The Apple Transition To ARM

[Shenanigunner]

21 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

The big caveat to this argument is that unless you intentionally buy an Intel Mac (assuming you need to get a Mac for reasons). Not to long from now (if not already), Apple will stop producing Intel Macs, period and anyone buying a Mac won't have a choice if their needs require modern/current equipment.

 

I think the only things I could say (and already typed and deleted) would be taken as or spark yet another round of platform flamewars. I'll just say that there comes a time when a maker clearly doesn't care about its legacy users, and that's the time to stop investing no matter how large the sunk costs.

 

(Speaking from 30 years in graphics, imaging, CAD, video, music/audio production—both as user and systems consultant.)

 

Seems like keeping an Intel Mac or two around to run legacy apps and beat up Arachnos is a perfectly viable strategy for quite some time. 🙂

[GM Tock]

On 1/24/2021 at 8:18 PM, WanderingAries said:

Consider this a Nail in the Coffin (for now). I just tried running the BC Assistant and it flat says it's not compatible and quits after clicking the confirmation button.

Yup, Apple said Boot Camp has reached end of life for them.  Not only is it not supported on Apple M1 Macs, but once the Intel Macs are discontinued from sales, it's basically no longer supported by Apple in any way.

 

13 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

I think the only things I could say (and already typed and deleted) would be taken as or spark yet another round of platform flamewars. I'll just say that there comes a time when a maker clearly doesn't care about its legacy users, and that's the time to stop investing no matter how large the sunk costs.

 

(Speaking from 30 years in graphics, imaging, CAD, video, music/audio production—both as user and systems consultant.)

 

Seems like keeping an Intel Mac or two around to run legacy apps and beat up Arachnos is a perfectly viable strategy for quite some time. 🙂

It's not all "boo Apple", it's curiosity for the PC side as well.  Microsoft is rumored to be considering the same leap for Surface devices.  (Nevermind that Surface Pro X has already been released, but it is running a Qualcomm Snapdragon, MS didn't 'design' the chip when they released it.)

 

Apple is both a peek at what this means as well as a harbinger.  Ignoring them or taking your money elsewhere isn't going to make the trend go away.  Then again, for being the "Post PC Era", sales were expected before 2020 to continue slumping in favor of mobile devices and tablets to continue replacing home computers.  Mobile work has changed that outcome.  So if Apple M1 is supposed to be a shot across the bow of the big three to start counting their days (HP, Dell, Lenovo), they're not feeling it yet.

[Shenanigunner]

1 minute ago, GM Tahquitz said:

It's not all "boo Apple", it's curiosity for the PC side as well.  Microsoft is rumored to be considering the same leap for Surface devices.  (Nevermind that Surface Pro X has already been released, but it is running a Qualcomm Snapdragon, MS didn't 'design' the chip when they released it.)

 

Surface devices (Surfaces? Surfi?) are not the whole of "desktop" systems on the WinTel side. Although MS has annoyingly shoved mobile/Surface features into the full desktop version of Win10 — it's irritating to have to actively disable things like touch and pop-up keyboards on an app installed on a desktop system — I don't see any plans to completely drop desktop-as-desktop versions of the OS.

 

This will deeply, deeply shock the under-30 crowd, but:

• No, kids, you can't do everything on a mobile device.
• No, kids, the touch-interface mode is not best for all C/H interaction.
• No, kids, a laptop is not the only/best/optimal format for getting work done day in and day out.

MS seems to retain some of this understanding. Apple's move to "computers are just mobile devices you can't carry easily" thinking, to me, means they really, really don't want to be in the computer business any more. As I said, what "computer" company runs high-budget ads basically crapping on the idea of computers, because gosh, you can run whole companies and do high-end graphics, video production and day-in-day-out work on a tablet? 😛

 

Not bashing Apple, but they all but conceded the work-computer market a long time ago and have clearly lost the last bit of interest in favor of their (excellent) mobile technology.

[GM Tock]

3 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Apple's move to "computers are just mobile devices you can't carry easily" thinking, to me, means they really, really don't want to be in the computer business any more.

Their fate will be clearer when news concerning the Mac Pro is made known.  If Apple says that's the end of their line when it's time for the 2019 cheese grater to get a refresh, I can tip my hat to you.  (Apps like Final Cut and Logic Pro can certainly still work on their laptops and iMacs, but really shine on bigger hardware.)

Regardless, this has nothing to do with City of Heroes, so I'll stop there.

[Shenanigunner]

21 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Regardless, this has nothing to do with City of Heroes, so I'll stop there.

 

How odd of you. 😛

 

Back to topic, I guess if someone is going to upgrade to an ARM Mac as their only system... compatibility of the game matters. But I'd guess anyone working with that level of hardware has at least one other system, IntelMac or even Winders, for backup and alternate apps. So hopefully the hardware shift won't really impact any Mac players.

[pauper_ill]

On 1/26/2021 at 10:41 AM, GM Tahquitz said:

It's not all "boo Apple", it's curiosity for the PC side as well.  Microsoft is rumored to be considering the same leap for Surface devices. 

 

It's not just Surface devices -- Microsoft has already gotten rid of 32-bit versions of Windows 10 in their OEM chain. As of May 2020, an OEM can't pre-install 32-bit Windows 10 on their machines. (This won't stop DIY enthusiasts, for now, but I suspect if you went to MicroCenter or Best Buy looking for a current gen laptop or workstation with 32-bit Windows pre-installed, it'd be very hard to find.)

Quote

 

Apple is both a peek at what this means as well as a harbinger.  Ignoring them or taking your money elsewhere isn't going to make the trend go away. 

Not to mention that Apple has traditionally had no problem being the harbinger for other technological changes in the personal computer space, like the elimination of the floppy drive, the elimination of the CD/DVD drive, the replacement of the track pointer (still used on the classic ThinkPad) with touch pads (the aforementioned ThinkPad actually comes with both these days), the elimination of serial and parallel ports in favor of USB (the original iMac was the first personal computer to ship exclusively with USB ports), etc.

 

It's sometimes frustrating to have to figure out work-arounds for these changes to new Macs, but the good news is that not only have there generally been work-arounds, they slowly become less necessary as the older software/hardware gets updated for the new technology, and where it's not possible to adapt the old, you figure out how to use something new and better. I can live with that.

 

Edit: I don't want to start a platform war, either, but the fact that I was able to figure out how to keep CoH running by using Crossover is a point in favor of my argument above. I felt it was important to make that point, but now that I've made it as relevant to CoH as I can, I can bow out as GM Tahquitz did.

 

--

Pauper

Edited January 30, 2021 by pauper_ill

[GM Tock]

Personally my only hangup with all of this is I don't want to advocate spending money on additional software to play Homecoming vs. waiting for Wine to have an answer that is no additional cost past hardware (which you'd need to obtain either way, PC or Mac fan.)  If someone wants to take the plunge anyway and if "it's my money" is the first thought that comes to mind when I say that, Crossover does work ...as long as players understand that GM & Developer staff can't offer support for it if something goes wrong at this moment.

 

Again, thank you and WanderingAries for sharing your experience in getting it running.

[WanderingAries]

48 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Personally my only hangup with all of this is I don't want to advocate spending money on additional software to play Homecoming vs. waiting for Wine to have an answer that is no additional cost past hardware (which you'd need to obtain either way, PC or Mac fan.)  If someone wants to take the plunge anyway and if "it's my money" is the first thought that comes to mind when I say that, Crossover does work ...as long as players understand that GM & Developer staff can't offer support for it if something goes wrong at this moment.

 

Again, thank you and WanderingAries for sharing your experience in getting it running.

I completely agree that the whole point is Not to encourage unnecessary spending, but to instead know your options. Hell, I'd much rather aim you at a budget PC at that point as you'd get more use TBH unless (like mentioned above) the issue was you were getting an M1 already.

[cheeseninja]

I got an Apple Silicon Mac Mini to install and run Homecoming with Island Rum by first installing wine-devel (current supports rosetta and wine64) with Homebrew. 

 

It runs very close to as well as it did in Crossover.   No obvious bugs or visual artifacts. 

 

[WanderingAries]

20 hours ago, cheeseninja said:

I got an Apple Silicon Mac Mini to install and run Homecoming with Island Rum by first installing wine-devel (current supports rosetta and wine64) with Homebrew. 

 

It runs very close to as well as it did in Crossover.   No obvious bugs or visual artifacts. 

 

ORL? Please Educate on the process! :p

[cheeseninja]

5 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

ORL? Please Educate on the process! 😛

To install Homebrew, paste the following into terminal: 

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

 

Next, install wine-devel by running the following commands in Terminal:

brew install --cask xquartz

brew tap homebrew/cask-versions
brew install --cask --no-quarantine wine-devel

 

After that, Island Rum should be able to do its magic. 

[WanderingAries]

4 hours ago, cheeseninja said:

 

So that should be:

 

1) Install Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

2) Install wine-devel

brew install --cask xquartz
brew tap homebrew/cask-versions
brew install --cask --no-quarantine wine-devel

3) Install Per Manga's Process?

 

_{(Sorry, most of that was to cleanup so I can read it later)}

[WanderingAries]

On 2/16/2021 at 11:49 PM, cheeseninja said:

I got an Apple Silicon Mac Mini to install and run Homecoming with Island Rum by first installing wine-devel (current supports rosetta and wine64) with Homebrew. 

 

It runs very close to as well as it did in Crossover.   No obvious bugs or visual artifacts. 

 

I just tried this on the same hardware you mentioned having Rosetta already installed (pretty vanilla OS). I'm running 11.2.1. I'm getting the Same, blank white window (after I manually expand it) with sound, that I've been getting the whole time. Can you think of anything in the process that may have been left out? Any other apps you may have already installed?

 

I've attached my Terminal results, goofs and all. Yes, I "USERNAME"d myself out of it.

CoX PrePrep.rtf

[cheeseninja]

15 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

I just tried this on the same hardware you mentioned having Rosetta already installed (pretty vanilla OS). I'm running 11.2.1. I'm getting the Same, blank white window (after I manually expand it) with sound, that I've been getting the whole time. Can you think of anything in the process that may have been left out? Any other apps you may have already installed?

 

I've attached my Terminal results, goofs and all. Yes, I "USERNAME"d myself out of it.

CoX PrePrep.rtf 20.69 kB · 0 downloads

Only thing I can think of is that it either picked up a pre-existing wine config or CoX config.    Try hitting alt-enter when you get the window, should try to fullscreen it if it's minimized.   The wine window manager interacts strangely with MacOS...  Crossover is much better with that sort of thing, almost worth it for that. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by cheeseninja

[WanderingAries]

4 hours ago, cheeseninja said:

Only thing I can think of is that it either picked up a pre-existing wine config or CoX config.    Try hitting alt-enter when you get the window, should try to fullscreen it if it's minimized.   The wine window manager interacts strangely with MacOS...  Crossover is much better with that sort of thing, almost worth it for that. 

This seems to be how it acts in general on the platform overall (for me at least) as it's exactly what happens each time I've tried from the beginning, even after purging all traces of CoX and Wine. Previously it was mentioned that it's likely something to do with OpenGL and Rosetta.

[cheeseninja]

1 hour ago, WanderingAries said:

This seems to be how it acts in general on the platform overall (for me at least) as it's exactly what happens each time I've tried from the beginning, even after purging all traces of CoX and Wine. Previously it was mentioned that it's likely something to do with OpenGL and Rosetta.

That's precisely the behavior I get with wine-stable.   wine-devel has the fixes applied for Rosetta memory locations which I think also fixes that as it works for me. 

 

What versions are Homebrew and Wine64 reporting?

 

Homebrew is 3.0.1 and wine64 5.7 here.

 

Unless Crossover overrides some wine libraries, I can't think of any reason other than wrong Wine version it would work for me and not you. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by cheeseninja

[WanderingAries]

3 hours ago, cheeseninja said:

That's precisely the behavior I get with wine-stable.   wine-devel has the fixes applied for Rosetta memory locations which I think also fixes that as it works for me. 

 

What versions are Homebrew and Wine64 reporting?

 

Homebrew is 3.0.1 and wine64 5.7 here.

 

Unless Crossover overrides some wine libraries, I can't think of any reason other than wrong Wine version it would work for me and not you. 

I'll have to check that then, thanks.

[WanderingAries]

On 2/18/2021 at 8:10 PM, cheeseninja said:

That's precisely the behavior I get with wine-stable.   wine-devel has the fixes applied for Rosetta memory locations which I think also fixes that as it works for me. 

 

What versions are Homebrew and Wine64 reporting?

 

Homebrew is 3.0.1 and wine64 5.7 here.

 

Unless Crossover overrides some wine libraries, I can't think of any reason other than wrong Wine version it would work for me and not you. 

I'm apparently using the newest wine64, but can't seem to sort out how to find the Homebrew version number. Also, I see Wine Devel.app with the "that's not compatible" icon over it and when I GI it says it's a 32bit app. Looking through the Terminal output, it should be Homebrew 3.0.1.

 

I just tried reinstalling the Wine-Devel and no change that I can tell. I'm a bit out of my language here though.

Edited February 21, 2021 by WanderingAries

[WanderingAries]

On 2/18/2021 at 2:11 PM, cheeseninja said:

Try hitting alt-enter when you get the window, should try to fullscreen it if it's minimized.   The wine window manager interacts strangely with MacOS...

Why oh WHY did I think this wasn't important? Because I "though" it was simply going to give me a big white screen instead of the little one, that's why! >.<

 

All is well and now it's time to take all this info and start writing!

[WanderingAries]

And Tada!

 

[Gorgar]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:03 PM, WanderingAries said:

Why oh WHY did I think this wasn't important? Because I "though" it was simply going to give me a big white screen instead of the little one, that's why! >.<

 

All is well and now it's time to take all this info and start writing!

This (plus the xquartz/wine-devel instructions) got me up and running on an M1 mini.  Thanks!

[pauper_ill]

Just wanted to chime in to say 'thanks' to WanderingAries and CheeseNinja for puzzling out the 'fix' to run the Mac version of CoH without spending extra cash.

 

This is exactly what I meant when I noted earlier in the thread that the community can go a long way to help keep these sorts of situations from being too great of a headache for users.

 

--

Pauper

[WanderingAries]

Just stopping by to say that the Win10 - Arm still runs the game at x86 only and that the Parallels Tech Preview is over (so it would cost anyway).

[Hyperstrike]

21 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

Just stopping by to say that the Win10 - Arm still runs the game at x86 only and that the Parallels Tech Preview is over (so it would cost anyway).

So you WERE able to get the ARM stuff running finally?

[WanderingAries]

3 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

So you WERE able to get the ARM stuff running finally?

 

Oh I've Had it running in Parallels on the M1 from the start (when their beta came out), but it's never been able to properly handle the 64 bit drivers for CoX for some reason.