How can I tell if an app in the MAS is compatible with AS?

[davidg4781]

I'm looking through some of the apps I bought/downloaded pre-AS. When I upgraded to an M1 MBP, some of the older ones said they are not compatible.

I'm looking at the list again and there doesn't seem to be a way to tell if they're compatible of not. And maybe I should ask in the games section since they're mostly games but I'm more interested in the overall experience.

Example... Pocket Planes was last updated 9 years ago. No mention of 64-bit or anything like that. It loaded fine but I didn't play.

Tropico 5, last updated 7 years ago, Compatibility says Works with this MacBook Pro. But when I download and click open, it says the developer needs to update the app.

And I get a developer might not want to go back and update old apps. But why can't it be clearer in the MAS?

 

[Tagbert]

I'm looking through some of the apps I bought/downloaded pre-AS. When I upgraded to an M1 MBP, some of the older ones said they are not compatible.

I'm looking at the list again and there doesn't seem to be a way to tell if they're compatible of not. And maybe I should ask in the games section since they're mostly games but I'm more interested in the overall experience.

Example... Pocket Planes was last updated 9 years ago. No mention of 64-bit or anything like that. It loaded fine but I didn't play.

Tropico 5, last updated 7 years ago, Compatibility says Works with this MacBook Pro. But when I download and click open, it says the developer needs to update the app.

And I get a developer might not want to go back and update old apps. But why can't it be clearer in the MAS?

At most, the App Store could tell you if the app has been recompiled for Apple Silicon. It can't tell you if the app will crash or not. I would be very leery of buying such old apps. At best, it would only run under Rosetta2 emulation mode.

For such old apps, it is pretty clear that the publishers have abandoned them and are not fixing anything or testing on newer hardware or software. If it hasn't been updated in the last 2-3 years, what happened to it and why was it abandoned?

 

[davidg4781]

At most, the App Store could tell you if the app has been recompiled for Apple Silicon. It can't tell you if the app will crash or not. I would be very leery of buying such old apps. At best, it would only run under Rosetta2 emulation mode.

For such old apps, it is pretty clear that the publishers have abandoned them and are not fixing anything or testing on newer hardware or software. If it hasn't been updated in the last 2-3 years, what happened to it and why was it abandoned?

Yeah that makes sense.

For Tropico 5, it doesn't look like it's available for sale but it does show up in my past purchases. It's just a hassle to download large apps only to find out they're not compatible. And it doesn't seem there's a quick way to know if it's been updated recently.

 

[Tagbert]

Yeah that makes sense.

For Tropico 5, it doesn't look like it's available for sale but it does show up in my past purchases. It's just a hassle to download large apps only to find out they're not compatible. And it doesn't seem there's a quick way to know if it's been updated recently.

For me, if I go to my purchase history in the App Store app and find an older app, I can click on the icon for the app and it shows me the app listing which has the version history. This version was last updated 10years ago. You can't get that app in the App Store, it has been replaced by a new app. Try this it might show you when apps were last updated.

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[Chozun]

I rely on this link to see which software is compatible with each new version of the Mac OS:

Application Compatibility Table — RoaringApps

Crowd-sourced application compatibility for macOS, iOS and Windows.

roaringapps.com

 

[Nermal]

Tropico 5, last updated 7 years ago, Compatibility says Works with this MacBook Pro. But when I download and click open, it says the developer needs to update the app.

That's stung me in the past. Apple really needs to update the Compatibility thingy because it seems to ignore CPU architecture (even on my Intel system it reports 32-bit-only games as compatible, but they don't run).