a major new release like Fog Convolver and thus taking more time? Are they relying on third-party libraries for some of them that are not yet ported? All of the above? From the outside, quite a few of your plugins appear to use the same underlying framework, like why are Valves & Speakers native but not Reels? You waded into this, so it does invite these questions.

Sure, so, on 29 plugins, 9 are still non-native but otherwise working fine under Rosetta. Most of them have stable Universal 2 Binary beta ready that we are handing out to asking customers. Just contact us if you want.
Fog Convolver and Phase Motion will not be ported but a big new update is in the pipeline for both.
Reels is also getting a big update (updated GUI, new features and improvements) very soon.
The only external library we couldn't reuse in the Silicon porting was an old FFT library. We have easily moved to Apple's own vDSP which is also faster.