Has Apple lost it's magic?

[Comptech]

At the same time, I got a Hyundai Veracruz in with a bad alternator, good customer and went to build the estimate for alternator and valve cover gasket replacement. My software for invoicing showed a open recall for that problem. 12 year old car pushing 200k and Hyundai is going to do it for free including towing, Hate to loose the job, but I wish the would hold the American companies to the same standard

 

[N6BY]

Apple has been very difficult to develop software for over the years. They keep pulling out the rug from underneath me with their frequent hardware and OS changes.

I develop for both Mac and Windows. The only change I had to make for Windows was many years ago in the transition from 32 to 64-bit.

With Mac, here is the list of major revisions I have had to make to get my software to run. The amount of time involved in each ranges from weeks to 2 years (#6). And most of these required me to buy new Macs to use for development and testing.

1) Mac OS 9 to OS X
2) Motorola 680X0 to PowerPC
3) PowerPC to Intel
4) 32-bit to 64-bit
5) Intel to Apple M1 chip
6) Mac OS X to Big Sur and Monterey - major changes to the way programs draw to the screen and numerous 'Deprecated' functions - functions which have been deleted (or soon will be) from MacOS

My customers blindly 'upgrade' to the latest version of MacOS, oblivious to the implications it will have with their existing software.

MacOS Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey broke my program. I spent 2 years rewriting it. Today, for example, I got a call from a customer who complained that my program doesn't work on his latest version of MacOS.

I explained to him that it requires a new version of my program because of the changes Apple made and he said "you mean I have to shell out $99 to use the software on the latest MacOS". I calmly replied "Well at least you didn't have to spend 2 years of your life making the required changes to the program like I did". He was speechless.

 

[clucas]

N6BY, Do you know if Wine works with Monterey? Asking before I upgrade from Mojave on my iMac.

 

[harshness]

Apple has been very difficult to develop software for over the years. They keep pulling out the rug from underneath me with their frequent hardware and OS changes.

OS changes are only a part of the carpet. Changes to the development platform has been a rocky road as well and cause more than a few Mac programmers to jump ship.

 

[N6BY]

N6BY, Do you know if Wine works with Monterey? Asking before I upgrade from Mojave on my iMac.

It doesn't. Wine requires 32-bit support and all MacOS versions beginning with MacOS Catalina are 64-bit only. (That includes Big Sur and Monterey).

 

[harshness]

N6BY, Do you know if Wine works with Monterey? Asking before I upgrade from Mojave on my iMac.

You would need to set up a virtual Windows machine using Parallels, VMware, QEMU or similar.

 

[clucas]

N6BY and harshness, Thanks for the information.

 

[ncted]

1) Mac OS 9 to OS X
2) Motorola 680X0 to PowerPC
3) PowerPC to Intel
4) 32-bit to 64-bit
5) Intel to Apple M1 chip
6) Mac OS X to Big Sur and Monterey - major changes to the way programs draw to the screen and numerous 'Deprecated' functions - functions which have been deleted (or soon will be) from MacOS

I feel your pain. OTOH, the Computational Fluid Dynamics software one of my customers just finished porting to Apple Silicon literally runs more than an order of magnitude faster on the M1 Ultra than on any recent x86 chip (even 128 core EPYC) due to the new memory architecture, and that isn't even taking power consumption into account.

Still, Apple has a bad habit of reinventing the wheel over and over again. That can result in some really nice results, but not without a whole lot of effort.