News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The future of my games on Apple and what this means for art games. Parent comment

Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by boudewijnrempt on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:40PM (#21506835)
Or just drop Apple and macOS. Even for an application like Krita, for creative people, macOS is a laughably small platform, with a very small user-base, bringing in next to nothing money-wise, nothing contribution-wise, and it tries to force everyone to use proprietary libraries like Metal, instead of properly supporting OpenGL and Vulkan.

From an effort-to-income perspective, macOS isn't worth it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by coldtea on Monday November 11, 2019 @01:50PM (#21507597)
For Krita maybe.

Creative Suite stuff, which actual pro creatives use, on the other hand, has been 50-50 Mac/PC sales, even though the Mac has 10% or less of the desktop market.

That's how many creatives are on the platform.

If Krita can't tap into them, it's not the platform that's at fault...

Affinity, for example, does fine, as does Pixelmator...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by chipotle_coyote on Monday November 11, 2019 @03:53PM (#21508804)
This pretty much nails it. I don't know anyone on macOS who uses Krita, but that's not because macOS has such a tiny tiny userbase there's no reason for anyone to support it -- it's because Krita has neither measurable marketshare or mindshare on the Mac.

It may be a wonderful program now, I don't know, but I do remember KDE's initial efforts on the Mac -- and they were... I originally wrote "just awful," but I'll amend that to a weaker "not very good." I haven't actually seen any desktop GUI program whose primary platform is Linux really take off on the Mac, with the possible exception of LibreOffice. We have so many good cheap-to-free alternatives.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by coldtea on Monday November 11, 2019 @04:48PM (#21509249)
I used KDE as my primary desktop for a few years circa 2000-2004.

In fact I used "webkit" before it was webkit and before it was cool: I used Konqueror as my main browser (I didn't care for it being not compatible with many sites at the time, as I cared mostly for simpler, text-based sites which worked fine).

I remember all the "KDE Office" apps, various drawing programs, etc. They were and many are on a perennial semi-finished state, in a way that Windows and OS X equivalent are not. Krita has done well on that front, and a couple of others, but it took many years of not great releases. And in Windows/OS X they are non-starters as ports...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by Razengan on Monday November 11, 2019 @01:13PM (#21507172)
> for creative people, macOS is a laughably small platform, with a very small user-base, bringing in next to nothing money-wise, nothing contribution-wise

... As a user, statements like that – about any platform – honestly just make me want to avoid anything from the developers who make them.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by gowld on Tuesday November 12, 2019 @10:14AM (#21514689)
The platform matters. Mac is intentionally expensive and exclusionary. They won't even sell their expensive OS to run on perfectly functional low cost computers. If you are going to blame the victims for that, I don't want you as a user either.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by Razengan on Tuesday November 12, 2019 @02:23PM (#21517189)
Apple got to where they are because users generally agree with them.

If a developer is going to attack users, the users are better off on Apple's side.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by s_dev on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:51PM (#21506941)
>From an effort-to-income perspective, macOS isn't worth it.

Apple has introduced Catalyst in Xcode -- this translates iOS apps to macOS, compile once and run on two platforms.

Mac App store has been notirous for not getting as much love as the iOS one but this change might reverse the direction as there will be a lot more apps coming for the Mac App Store now that they can leverage their iOS dev ecosystem.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The future of my games on Apple and what this means for a... by w1nst0nsm1th on Monday November 11, 2019 @05:03PM (#21509390)
I don't know If the Mac App Store will bring better apps and grater for enthousiasm than it is now for Apple Store business model, but you can be sure of one thing : notarisation program will not last. The goal is to lock the platform like iOS and force force every user to get their apps through the App Store and nowhere else.

I'm pretty sur once MacOS has switched to ARM, system partition will be in read only mode, you will not be able to install app outside of the AppStore except if you jailbreak thank to a "security flaw".

[ Parent | on HN ]