To support OSX or not to support OSX? [Poll] - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 03:13:50 pm
content: I'm working on a little cross platform something and would like peoples opinion on this as properly (and legally) supporting OSX would involve investing in a Mac or two which really wouldn't get used for anything else.Thanks in advance to all that at least consider leaving an answer.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 03:15:02 pm
content: And yes I'm doing this as free market research but it will be FLOSS so personally think that's fair.EDIT: I wasn't been vague because it's any sort of big secret or anything, just thought it might end up with more balanced responses. And I can also imagine comments along the lines of "well that's pointless anyway" lol.The so far nameless project is a schematic viewer and converter with just enough editing capability to make quick fixes or aesthetic changes. That's it. No layout viewing or editing, no Gerber viewer, no parts library support beyond component symbols. The plan is to slowly make it a more capable editor but keep an emphasis on scriptable import and export and keeping the codebase as platform agnostic as possible. I do want this to be on tablets, mainly because all the schematic editors I've tried there are nothing more than rubbish paint programs and can't view anything but their own schematics. If I add any other programs to the suite I probably wouldn't care about tablets but schematic editing isn't laying out a board.And of course I know that with it been open source and with me aiming to make it cross platform it should* be as simple to support Macs as someone getting the code and building it for one, but if a problem comes up I personally can only try to fix it and hope a random Mac user is to happy to test it for me.*Should...

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 03:54:36 pm
content: Get an old Mac. Yes, their resale value is higher than an equivalent laptop, but it's because replacement parts are more available and there's a better chance that your repair is documented, because Apple's lineup is small and their individual models almost always outsell individual PC models (look at Amazon best sellers).I'd consider an old Mac Mini or other desktop Mac. MacRumors has a good comprehensive list of Macs, get something that can run the current OS and has specs to spare.

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 04:13:30 pm
content: OSX any.X have about an 8% installed market share. Sales figures are currently in the 12-14% range. So in time installed market share will reach the 12-14%So if your goal is financial - can the extra effort earn you the monies back from developing for OSX? I know usually OSX users have more available cash. But many also have Parallels or Fusion to run Windows based programs.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 04:23:42 pm
content: It all depend on resources.So as long as it doesn't take development time from the primary implementation I would say to go for it. But if it does and you end up with a less capable application because of the time and resources spent on the development of other platforms I would say forget it.I didn't vote because the choices given and accompanying premise are too generic to give a good opinion.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 04:34:28 pm
content: It also depends on the potential user-base.There are a large number of applications where the Mac fraction of potential users is so small, it isn't worth the resources.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 04:35:57 pm
content: I had exactly the same quandry five years ago for a hardware product. Being predominently a Windows person (albeit with plenty of dabbles over the years in Linux and Mac), to make the project scope reasonable, I initially drew a line and said "Windows only" to limit the amount of work necessary.In the end I found myself being bullied into supporting Mac and Linux by a few vocal individuals. So I wrote the original support software in Qt which meant quite a bit of additional effort on my part as I had to learn Qt and integrate cross platform USB libraries on platforms that were new to me. I bought a Mac mini, although I also burned several days getting a Hackintosh going too.Although the cross platform Qt interface worked, it was a compromise. While I had a product that technically worked on OSX and Linux, third party software started appearing that supported my products, and the quality and quantity of that software on Windows so far has been much better than that on OSX or Linux.On the other side of the coin, I found that I quite liked the Apple hardware, so now the entire day to day operation uses Macs of one form or another, but running Windows natively and rebooting into OSX only when necessary (i.e., rarely).So in short I would take care that any cross platform implementation is not too much of a compromise, and that you have the bandwidth necessary to be able to take on the extra effort of supporting multiple platforms. There are very few cross platform implementations I've ever seen that I'd say weren't compromised in one way or another, and when you get into specifics like OS specific implementation such as USB it can be a bit of a can of worms. To this day I am not convinced that providing cross platform support is always the right thing to do.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 04:54:51 pm
content: It depends what is your target market. If it's an open source project for the maker community than yes, of course, you want to support Mac OSX. If it is a commercial product that targets corporations then it's not that important.You need to provide more background information.(I am a Mac OSX user, they are the best unix laptops IMO).

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:08:31 pm
content: Apple's hostility to developers by refusing to allow anybody to develop for OS X without actually buying Apple hardware makes me really not want to support them if I don't absolutely have to. You want to run software? Install a real OS like Windows into a VM, or get a real computer.

author: owiecc
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:09:42 pm
content: If it is something you would be first in you would get 100% of the marketMac sales are going up. Many students are going with Mac (especially programmers). It really depends on your application.From my side I can tell you, as a Mac user, I really appreciate if the software is native for OS X. Not a Java port or something like that. And it is very easy to spot such a program. Native Mac apps have a certain look and feel. Using a port makes the app look unfinished. E.g. all PCB software is crap.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:24:12 pm
content: Quote from: owiecc on July 26, 2015, 05:09:42 pmThat makes me happy because then I'll have job security for the foreseeable future

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:53:50 pm
content: Quote from: owiecc on July 26, 2015, 05:09:42 pmBeyond the window decorations and menu bar everything will be rendered using GLES (and later Vulkan). If a native title bar and menu bar aren't enough to achieve that native look and feel for you you probably won't be happy.Quote from: c4757p on July 26, 2015, 05:08:31 pmI normally feel the same but I'm normally aiming things at people who I'd expect to be able to build it themselves, and tbh others wouldn't have a use for.It's sort of why I put more than a yes/no poll up too. To get some sort of idea just who thinks what as well lol. With just a yes no poll I could get a 90% yes to "don't bother" but 90% of that 90% come from people who would never use OSX.Actually does anyone know if AMD still still rip GL support from the last Windows driver update for a graphics chipset they no longer support?

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:56:58 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on July 26, 2015, 05:53:50 pmOh sweet Jesus I hope not.

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 05:59:21 pm
content: Quote from: owiecc on July 26, 2015, 05:09:42 pmIf Apple didn't have to be special snowflakes and use a GUI system that's incompatible in every way imaginable with every other system out there, this wouldn't be a problem. And frankly, I don't see why EDA developers should be wasting their time polishing up the look and feel of such a port. There are more important things to spend one's time (and money!) doing.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 06:33:56 pm
content: If you're good with cross platform development, it shouldn't take much effort.Hardware wise, they're not exactly bad but obviously way overpriced for what you get. On top of that, their desktops have rather poor thermal design. If you want a well built desktop without having to build one yourself, buy a server and add a good GPU. As for their laptops, if I actually had the need for a very good one, I would just go for one of those mobile workstations. For phones/tablets, they're good to use as appliances but not very DIY friendly, not to mention more expensive than Android based equivalents.

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 06:48:37 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on July 26, 2015, 04:35:57 pmyes both Mac and Linux users are very vocal (combined market share of < 10%) - and QT is absolutely not cheap for commercial use!I use both OSX, Linux and Windows and I don't care about the politics and platform haters. I just want productivity. So I'm still on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. But my Mac runs Yosemite Most of my documents and projects are in my own PRIVATE cloud so all is synced and up to date across all platforms. And I don't really know if I'll update to Windows 10 - it depends if I can kill all the crap background Internet/New start button distractions.I think if you can maintain a codebase that is easily portable (Like using Xamarin & C#- which is NOT cheap either) - it might be worth investigating. But if your codebase ends up being very different from platform to platform (Objective C vs VS C) - and everything hand optimized - you need a heck of a lot of customers to support "other" than Windows platforms.So think abstractions - - how can you abstract your code so it is as portable as possible - so IF you decide to add OSX support later - you don't have to rewrite the base code but only the UI part.I have not read fully up on the new Visual Studio 2015 - but there is a lot of "potential" for cross platform built in as far as I remember. I like C# as a language (C with a hint of Pascal)

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 06:49:47 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 26, 2015, 06:33:56 pmNot sure which desktops you're referring to, I have three Mac minis here, two of which run 24x7, and neither have blinked other than to install updates requiring reboots t my behest.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 07:13:43 pm
content: Are they popular Windows only open source products and free products that target the makers community? If so, what are they?My impression that the vast majority of the successful products in this category support multi platforms.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 07:35:55 pm
content: I develop cross platform by default and try to avoid vendor lock-in. Some of my projects need to run on Windows and Linux so two birds with one stone is a good deal.I have been using the Wxwidgets cross platform framework for over a decade. It does a good job in being OS generic. A good thing is that Wxwidgets doesn't compromise and doesn't emulate; you get OS native controls which follow the user's desktop scheme. Some of my software has Linux or Windows specific pieces but these are very small. I never tried to compile a program for OSX but it shouldn't be a big problem.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 09:27:24 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on July 26, 2015, 08:46:30 pmIt's my toy. If I say it works on OSX it better work on OSX or I'll sulk like the biggest bitchy bitch evar!1!!Sorry....EDIT: After I read that back I realised it didn't come across quite as I thought it would.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 11:40:05 pm
content: Quote from: owiecc on July 26, 2015, 05:09:42 pmI'm not so sure about that. Quite a few people I know have ditched their Apple laptop and asked my advice for a cheaper PC replacement, especially students who have a limited budget. There are plenty of people who are looking in the sub-$1000 price range these days for laptops rather than forking out much more for an Apple machine.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2015, 11:42:23 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on July 26, 2015, 09:27:24 pmIf you want it to run also on OSX you need to design it to be portable, it's not an afterthought thing.Note that majority of popular open/free software are multi platform. No point in having your baby limited by design.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 02:52:55 am
content: I'm not buying these low OSX market share estimates. Macs are now the defacto notebook computer. I rarely see anything BUT Apple laptops in the airport, coffee shop or wherever. Then there's confusing sales figures with machines that are in service. Mac hardware has a very long lifespan.More than 10% of the computers *in use* are OSX. At least in the U.S. The dominance of Apple in mobile computing market share is unmistakeable and underestimated.

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 03:19:00 am
content: Yes, and most people don't actually run any software besides their web browser. People who need real software need real computers. The rest can use fruit internet appliances.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 03:38:34 am
content: Quote from: c4757p on July 26, 2015, 05:08:31 pmIt is possible (and not particularly difficult) to develop software to run on an un-modified Mac without X installed from a non-apple platform.

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 04:25:57 am
content: Quote from: LabSpokane on July 27, 2015, 02:52:55 amWell sales and markets statistics match online usage statistics pretty well -https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0So I think "What you see" is partly influenced by your affinity for Mac'swhich is a normal psychological effect. You identify more and notice more people who use Mac's - because it pleases you - and Mac's stand out design wise - making them easy to spotI won't argue that the US might have a higher percentage of Mac's.I do agree Mac's usually have a longer life than cheap crap like Acer. But they don't last longer than my ThinkPads - far from it.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 05:23:59 am
content: Quote from: kaz911 on July 27, 2015, 04:25:57 amI'm not going to get into a this vs that argument. I have a Lenovo for work and it's fine. For me and my business, I run Macs with a VM for PC stuff.Maybe, it's confirmation bias, but I'm honestly surprised by the huge number of Mac laptops I see in the wild here in the U.S., versus the extremely low representation on these statistics.To answer the question, cross-platform is a selling point for me, but only if it's well-implemented. If someone isn't going to go to the effort, I'll just run the application in a virtual machine like I do everything else. It's no big deal anymore. Virtually every Mac user I think has a virtual machine of some sort to handle this. The real problems are implementations that run on .NET. Those just suck anywhere they are.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2015, 07:51:00 am
content: Quote from: LabSpokane on July 27, 2015, 05:23:59 amIt's not confirmation bias, it's just that you're in the US. I'm also surprised by the amount of popularity Macs have where you are when over here I've only seen one in the last decade*. Like you it makes me doubt those stats, unlike you it makes me think they're overrepresented in them :/QuoteBeing written from the ground up to be cross platform. I'm not going to go out of my way to make it not run on a Mac, but we all know how often stuff that should run anywhere needs this tweak on Windows, some strange artificial limit imposing on Linux but not BSD, undocumented this here, straight up should break everything there etc, etc... I'm happy to release and say "OSX users you have to rely on the fledgeling community for releases," I'm just not happy to put up an OSX build in the "official" downloads when none of the devs (i.e. for now little old me) can even test it.Quote from: BradC on July 27, 2015, 03:38:34 amI can't find a way to (legally) crosscompile for Mac that works for anything more than barebones. I think 2015 is a bit late to be making a PC booter.*And no, I'm not exaggerating for dramatic effect.

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 02:54:37 am
content: Quote from: c4757p on July 26, 2015, 05:08:31 pmYeah, I can't install Raspbian OS on my ARM tablet, so I can't develop on the go. RasPi foundation, such douches...Apple's hardware is different to PC hardware in a handful of ways, one of the most important is that Apple is in control of the software-hardware relationship, so you get things like 30 days standby, subsecond wakeup from sleep, not having driver related crap fail on you, etc. -A Windows user.

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 03:01:38 am
content: FAQ: Will Raspbian work with non-Raspberry Pi systems?Bullshit Apple's hardware is different. Maybe they have additional devices that they include drivers for, but none of them are essential for the operating system to run. The operating system itself is just x86.

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 03:04:20 am
content: Quote from: BradC on July 27, 2015, 03:38:34 amAnd how do you test this software? OS X won't even boot properly in a VM. Some people have had luck hacking it to do so, but that doesn't work consistently and is likely illegal or close to it, particularly depending on where you have to get the software.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 04:11:46 am
content: Quote from: c4757p on July 29, 2015, 03:04:20 amYou're obviously not using the correct VM. OSX boots and runs perfectly without modification on QEMU/KVM.I don't get the rabbid anti-apple angst here (or anywhere for that matter). You sound like the kid at school who drives a Magna having a go at the kid with the Porsche 944 because it's not a "real Porsche".Get over yourself. Apple happen to make hardware and an OS that works well for some people. If you can't develop for it without owning one it's your inability to work with the right tools, not the hardware or OS's fault.Some of us manage to make it work without pissing and moaning on a forumI now own several Apples because I've learned they make great hardware for *me*. I don't run OSX except in a VM to test with. It runs the same as it did before, but now it's technically legal.Have a look around, there are tool chains and languages that happen to work great on a Mac and allow you to make cross major platform (linux/windows/bsd/OSX) software with minimal changes.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 06:21:43 am
content: Quote from: BradC on July 29, 2015, 04:11:46 amI guess Qt isn't one of them, at least not in my experience. I wanted to go back and make some changes to code I'd written a barely18 months earlier. When it came to compiling the code with the latest release, so much was broken, I decided to build an environment based on the original versions of Qt that I'd used. No such luck, the versions I'd built it on were no longer archived.That taught me something: once you have something working, build a VM with a working toolchain and archive it!

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 06:30:12 am
content: give XOJO a try ... will compile to mac,linux,windowsand you can program it from mac,linux or windows ...www.xojo.comoh and it's free. you pay when you compile without debug.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 08:07:03 am
content: Quote from: kripton2035 on July 29, 2015, 06:30:12 amHow well does it work with custom hardware? If I wanted to communicate with a USB HID device for example? This is where I find a lot of these cross platform systems break down.I wonder how fast it is too. Most of my host software work is number crunching DSP. It looks a bit like VB to me, not much scope for optimising.The cross platform solution I already work with is Marmalade. Does every platform conceivable... except Linux though. C/C++, super fast, and plenty of room to flex your programming muscles.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 08:47:42 am
content: to do custom hardware you need a plugin named MBS for xojo - they have USB HID routines for all platformsbut if you're doing intensive maths may be it's not for your application.it's very nice for user interface multi platform.you can do your highly optimized routines in C with a plugin, and do the interface with xojoyes it's a kind of VB but multiplatform.very easy and rapid crossplatform development tool once you are used to it.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 04:16:25 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on July 29, 2015, 04:11:46 amI know that wasn't exactly aimed at me but I have no problem writing the code without a Mac, what I can't do is legally test it myself without a Mac and that's a lot of money on very little hardware if the demand isn't high enough. I probably will end up with one but am trying to decide if I should rush into it or not.And you also say it's more than easy to crosscompile for OSX, could you please link to any information on that that could get me started? Everything I've found only partially works if it still does at all.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2015, 06:42:03 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on July 29, 2015, 08:07:03 amI'm using Xojo. It is no where near as bad as VB/.net when it comes to dependencies. My stuff compiles to one executable. No clue on the speed yet. The documentation is a bit of a fragmented mess. I get very frustrated trying to figure out what functionality is built in.They have a holiday special that they run for $80 per platform for a compiler.

author: eas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2015, 10:08:25 pm
content: Quote from: kaz911 on July 26, 2015, 04:13:30 pmThose installed base and current sales figures look like they both include corporate/enterprise. Your success in penetrating much of that market with its centralized IT control and purchasing with a small FLOSS project is probably going to be much lower than your success in penetrating the end-user & small business market, a market where Macintosh has significantly better penetration.Whether or not individual Mac users have larger software budgets on average than individual Windows users may be up for some debate, though average selling price of the hardware alone would suggest they do.As one of those individual Mac users, I prefer not to run a VM if I don't have to. If it's free/open source, and there isn't a native OS X version, and there isn't a reasonable OSX-native alternative, I'll generally try running it in WINE before I think of firing up a VM. If its commercial software I'm unlikely to buy it unless its native. Being native isn't good enough though. A poorly done port of poorly designed Windows software better be essential and irreplaceable before I consider spending any money on it. A lazy port of well designed Windows software is a slightly better sale.Or, putting it another way, I chose to pay a premium for a Mac and put up with a somewhat smaller native software selection because they mostly just work and work well, and because, in my perception at least, they tend to attract better designed, more useable software. My software choices follow from that.So, I guess my question/advice is: How comfortable/familiar do you think the average electronic designing Mac user will feel with the software you are writing? How much effort are you willing to put into put into polishing the user experience on any of the platforms you plan to target? If you are mainly focused on functionality and end-states, I'd say the best thing you could do for Mac users is to test it on OSX in Wine, or perhaps even use some WINE based tool to package it as a Mac app. On the other hand, if you care about the transitions, it might be worth doing a native Mac port, even if you use a cross-platform UI framework.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2015, 10:23:36 pm
content: Quote from: eas on July 30, 2015, 10:08:25 pmWhile that argument makes sense to a certain extent, if you're in North America especially, when you look at how much moneysomewill spend on PC hardware and the prices of a lot of the software it starts to loose ground. It's all just different strokes for different folkes. "the PC Master Race" is hardly known for not putting their hand in their wallet either tbh.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2015, 11:49:21 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on July 29, 2015, 04:16:25 pmThis works for me. I'm as comfortable in Delphi/Pascal as I am in C, so this makes life stupidly easy. I used this to write a compiler/ide for the Parallax Propeller. I targeted Linux (because that's all I care about) but adding Win32 & Mac support was stupidly easy and the whole thing cross compiles on my Linux box.http://lazarus.freepascal.orgI've since used it to write a heap of internal Mac utilities for my wife & mother (who both now use OSX). Prototype & compile in linux.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2015, 11:53:02 pm
content: Quote from: c4757p on July 26, 2015, 05:08:31 pmMicrosoft is pretty hostile to developers who would prefer to not buy a copy of Windows and Visual Studio, too.

author: eas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 12:02:41 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 30, 2015, 11:53:02 pmWell, to be fair, with a little effort are ways to get at those for cheap/free. In fact, I bought a used Core2Duo with a Win7 Pro license for less than I would have had to pay for the Windows license alone. Ebay is lousy with such deals.Still, how whiny and entitled is it to get bent out of shape about buying a Mac if you want to develop for OSX.Actually, it seems to me a good thing for everyone involved. Why waste your own time developing for OS X if you can't bear buying or scrounging even a used Mac to develop on, and why waste the time of users if you can't bother testing on even one example of the hardware they are running on?

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 12:39:09 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 30, 2015, 11:53:02 pmAhem,https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 12:42:25 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 30, 2015, 11:53:02 pmThat's just software, though, and you don't need Visual Studio. I can still successfully put Windows into a VM on my non-Windows machine and test the applications.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 07:22:08 am
content: to put windows in a VM you need a windows licence though ...

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 02:43:25 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 30, 2015, 11:53:02 pmI've got to admit they're good to me. I've had a free MSDN license from them for years just because I asked once about better supporting Windows for cross platform projects, and even though I carried on using mingw to compile releases.VS community edition seems very good as well, but I'm not the biggest fan of IDEs. Haven't tried Visual Studio Code yet but I doubt it's not excellent.

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 03:14:32 pm
content: Quote from: c4757p on July 29, 2015, 03:01:38 amhttp://www.hackintosh.com/Useful to the OP as well, if he wants to go that route.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 09:33:28 pm
content: MM,I think that if you just focus on writing something that's really good and solves a problem - and/or solves the problem better than your predecessors, that people will simply find a way to run your software. Hypothetically, if you had a fantastic solution that was Linux-only and it solved my problem, I'd simply build a Linux machine and reap the benefits. I wouldn't let my bias toward a hardware preference keep me from it. And I would add "well-deployed" under that "well solved" category. If it's an easy, click-it and go solution, that will help ensure wide adoption.Just do good work and don't try to be all things to all people. Smart people will leverage it.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2015, 10:02:11 pm
content: BradC thanks but that unfortunately doesn't fix the problems of building for Mac without oneQuote from: LabSpokane on July 31, 2015, 09:33:28 pmThat's true, and with how I'm writing it *should* (hopefully) just be a matter of building it too which I'm pretty certain if Mac users want it one will for everyone else until I get around to getting one or someone joins "the team" lol.Again thanks everyone for your input.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2015, 12:44:38 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on July 31, 2015, 10:02:11 pmI'm not sure I follow. I build for Mac without touching a Mac. I just use OSX in a VM to test with. The fact I *now* do it on Apple hardware is irrelevant because I use the same methodology I was using when I had generic white-box linux PC's.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2015, 12:53:35 am
content: Quote from: BradC on August 01, 2015, 12:44:38 amI can't *legally* get the needed SDK without having access to a Mac. According to the projects wiki anyway.

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2015, 10:50:39 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on August 01, 2015, 12:53:35 amFunny thing, I live in a country where EULA isn't a real thing. I've bought OS X Snow Leopard on disc, installed it on my PC, registered at Apple, got upgrade to latest OS version (by downloading it for free at Appstore) and now Apple happily supports my "Mac Pro 3.1", whathever that may be. They're also very happy to charge me for developer license:)

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2015, 07:24:35 pm
content: Quote from: kaz911 on July 26, 2015, 06:48:37 pmAt work I also went through the process of deciding to support Mac OS X and I can confirm how vocal the very small percentage of Apple users can be (we can verify this in comparative number of downloads across Windows and Linux as well). The decision to support it went through a long process and took other factors into consideration, but along the way I was always the one deconstructing the general idea that Apple computing's market share was the same as Apple consumer (which it isn't).One thing I learned in the process is that supporting a new platform brings a new set of problems to support and fix. Another idea I had to deconstruct along the decision process: Apple is not "more stable" nor "simply works" when talking about developing/porting/supporting a product.Quote from: Mechanical Menace on July 27, 2015, 07:51:00 amThat is probably right; if Apple hardware is overpriced in the US, the history becomes much more critical in several countries I know (and have secondhand reports as well). Therefore, the popularity of Apple computing (and sometimes consumer) products is extremely small and caters to the wealthiest of the wealthiest.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2015, 07:53:43 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on September 27, 2015, 07:24:35 pmLook at the poll results here, majority say that they use or plan to use an apple computer. I doubt that we here are the 'wealthiest of the wealthiest'

author: fivefish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2015, 08:05:04 pm
content: For personal use: If a software does not have an OSX version, I don't even consider using it.For business use: Yes, I'll work with Windows... aka, the more problems it have, the more time I spend on it, the more I get paid. Sure... why not.While OSX/iOS have a smaller market share than Windows/Android, they're more likely to purchase and buy legal software than pirate it.http://fortune.com/2014/06/27/apples-users-spend-4x-as-much-as-googles/They tend to have more disposable income in general.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2015, 10:10:24 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on September 27, 2015, 07:24:35 pmOnce you compare hardware specs and factor in the longevity of the hardware, the retail price of Apple is the same as Lenovo or anyone else. I just went through this exercise thinking I could get a cheaper notebook by buying Lenovo, etc. and moving to Windows. Nope.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2015, 01:53:18 am
content: Quote from: zapta on September 27, 2015, 07:53:43 pmI see the confusion in my last sentence: I meant this in the countries I referenced, not the reality of US (which, like it or not, is the wealthiest of the wealthiest among countries).Quote from: LabSpokane on September 27, 2015, 10:10:24 pmAs I mentioned above this is related to the countries I referenced, where the price of a prebuilt top tier brand computer almost never compares to a pre-assembled one that uses parts from the gray market (for desktops) or has to buy a cheaper low-tier brand (for laptops).By the way, in my experience I have trouble reconciling the upfront costs of a more expensive hardware given I tend to take good care of the PCs I have - the oldest computers I have range from 6 to 11 years old and are still going on strong (although relegated to more mundane tasks given the processing power). But that is only my experience.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 28, 2015, 08:48:15 am
content: Quote from: LabSpokane on September 27, 2015, 10:10:24 pmAgreed, of 4 PC laptops I've had in the past 10 years only one didn't give me trouble. First one (no name) had a crap case, hinge attachments broke after one year, 2 months without it while it was sent back to be fixed. 2nd one (acer) had bad thermal design and would overheat / throttle down anytime it was under load until I found a program that allowed to reduce core voltage. 3rd one (dell) was good. 4th one (HP) was stupidly designed, they reused an existing battery on a new model with max power requirements that exceeded the battery's design, which caused the battery's resettable fuse to trip anytime you'd use something that loaded both the CPU and GPU. Not to mention the crap capacitive switches that would activate themselves randomly turning off WiFi when it's the most impractical.I then got a macbook air that I kept for 4 years, and which considering how much I could still sell it for after that cost me half of what I lost oneachof the PCs. Now 15'' macbook pro and very happy, nobody else makes machines that are strong yet slim and light, powerful yet long battery life when the power isn't needed. And they last, and resale value stays high for a long while.For desktops it's a whole other story, there it's always self-built PC, no doubt.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2015, 02:41:52 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 28, 2015, 09:48:02 amThat's a faulty statistics. You assume that using a Mac and generating Gerber's are two independent events.MACs are more popular the the maker community than in the general population.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2015, 05:09:42 pm
content: Simple.I'm an EE. Operating system is a tool, which allows me to run programs. Most programs (most EE tools) run on Windows, I use windows, and actually I do it quite efficiently.Pareto principle: You can target 80% of the audience with 20% of the effort. Why would you even consider supporting Mac? I would first think of supporting Android or IOS.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 12:48:16 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 28, 2015, 10:44:59 pmWindows only programs do poorly, in general, in the maker market.

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 09:54:16 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on September 28, 2015, 05:09:42 pmThere's a good example with how it works. Let's go into FPGA world. Altera's Quartus is a horrible port of some non-open-source-Unix-targeted software, written in mixture of C++, TCL (which is apparently still industry standard for scripting in digital stuff for some reason) and Lisp. GUI was quickly hacked in Qt (library that started on Unices) probably because Motif (80s Unix industry standard GUI library) could not really be used anymore. Yet still now they support this frankenstein of software (if you start digging in the Quartus directory your eyes will bleed, from gluing all this stuff and using Cygwin to make it work on Windows) MAINLY on Windows. Technological debt is awfully big, but they still hang on and do the development on Windows using all this mess. In 2015 I still from time to time have troubles importing project from Windows Quartus to Linux version (which should be the "more native" one), because Quartus project is a big mess of flat files (did you know that graphic schematic in Quartus is actually a text file with Lisp source code having hardcoded coordinate values?), source control is for the weak, and Linux Quartus will actually screw up loading a project because on Windows filenames aren't case sensitive, but on Unices they are...I really feel for my former Uni people teaching this stuff, when they got 150 CPU on FPGA projects where each needed 10 minutes of tinkering to at least open the thing and show the graphical schematic, because upper/lowercase got lost, Quartus silently put absolute paths like 'D:\MyLittlePony\MyStudy\Super Important Project\VersionFinal\AlU.vhd' into the project files, even though whole project was in single directory;)Running outdated version of Quartus on Linux is also a nice challenge, because they use hardcoded library names, and you end with doing manual symlinks from libpng.1.7.so to libpng.1.3.so because otherwise installer crashes at start (because it can't display Altera logo on welcome screen).I love what Quartus does, but from software engineering point of view it's just a big can of worms.

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 10:03:36 pm
content: By the way LTSpice is supported on OSX, it's just that Linear Technologies forgot to put some menus and screens in their port, so you have to do all your simulation settings writting it by hand ;p

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 10:15:45 pm
content: I've edited my post and now the discussion started to not make any sense, fixing that nowAbout using Windows, I work on logic synthesis, most of stuff are rather proof-of-concept programs that don't really require any graphical user interface or hardware support, so I can do it on whatever platform I want (and I prefer Unix-like toolchain for programming than Visual Studio business, just a matter of taste), my side-job is on web dev, which is very unix-friendly. If I need to run Quartus, to see how big boys optimize some gizmo, I just use my gaming rig which uses Windows for obvious reasons. And everyone is happy:) But I really don't envy people doing software in Altera, with this big ball of wool having zillions of complicated algorithms and the whole build process that actually requires a full moon and few prayers to finish:D

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 10:56:53 pm
content: Quote from: karoru on October 03, 2015, 10:03:36 pmNext time you're adding a simulation setting / analysis command, try right-clicking in the text entry area...Quote from: blueskull on October 03, 2015, 10:13:14 pmFor values of 'now' that include 2013...

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 11:02:01 pm
content: Quote from: Tac Eht Xilef on October 03, 2015, 10:56:53 pmOh boy, now I'm blushing, it's usual case of PEBKAC (problem between keyboard and chair). Thanks!To my defense, I didn't suspect that right click on text entry will give anything useful on them Mac text areas ;p And I can now happily trash my SPICE simulation command cheatsheet on my wall.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 03, 2015, 11:19:06 pm
content: Yeah, I had much the same reaction when someone told me about itI've never read what little documentation there is for the OSX version of LTspice, so I don't know if it's even mentioned there.

author: owiecc
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2015, 11:24:09 am
content: Quote from: karoru on October 03, 2015, 11:02:01 pmThis is just a case of bad UI design. I really like LTSpice for its technical abilities but I really hope they give it a better UI at some point because it sucks on all platforms.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2015, 03:42:54 pm
content: Quote from: Tac Eht Xilef on October 03, 2015, 11:19:06 pmI tried the OSX version about a year ago and it was barely useable compared to the Windows version. A big portion of the UI was not implemented on OSX.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 04, 2015, 09:39:25 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on October 04, 2015, 03:42:54 pmOh, it's all there - you just don't know it because it's completely non-standard and undocumented.To quote Mike Engelhart:QuoteBut LTspice - Win or Mac - has always been a mess of strange design/implementation choices, that are as often as not defended as The Only Right Way of doing things...

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2015, 10:39:08 pm
content: IMHO LTSpice is a typical example of a program where the GUI was added as an afterthought. Not very relevant to decide whether to write software cross platform or not. If you choose the right tools then creating a cross platform application doesn't take much extra effort (maybe 1%).

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2015, 12:37:44 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 04, 2015, 10:39:08 pmI met last week with a game developer. According to him the industry standard is a tool named Unity that supports virtually all game platforms.What would be the equivalent for GUI based desktop applications?

author: owiecc
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2015, 07:25:02 am
content: Quote from: zapta on October 05, 2015, 12:37:44 amThere are few popular UI frameworks like Qt or wxWidgets:List of platform-independent GUI libraries. The problem is that each platform has a different look and feel. While it is easy to change the shape of buttons and colors it is not easy to make one design that fits many OS designs. A well designed app for Windows 10 will look awkward under OS X and vice versa. Windows apps use ribbons now while an inspector panel is commonly used on OS X. Ideally you would need to design a separate UI for each platform while still maintaining some common ground so that users can switch platforms seamlessly.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2015, 08:10:01 am
content: Quote from: zapta on October 05, 2015, 12:37:44 amThe standard is probably still not bothering with a third party engine and making your own tbh. Unity is good if you don't have any unique requirements so is popular with some indie devs and shovleware publishers, but a lot of times it's just easier to start from scratch than to take such a big project and customise it to your needs.Quote from: owiecc on October 06, 2015, 07:25:02 amHence why I'm rolling my own based on GL and maybe later Vulkan. In my experience if the GUI works well for the job people may moan that it doesn't fit their particular OS of choices standards but they'll still happily use the program.Anyhows again thanks everybody for the feedback. I think I'm going to stick with aiming to be cross platform and hope an OSX user does builds for the rest of yous until I can justify buying a Mac just for the jollies. Unfortunately work and a new relationship are meaning I've less time to spend on this than I would of had but peeps here will be the first to hear about it when it's something like usable.

author: karoru
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2015, 12:30:06 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on October 06, 2015, 08:10:01 amWell, considering that most AAA games are made using something like Unreal Engine (which you can buy for pennies considering the whole budget), then that's really not true. Nobody starts from scratch now, unless you intent to spend few million bucks on reinventing the wheel. Starting from scratch now in game industry is an equivalent of creating your own ASICs.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2015, 06:09:53 am
content: Quote from: karoru on October 07, 2015, 12:30:06 am