MacOS 11

[GetRidOfWires]

Apple announced MacOS 11 and the transition from Intel to ARM chips at WWDC today. I understand these changes will make the code base for apps on Macs and iDevices easier to maintain, and have uniform UIs. But just like when they moved from 32-bit to 64-bit Catalina, I'm sure there will be issues running CoH on Macs going forward. Does anyone here have any information? I assume Wine will need to be recompiled for ARM chips, if that is even possible. Maybe we will need to use a VM to run our favorite game?

[Redlynne]

Found this ... LINK

[Apparition]

Honestly, you probably would be better off using a Windows 10 VM to run CoH with, instead of using an emulator to use another OS's APIs.  Apple has been notoriously anti-video gaming from its very beginning, as Steve Jobs thought that video games were a waste of computing.

[Gulbasaur]

My brother came to the conclusion that the only way to guarantee compatibility on his mac with a few things he uses regularly for work (and games, as a side effect) was to stop updating the OS. It's a shame how they actively shun backwards compatibility. Back in the day, they dropped the Classic layer, which was an entirely separate install, on PowerPC machines that could run it comfortably because other machines ran Intel processors and they wanted feature parity. Despite Windows being a complete mess in terms of the UI and how you access anything in the settings, the backwards compatibility on it is pretty remarkable.

 

It looks like Wine installed via Homebrew might work for 64-bit programs according to this user on StackExchange.

 

I think it depends on how much work you're willing to do for it to maybe work, sadly. 

[macskull]

6 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Back in the day, they dropped the Classic layer, which was an entirely separate install, on PowerPC machines that could run it comfortably because other machines ran Intel processors and they wanted feature parity.

To be fair, Classic worked in every PowerPC-supported version of OS X except 10.5, which was released in fall 2007, almost six and a half years after the first OS X release, and it didn't work at all on the Intel releases of 10.4 and 10.5. Likewise, Rosetta (PowerPC -> Intel) was available for all OS releases for about six years, and OS X didn't drop support for 32-bit applications until just last year. The thought process there is that any commonly-used software will almost certainly be updated in that time frame and the compatibility layers are no longer needed because they add complexity. Obviously if you're using some kind of niche software or abandonware the story is a little different, but you can still run older versions of OS X that support those features in a VM (Intel) or emulator like SheepShaver (PowerPC) if you're so inclined.

Edited June 23, 2020 by macskull

[WanderingAries]

Odds are, If you dont' already, it'd be "easier" to just have a reasonably powered PC to run the game if you're wanting an ARM Apple device. That said, OS11 isn't exclusively ARM either apparently. They're using it to migrate that direction, but anything capable of Mojave (Maybe HS?) will run this one right now.

[Jimmy]

My understanding is that Rosetta 2 should be sufficient enough to handle for a while yet. As @macskullmentioned, the original Rosetta (used during Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel) was supported for around 6 years worth of OS updates, so assuming they follow a similar path here then you should be good for at least that long (and even then you'll be fine if you don't update). And of course you will continue to have the option to dual boot.

 

Difficult to comment beyond that right now though, still very early days in that regard and I am by no means an expert when it comes to OS X. 

[Fiery_Deception]

20 hours ago, Apparition said:

Honestly, you probably would be better off using a Windows 10 VM to run CoH with, instead of using an emulator to use another OS's APIs.  Apple has been notoriously anti-video gaming from its very beginning, as Steve Jobs thought that video games were a waste of computing.

Ah, the usual "just use windows" answer just because someone uses a different OS.

[Apparition]

9 minutes ago, Fiery_Deception said:

Ah, the usual "just use windows" answer just because someone uses a different OS.

... that is actively hostile to video games and video game developers, and now intends to move to a platform where no current video games will work on at all without emulation.

[macskull]

7 hours ago, Apparition said:

... that is actively hostile to video games and video game developers, and now intends to move to a platform where no current video games will work on at all without emulation.

Apple has never been "actively hostile" to video games and game developers, what on earth are you talking about?

[Apparition]

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

Apple has never been "actively hostile" to video games and game developers, what on earth are you talking about?

 

Where to begin?  First, Apple had a terrible, near deprecated version of OpenGL for years that they barely supported.  Then they axed it all together.  Then Apple refuses to support Vulkan in favor of their proprietary Metal API.  See here and here for starters.  Then dropping all support for Nvidia graphics cards.

[Number Six]

To be completely blunt, Rosetta 2 is probably the best bet for a while -- other than just not buying an ARM Mac while they are still making the Intel ones -- but I wouldn't count on much beyond that unless Apple gets a ton of backlash from users and it takes a bite out of their sales.

 

While I wouldn't put an ARM port of COH beyond the realm of possibility, Wine is probably dead outside of Rosetta since there's not really such a thing as a Windows ARM executable anyway. A native neo-Mac port would require porting to ARM, and Xcode, and a proprietary graphics API that isn't used anywhere else.*

 

That's... approaching a full rewrite from the ground up. A native Linux port is more likely, since at least the graphics engine doesn't have to be completely re-engineered, and some of the backend work we've been doing has been moving things in a more cross-platform direction.

 

* barring things like MoltenGL becoming mature enough, but most of those focus on restricted profiles like OpenGL ES or are non-free and expensive to license

[golstat2003]

11 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

Where to begin?  First, Apple had a terrible, near deprecated version of OpenGL for years that they barely supported.  Then they axed it all together.  Then Apple refuses to support Vulkan in favor of their proprietary Metal API.  See here and here for starters.  Then dropping all support for Nvidia graphics cards.

How on earth do you drop support for one of the most used cards in the industry? WTF?

[GM Tock]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

How on earth do you drop support for one of the most used cards in the industry? WTF?

This isn't anything new.  Apple hasn't fostered any kind of relationship with NVidia for a long time.  NVidia dropping MacOS Support is kind of a shrug at this point, since Mojave shut out hardware CUDA support from Mac Pros making NVidia cards far less useful.  The future of AMD and Mac Pro is just as muddy, though, with the recent news... if Apple wants to design everything about their computers from the top-down, AMD may not be a part of future Mac Pros either.

 

Of further interest, Boot Camp was one solution to work around running City of Heroes on a Mac (just less popular than Island Rum, because dropping MacOS for Windows is still happening.)  That ends with the Intel to ARM changeover, as Apple is quietly dropping support for non-Intel Boot Camp use after the changeover, and (past IOT builds without a GUI, or modified Raspberry Pi builds from homebrew enthusiasts) Windows 10 isn't commercially available for consumer installation on ARM systems past read-only firmware anyway.

[golstat2003]

39 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

This isn't anything new.  Apple hasn't fostered any kind of relationship with NVidia for a long time.  NVidia dropping MacOS Support is kind of a shrug at this point, since Mojave shut out hardware CUDA support from Mac Pros making NVidia cards far less useful.  The future of AMD and Mac Pro is just as muddy, though, with the recent news... if Apple wants to design everything about their computers from the top-down, AMD may not be a part of future Mac Pros either.

 

Of further interest, Boot Camp was one solution to work around running City of Heroes on a Mac (just less popular than Island Rum, because dropping MacOS for Windows is still happening.)  That ends with the Intel to ARM changeover, as Apple is quietly dropping support for non-Intel Boot Camp use after the changeover, and (past IOT builds without a GUI, or modified Raspberry Pi builds from homebrew enthusiasts) Windows 10 isn't commercially available for consumer installation on ARM systems past read-only firmware anyway.

Thanks for the info. Seriously, at this point anyone asking me "can I play COH on my mac" my answer is going to be dual boot a VM of windows on your mac.

[Jimmy]

A few posts have been hidden. It may surprise you to learn that bickering is not the purpose of this thread, so please try to avoid it 🙂

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, all threads on the Internet are ultimately bickering!

 

[GM Tock]

And Manga said a thing.

[WanderingAries]

On ‎6‎/‎24‎/‎2020 at 11:54 AM, golstat2003 said:

Thanks for the info. Seriously, at this point anyone asking me "can I play COH on my mac" my answer is going to be dual boot a VM of windows on your mac.

I would alter that to Bootcamp only until that goes out the window as well because of the extra strain using VM to run Windows for graphically intensive tasks. Hence my begrudging "better to just get the PC" response. You'll already want to have MacFanControl installed as it is with the fans on max when in windows.

 

 

As for a random comment on here, from a (LARGE) Mac group that is very active online: (summarized) "[The CEO] has historically viewed games as waste of clock cycles".

[Redlynne]

16 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

As for a random comment on here, from a (LARGE) Mac group that is very active online: (summarized) "[The CEO] has historically viewed games as waste of clock cycles".

Jack Emmert was prone to fanatically believing things that were objectively untrue too ...

[WanderingAries]

On ‎6‎/‎30‎/‎2020 at 11:56 AM, Redlynne said:

Jack Emmert was prone to fanatically believing things that were objectively untrue too ...

Fair enough, but generally I (and most I've been around) have viewed Apple as not being all that supportive (quantity/quality), but not outright against otherwise we wouldn't have things like Myst being so popular.

[Greycat]

Well, there's a difference between "being supportive" and "just happening to have the tools someone else used to make a game." (In Myst's case, as I recall, that was Hypercard - at least in the games leading up to it.)

 

At least they're somewhat consistent. (Unlike, say, OS/2's support back in the day - which went from being indifferent to "We're supplying tools to assist gaming" to "Due to internal politics (IE, "another division is trying to axe this because they're selling windows PCs and this is competition,") we're taking those tools away, but at least they weren't released." We *still* got things like Galactic Civilizations, but... could've been better.)

 

I'll take indifference over actively hostile. 🙂

[GetRidOfWires]

Thanks for the replies, except of course the Mac-hostile ones. If Rosetta2 will work for a few years that’s fine with me. Maybe by then I’ll get up the courage to switch to Linux full-time.