I'm not paying the Homebrew developers anything so I've got no right to expect anything or criticise whatever they choose to do with their time and their project.
But if they did want compatibility it's not true that they're 'at the start of Apples two year transition to ARM CPUs' - you have been able to access development machines for many months. I got one and I don't maintain anything nearly as important as Homebrew.
The reason Apple do developer previews, betas, and early access to hardware is so that you can have day-one support, if you want it.
I don't think you needed M1 - I think A12Z was fine and widely available for many months.
So no, I don't think "you can have day-one support, if you want it" is accurate at all.
Do we have any actual numbers on that? I feel like developers (and power-users generally) have internalized this notion that we're a rounding error compared to the general public (perhaps a holdover from the old days, when regular folks didn't use the internet or computers at all). But in 2020, software development is a massive portion of the economy, and Macs seem to be disproportionately popular with startups and developers.
A little lazy googling puts the graphic design industry at $12.7 billion, and the software development industry at $388.98 billion.
I hope this next year shows Apple helping out pivotal projects like Homebrew. If they expect their own developers to be using their own hardware, then they will certainly have to make it work.
I was only a student when they switched to Intel, so I wasn't aware of any issues facing developers back then. I'm guessing they'll follow the same playbook, though.
Because an important segment of Apple's customers--developers--rely on Homebrew for critical functionality.
Of course it's difficult to move an entire ecosystem to a new architecture, and Apple may have made the right move here. But it's not very hard to understand why people who stand to gain so much from the new architecture, but can't use it yet because the ecosystem isn't there yet, are a little annoyed.
Plenty of us develop just fine without it.
> Otherwise have patience and wait for people work through the issues. Besides in a years time Apple are undoubtedly going to release the M2, M3 etc with a whole slew of “pro” devices better suited for developers.
There's also, arguably, a pretty pronounced bleeding-edge trend over the past 12-18 months or so, across a number of device categories: foldables everywhere, new game consoles, multiple open-spec Linux phones, M1 Macs, etc.
And if you're not itching to early adopt, the timing for all of these is actually kind of great. Because parallel to this, there are multiple ecosystem-level changes hitting over the next several months that should translate to big usability jumps for any of the ones that get a next version. (Though probably not the consoles, since those tend to run longer lifecycles by design.)
Of particular note: by the time the M2 or M3 has ironed out the macOS ARM ecosystem, you can also reasonably expect high-end devices as a category to have 6GHz WiFi and a modern spec for Bluetooth audio.
Sure, but making it easy for developers to use your platform is good because then it's easier to develop big fancy things like Photoshop.
By its very nature Homebrew is going to hit every edge case that can possibly exist during this transition process. It also has a huge number of indirect dependancies, also driven by its nature as a package manager. Meaning a huge amount of work across many projects is needed to get Homebrew “working” for everyone.
We’re at the start of Apples two year transition to ARM CPUs. If important thing X doesn’t work right, and it’s important to your workflow, then buy an Intel Mac.
Otherwise have patience and wait for people work through the issues. Besides in a years time Apple are undoubtedly going to release the M2, M3 etc with a whole slew of “pro” devices better suited for developers.
As to why Adobe gets a helping hand. Simple, Adobe’s customers almost certainly make up a bigger portion of Apple’s revenue than developers. Plus normal people understand what photoshop is, and understand how important it is to work on these new Mac. The general public hasn’t even heard of Homebrew, never mind understands how impressive it would be to get such software working on day 0.