15 ms·

Thanks and sorry for no Mac support. The hard truth is that Mac users represents less than 1% of our potential user base and it is hard to justify the time to

Thanks and sorry for no Mac support. The hard truth is that Mac users represents less than 1% of our potential user base and it is hard to justify the time to support Mac. We are planning to revisit this decision soon and see how much effort would it be.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Yes, but we are the cool 1%.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thomashop 4y ago
  is it 2005?
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    No. If you’re just waking up a lot has changed. There’s a pandemic. Donald Trump (seriously!) was president. There’s a new Cold War. Everyone works from home and drives an EV. Cars can drive themselves now. It’s a weird time to be alive. Good luck!
    - bilbyx 4y ago
      And Apple is no longer the cool company it used to be. Their decline in hardware and software quality was what made me stopped buying Macs after being a fan for the longest time.
      - fnordpiglet 4y ago
        I didn’t say Apple was cool. I said Mac users were. In fact, I’d posit anyone using a Unix based operating system is inherently cool.
        behnamoh 4y ago
        `man cool` please.
        selfhifive 4y ago
        Mac users are the preppies of CS. They all think they're cool but come across as snobs living in a walled garden.
      - stingrae 4y ago
        Is this a joke? Apple with M1 and iterations is changing the industry.
        TruthWillHurt 4y ago
        Yes, by increasing how many lies people will believe.
        resonious 4y ago
        In the industry I'm in (just fintech SAAS), the only "change" I've been noticing is that all of our Mac user devs have even worse local development performance than before: inability to run some Docker containers, and very slow local server runtime. I may be straying away from M1-related issues now, but I've also been seeing widespread Linux-style "why can't I share my screen?"-type problems. Not to mention fear of installing new updates and things breaking. It's like Mac is now the worst of both worlds of old Windows and Linux. To be fair, I'm not actually a Mac user - this is just stuff I've been observing from the outside.
        behnamoh 4y ago
        M1 has indeed introduced some positive and negative things. (+) Impressive performance while staying literally quiet and cool all the time. My MBP's fans kicked in only once—when using ffmpeg. This in itself has pushed the industry forward. We shall see what Intel and AMD have to offer soon. (-) Apple is obviously, well, Apple. They broke some things that used to work perfectly (or things for which there used to be a workaround). Apple is pushing a vision for user experience, which tbh, is not always ideal, but I get that. For this vision, they sacrifice so many things along the way (see this for example: https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c98fd9be4001 https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c...). Docker has been working well for me. But I agree that some changes (esp. M1) have made macOS feel a bit like Linux.
        tluyben2 4y ago
        I work in fintech saas and yes this has been an issue; my 11 year old x220 felt faster than the m1 when working on our monolith and services written in asp.net core and the docker services it needs. For everything native, it’s really fast. You really need to be careful to have everything native. With .net 6 which has an m1 target things are so much better. Same for the jvm, android dev and react native. Xcode is still buggy but we only use the tooling anyway. In short; it started out rocky, but, if you are careful and use only native application so Rosetta doesn’t kick in, it is a phenomenal machine (I have the air); great keyboard, touchpad and screen, great battery life and it stays cool throughout a development day. If you need x86/64 binaries, then these laptops are not a good choice; wait until there are m1 arm targets.
      - pipeline_peak 4y ago
        Also Steve Jobs is dead
        314 4y ago
        The dude's just woke up - this needs a spoiler tag.
- stingrae 4y ago
  1st Quarter 2022, Apple shipped nearly 15% of all PCs sold in the US.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    For playing games?
  - genewitch 4y ago
    Is this because they fab their own parts rather than off-the-shelf stuff that has been in supply side limbo for 2 years? $1000 "arm board" with impressive power and performance envelopes will get you some market share, especially if the existing ecosystem bends to the manufacturer's will. As they do. I fully expect the first company to really try and make an impressive risc-V workstation to clean up in that market, especially with people like myself that use higher end consumer parts as servers.
    - BatteryMountain 4y ago
      No not that direcly. Even with mac + intel chips the situation is the same, the hardware not really the main barrier. It's just a different software stack (OS, Drivers, Window management/UI, Sound, Networking, file access). It has similar barriers/differences in Linux. It requires extra build/compile pipelines at the minimum and most cases it means some refactoring of your code. In the worst case your gfx/audio/netcode is just plain incompatible (hard coded for a Windows/DirectX stack), meaning you have to rewrite quite a bit to abstract away the differences. This counts even in unity, it just helps here and there with making it cross platform and enforcing an opinion. These guys didn't use much of Unity and seems to use unity just as a rendering pipeline. People who buy macs tend not to game on them much, they buy it for other reasons. I think people who owns macs and play games, tend to have consoles or even a gaming rig (since they can most likely also afford those to begin with).
  - asdfasdf1111 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
- BbzzbB 4y ago
  Without P2W and micro-transaction mechanics, I don't think Mac users are more valuable than other ones for OP (I assume that, in the context, you are referring the fact Apple users spend more [1, 2], tho it could just be a cheeky joke). 1: https://www.phonearena.com/news/app-store-users-spend-more-than-double-google-play-users-subscriptions_id138692 https://www.phonearena.com/news/app-store-users-spend-more-t... 2: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/iphone-users-spend-more-money-on-apps-than-android-users-report/articleshow/83947757.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/iphone-user...
- jspaetzel 4y ago
  This is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps mac-only or mac-first businesses from becoming successful more frequently.
- peterpost2 4y ago
  Sure buddy
Mister_Snuggles 4y ago
I've found that CrossOver[0] does a really good job at getting Windows games to run on Mac. It might be a good stopgap. [0] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover
carabiner 4y ago
> 1% of our potential user base How did you determine this? Factorio is available for Mac. How did they, and other game developers, justify the work for a Mac port?
- yellow_postit 4y ago
  Not speaking for OP but Steam has some interactive stats [1] Where as of May 22 shows Macs to be ~2% and Linux 1% of install base. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- genewitch 4y ago
  Author mentioned that they only use unity for the rendering and audio, cross-platform games will use unity for a lot more, and generally get cross-platform for a significantly reduced "cost". This project is in C# so that's the first hurdle, I'd guess.
  - oynqr 4y ago
    Compiling modern C# is usually not a problem on Unix. Building the relevant tools yourself is a challenge, but the average macOS dev won't be doing that.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    C# has had cross platform support for 17 years. Without getting into the horror show of absolutely counter-intuitive acronyms that is modern .NET development (of which C# is a part), .NET now directly and natively supports cross platform targeting. I can build a Linux/Mac/etc binary from my Windows machine with the same compiler by changing a single flag. It's pretty cool stuff. The Uno platform is a third party project that ties this, and more, together to enable building single code-base cross platform apps with native UIs simultaneously targeting Windows/iOS/Android/Web (WebAssembly)/Linux/macOS/Surface Duo.
- McBeige 4y ago
  Perhaps using Steam's hardware survey: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
alephnan 4y ago
But Mac users are also more likely to spend extravagant amounts of money. Have you tried sending out a survey asking “how much would you be willing to pay for this game?”
- Fradow 4y ago
  The game is a one-shot purchase though, and Steam doesn't offer a per-platform pricing. It doesn't look like a game where micro-transactions would work either.
  - m_eiman 4y ago
    Per-platform pricing is easy: just release the Mac version on Gog, the PC verson on Steam, the Linux version on … EA? Then you can set separate prices for each :)
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      > Linux version on … EA ? Nice trolling. Linux would be of course on dev's own website, like for Factorio ? (Or Itch.io I guess ?)
4m1rk 4y ago
I thought Unity is cross platform
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  It is, but there are always some quirks that needs to be addressed on different platforms, and this takes up time when it comes to fixing and supporting those quirks. I would definitely also just release for one platform, Windows that is, and then consider every platform added after that as a bonus.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Yes, but we are the cool 1%.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thomashop 4y ago
is it 2005?
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  No. If you’re just waking up a lot has changed. There’s a pandemic. Donald Trump (seriously!) was president. There’s a new Cold War. Everyone works from home and drives an EV. Cars can drive themselves now. It’s a weird time to be alive. Good luck!
  - bilbyx 4y ago
    And Apple is no longer the cool company it used to be. Their decline in hardware and software quality was what made me stopped buying Macs after being a fan for the longest time.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      I didn’t say Apple was cool. I said Mac users were. In fact, I’d posit anyone using a Unix based operating system is inherently cool.
      - behnamoh 4y ago
        `man cool` please.
      - selfhifive 4y ago
        Mac users are the preppies of CS. They all think they're cool but come across as snobs living in a walled garden.
    - stingrae 4y ago
      Is this a joke? Apple with M1 and iterations is changing the industry.
      - TruthWillHurt 4y ago
        Yes, by increasing how many lies people will believe.
      - resonious 4y ago
        In the industry I'm in (just fintech SAAS), the only "change" I've been noticing is that all of our Mac user devs have even worse local development performance than before: inability to run some Docker containers, and very slow local server runtime. I may be straying away from M1-related issues now, but I've also been seeing widespread Linux-style "why can't I share my screen?"-type problems. Not to mention fear of installing new updates and things breaking. It's like Mac is now the worst of both worlds of old Windows and Linux. To be fair, I'm not actually a Mac user - this is just stuff I've been observing from the outside.
        behnamoh 4y ago
        M1 has indeed introduced some positive and negative things. (+) Impressive performance while staying literally quiet and cool all the time. My MBP's fans kicked in only once—when using ffmpeg. This in itself has pushed the industry forward. We shall see what Intel and AMD have to offer soon. (-) Apple is obviously, well, Apple. They broke some things that used to work perfectly (or things for which there used to be a workaround). Apple is pushing a vision for user experience, which tbh, is not always ideal, but I get that. For this vision, they sacrifice so many things along the way (see this for example: https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c98fd9be4001 https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c...). Docker has been working well for me. But I agree that some changes (esp. M1) have made macOS feel a bit like Linux.
        tluyben2 4y ago
        I work in fintech saas and yes this has been an issue; my 11 year old x220 felt faster than the m1 when working on our monolith and services written in asp.net core and the docker services it needs. For everything native, it’s really fast. You really need to be careful to have everything native. With .net 6 which has an m1 target things are so much better. Same for the jvm, android dev and react native. Xcode is still buggy but we only use the tooling anyway. In short; it started out rocky, but, if you are careful and use only native application so Rosetta doesn’t kick in, it is a phenomenal machine (I have the air); great keyboard, touchpad and screen, great battery life and it stays cool throughout a development day. If you need x86/64 binaries, then these laptops are not a good choice; wait until there are m1 arm targets.
    - pipeline_peak 4y ago
      Also Steve Jobs is dead
      - 314 4y ago
        The dude's just woke up - this needs a spoiler tag.
stingrae 4y ago
1st Quarter 2022, Apple shipped nearly 15% of all PCs sold in the US.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  For playing games?
- genewitch 4y ago
  Is this because they fab their own parts rather than off-the-shelf stuff that has been in supply side limbo for 2 years? $1000 "arm board" with impressive power and performance envelopes will get you some market share, especially if the existing ecosystem bends to the manufacturer's will. As they do. I fully expect the first company to really try and make an impressive risc-V workstation to clean up in that market, especially with people like myself that use higher end consumer parts as servers.
  - BatteryMountain 4y ago
    No not that direcly. Even with mac + intel chips the situation is the same, the hardware not really the main barrier. It's just a different software stack (OS, Drivers, Window management/UI, Sound, Networking, file access). It has similar barriers/differences in Linux. It requires extra build/compile pipelines at the minimum and most cases it means some refactoring of your code. In the worst case your gfx/audio/netcode is just plain incompatible (hard coded for a Windows/DirectX stack), meaning you have to rewrite quite a bit to abstract away the differences. This counts even in unity, it just helps here and there with making it cross platform and enforcing an opinion. These guys didn't use much of Unity and seems to use unity just as a rendering pipeline. People who buy macs tend not to game on them much, they buy it for other reasons. I think people who owns macs and play games, tend to have consoles or even a gaming rig (since they can most likely also afford those to begin with).
- asdfasdf1111 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
BbzzbB 4y ago
Without P2W and micro-transaction mechanics, I don't think Mac users are more valuable than other ones for OP (I assume that, in the context, you are referring the fact Apple users spend more [1, 2], tho it could just be a cheeky joke). 1: https://www.phonearena.com/news/app-store-users-spend-more-than-double-google-play-users-subscriptions_id138692 https://www.phonearena.com/news/app-store-users-spend-more-t... 2: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/iphone-users-spend-more-money-on-apps-than-android-users-report/articleshow/83947757.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/iphone-user...
jspaetzel 4y ago
This is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps mac-only or mac-first businesses from becoming successful more frequently.
peterpost2 4y ago
Sure buddy

Mister_Snuggles 4y ago

I've found that CrossOver[0] does a really good job at getting Windows games to run on Mac. It might be a good stopgap. [0] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

carabiner 4y ago

> 1% of our potential user base How did you determine this? Factorio is available for Mac. How did they, and other game developers, justify the work for a Mac port?

yellow_postit 4y ago
Not speaking for OP but Steam has some interactive stats [1] Where as of May 22 shows Macs to be ~2% and Linux 1% of install base. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
genewitch 4y ago
Author mentioned that they only use unity for the rendering and audio, cross-platform games will use unity for a lot more, and generally get cross-platform for a significantly reduced "cost". This project is in C# so that's the first hurdle, I'd guess.
- oynqr 4y ago
  Compiling modern C# is usually not a problem on Unix. Building the relevant tools yourself is a challenge, but the average macOS dev won't be doing that.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  C# has had cross platform support for 17 years. Without getting into the horror show of absolutely counter-intuitive acronyms that is modern .NET development (of which C# is a part), .NET now directly and natively supports cross platform targeting. I can build a Linux/Mac/etc binary from my Windows machine with the same compiler by changing a single flag. It's pretty cool stuff. The Uno platform is a third party project that ties this, and more, together to enable building single code-base cross platform apps with native UIs simultaneously targeting Windows/iOS/Android/Web (WebAssembly)/Linux/macOS/Surface Duo.
McBeige 4y ago
Perhaps using Steam's hardware survey: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

alephnan 4y ago

But Mac users are also more likely to spend extravagant amounts of money. Have you tried sending out a survey asking “how much would you be willing to pay for this game?”

Fradow 4y ago
The game is a one-shot purchase though, and Steam doesn't offer a per-platform pricing. It doesn't look like a game where micro-transactions would work either.
- m_eiman 4y ago
  Per-platform pricing is easy: just release the Mac version on Gog, the PC verson on Steam, the Linux version on … EA? Then you can set separate prices for each :)
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    > Linux version on … EA ? Nice trolling. Linux would be of course on dev's own website, like for Factorio ? (Or Itch.io I guess ?)

4m1rk 4y ago

I thought Unity is cross platform

thatwasunusual 4y ago
It is, but there are always some quirks that needs to be addressed on different platforms, and this takes up time when it comes to fixing and supporting those quirks. I would definitely also just release for one platform, Windows that is, and then consider every platform added after that as a bonus.