They are running Altium on MAC?! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 08:45:20 am
content: I know that we have an Altium forum, but this is more than Altium.Just saw on LinkedIn that Altium hosted some event where students used Altium for their project.How on earth are they running it on Mac? I had tried to run altium on Mac (M1, 16GB RAM) and got 0.5fps on the 3D viewer, where other things ran very slowly... and that was by running windows ARM directly on the M1. Is there an altium version that is running on Mac?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 08:50:07 am
content: Probably still running in windows, just under a VM (parallels etc).The VM window isn't running fullscreen, so you can still see the mac status bar/controls

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 08:55:40 am
content: I haven't used parallels, but does it show the programs icon? Because you can see that the tool bar has the altium logo open.

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 09:00:06 am
content: Here is the posthttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/altium_altiumdesigner-education-electronics-activity-7148825429347303426-derD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 09:03:00 am
content: Just watched it in more detail... they are running windows on the macI was just so happy to see a slight chance of altium creating a mac variant :'( :'( :'(Case CLOSED.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 09:16:17 am
content: As the resident Apple hater here I can only remind you that Apple had maybe 1% of laptop market before they made it possible to run Windows on Macs

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 09:28:54 am
content: I am not much of a fan of it either, but the build quality and the battery life is what makes it worth as an every-day carry for doing web, writing documents and for occasional coding.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 09:33:37 am
content: Quote from: mrburnzie on January 08, 2024, 09:28:54 amThat may have been the case 5 years ago, but other ultrabook manufacturers have upped their game.With Apple you often get an unrepairable laptop in the event of liquid spillage or just normal wear, for instance the Butterfly Keyboard design requires the entire top case to be replaced to change one key.Nowadays a Mac is more street cred than actually better.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 01:14:24 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 08, 2024, 09:33:37 am+1street cred and aesthetics.

author: m98
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 01:36:44 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 08, 2024, 09:33:37 amPost-2019 Macbooks have a scissor keyboard, and you can exchange it just fine. Aside from the lack of upgradability, I can't see how Macbooks are in any way less repairable than other Ultrabooks. The M SoCs are also a massive advantage on terms of battery life, especially when running compute- or graphics-heavy applications.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 10:11:02 pm
content: Quote from: magic on January 08, 2024, 09:16:17 amActually it was around 10%, but who’s counting orders of magnitude?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 10:17:07 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 08, 2024, 09:33:37 amOther companies have definitely upped their game on build quality, but they can’t compete on battery life. As others have said, Apple Silicon isinsanelyenergy-efficient. The MacBook Pros with M3-series chips claim22 hourbattery life, and Apple is generally quite good at stating fairly realistic laptop battery figures. I don’t think any Windows laptop can claim anything like that, never mind a laptop as slim as that.

author: Gerhard_dk4xp
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 10:31:43 pm
content: Someone here had the idea to run Altium on a Macbook Air with Parallels.I tried two days and gave up. When you give your address to P., you'll getdaily super duper special offers for 6 weeks that are all alike.I run my own Altium on a WIN10 VMware machine under Linux. That evenworks when i'm $SOMEWHERE with the motor cycle and a tiny DELL XPS13.Slower than on the tower at home, but I'm always ready for answers.Cheers, Gerhard

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 11:03:46 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on January 08, 2024, 10:17:07 pmThere are tiny/slim ARM windows laptops with similar battery life such as a Lenovo ThinkPad X13s. But I'm not familiar with anything that has both the performanceandpower efficiency of the Apple M series.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 11:46:56 pm
content: Quote from: mrburnzie on January 08, 2024, 09:03:00 amAD is probably so tied to Windows that porting it to macOS would probably mean rewriting 80% of it to address a rather small market (although this market is clearly increasing in the last years, while Windows market share is actually decreasing.)But using a VM is fine. As long as you have enough RAM. (Which on Macs is not cheap.)

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2024, 11:52:07 pm
content: The computer is just a tool to run the software. You select the tool based on requirements.And it's expensive enough, so you can easily afford to buy a PC.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2024, 12:12:27 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 08, 2024, 11:46:56 pmAn alternative that the gaming industry uses: write/test the code against operating platform independent libraries (WINE if you want to take an existing windows codebase).

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2024, 09:38:45 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on January 08, 2024, 11:52:07 pmI wish Altium ran on Mac. Yes a computer is “just” a host for the programs one uses, but I think people significantly underestimate how much time we spend interacting with the OS itself, in things like file navigation (both in Windows Explorer or Finder, but also in open/save dialogs). I still find file navigation on Windows to befarinferior to the Mac, to the point of being a noticeable, time-wasting thorn in my side. (I feel that one spends far more time on Windows re-navigating to the same places over and over.) I also (for the most part) far prefer window management on the Mac. While I certainly find Windows 10 and 11 to be eminentlyusable(with them finally having fixed the stability and performance problems that vexed me on Win 7 and earlier), they still aren’telegant, which macOS decidedly is.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2024, 10:57:00 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 08, 2024, 11:46:56 pmFor porting to iOS it would have been easier if they had left the code in Delphi rather than porting to C++, which they did many years back.If they had stuck with Delphi longer all the cross compile stuff for Windows and iOS would have come out and with a little effort to update the win32 GUI stuff to firemonkey they could have had an version that will cross compile on Windows and iOS.I assume they ported it to C because the pool of programmers to hire from is so much larger.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2024, 11:09:05 pm
content: Delphi is a pretty bad language though. I should know - I'm a former victim. It's also hard to find Delphi programmers and it suffers bad vendor lock in because Embarcadero are the only provider of viable development tools.C++ is fine, as long as you use it right, and a far better choice than Java (Eclipse can die in a pit of fire). They could (and maybe did) write it with a toolkit that allows multiple operating systems to be used, but there's a lot more involved in building a Linux/Mac port like software testing and support. If the market is too small they won't be able to justify doing it.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2024, 09:03:22 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on January 11, 2024, 10:57:00 pmiOS ≠ macOS. I don’t think anyone wants Altium on iOS. (Delphi would compile to macOS, too, however.)

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2024, 10:45:12 pm
content: Far more likely they will continue to move in the direction of cloud hosting. It's certainly not what I prefer, but if you can play a first person shooter with streaming, even slightly effectively the technology is going to be good enough for altium. And it makes a lot of business sense for altium, it gets them cross platform support automatically, gives them more opportunities to extract money from customers, and largely side-steps the hellscape that is trying to keep your software running well on modern corporate windows desktops.I've used the existing altium 365 viewer, and it's obviously quite limited and could be faster, but it actually works better than I expected for design reviews.Even large companies are coming around to having policies that allow storing proprietary data in approved 3rd party cloud providers, as you can see from the success of products like OnShape and Autodesk Fusion. Of course there will be companies that can't or won't, and the desktop version isn't going to go away any time soon, but if you are hoping for Altium on the Mac the only way you will see it is in a browser.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2024, 09:45:33 am
content: I haven't run AD on a native Windows installation for over 6 years, all in VMs.. works fine. Win10 comes with DirectX software emulation APIs such that the DirectX version (older) Altium versions can be rendered without a GPU, inside the "VM client". I also tried Virtualbox 3D features, which is also a software emulation layer on the host side, but it didn't support Altium's crooked (older) DirectX version.. and I also think its abandonware at this point.Software rendering does take quite a punch to the system though. I ran it on a 3900X system with as many cores allocated as I could get away with. Performance was OK with anti aliasing turned off and medium sized designs. However, I also found that a 5600G with only 6 cores can deliver acceptable performance, just. I have that CPU sitting in my NAS running Windows VMs, so that way I can remote into a CAD environment at anytime.By todays standards both CPUs are not amazing multi-core performers anymore, so with that it should run on virtually any modern workstation. For folks that use older systems and want to use Mac or Linux, I feel your pain.As in native support for Altium.. I wouldn't expect that in probably another half a dozen years. Besides electrical engineers often treating PCs as tools (rightly so), it also means that Mac's have a prejudgement of "useless" since so few tools work well on Mac. Ever tried LTspice's Mac version port? Yes I did, and although the primitives are the same.. the UI is not, and they clearly have stopped caring at some point as many useful UI dialogs are missing compared to the Windows versions.However, since not many EEs use a Mac, this makes it a perfect chicken-egg problem. VMs are mainly just patches. To be honest I've stopped using Altium and swapped it for KiCad instead. For my projects its good enough.Secondly, hearing the language/tools/developments woes of Altium doesn't convince me that they will quickly port over anytime soon. A large part stands by the UI framework chosen, and vendor lock-ins from language/tool environments doesn't help.I honestly do think that if they (Altium) was to poll their customers for Linux support, that a considerable amount of people in the embedded space would probably vote in favor of a Linux port.