Instead of Rosetta 2, why Apple doesn't make a Windows x86 emulator?

[ADGrant]

Because current solutions don't work. Apple doesn't need to get into the CI/CD business, they could play nice with cloud service providers by selling them M1 SOCs or letting them run macOS on non-Apple hardware.

After almost two years of Apple Silicon, there is no cheap CI/CD service to help developers test their apps, so Apple should step up and fix the situation.

Isn't that the point of Xcode cloud?

 

[ahurst]

I've seen very few in the physics and aerospace fields. Very few. Going back decades.

I'm certain it varies by field (and likely by institution), hence why I listed fields I can personally speak to (either from direct experience or close proximity). I will say that I have a friend who did an undergrad in fluid dynamics with a MacBook Pro for running simulations, and that the guy I collaborated with from the PyTroll satellite data processing project was also a Mac user (we had a shared Python dependency that had been abandoned by its original author), but they could very well be outliers.

That was the marketing early in the OS X era, but they haven't kept up with it. If they did and worked on that, they could own the technical workstation market. They choose not to. I could run part of my toolset on OS X, but not all of it, where with Linux I can. So, why Apple? Workstation-level M2 chips with ECC and not insulting RAM limits would be great. Will we see that? Will they actively support or encourage bringing higher-end CAD and CAE applications to MacOS? Doubtful.

Apart from offering ECC and more RAM, what else can Apple do to encourage CAD and CAE applications to be ported to macOS? I mean, I have no experience with CAD (apart from some basic AutoCAD they taught us ages ago in High School), but my understanding from talking to others is that it's the software companies failing to provide drivers and not bothering to port their software (or doing a poor job of it) that are the main barriers to adoption, which is something Apple doesn't have much control over.

I took a grad-level biomed engineering course last year to learn more about signal processing & building instrumentation, and it was a huge pain because all of the National Instruments USB data acquisition boxes had Windows-only drivers. The professor had even bought some special NI USB boxes specifically for the purpose of Mac/Linux compatibility, but the company decided to discontinue the cut-down version of the non-Windows driver several years ago so they won't work at all with Mac or Linux hardware. I ended up borrowing an old ThinkPad X200 from my lab's store room so I could actually do the labs during class.

 

[Krevnik]

Because current solutions don't work. Apple doesn't need to get into the CI/CD business, they could play nice with cloud service providers by selling them M1 SOCs or letting them run macOS on non-Apple hardware.

I’m probably more likely to get struck by lightning than Apple implementing either of these suggestions.

After almost two years of Apple Silicon, there is no cheap CI/CD service to help developers test their apps, so Apple should step up and fix the situation.

Which, in Apple’s view, would be addressing the gap with Xcode Cloud. Something they announced a year ago. The only reason I can think of it being in beta this long is they‘ve been trying to collect long-term data for pricing and stability purposes.

That said, on the iOS side of things, cheap CI has always been done using simulators with x86 builds. And those have more obvious issues where the simulator flat out can’t do all the things a device can, even on ARM Macs. Those that needed devices had to setup their own CI pools so they could ensure devices were attached to the machines. If anything, unless you are doing something very M1 specific, Mac CI on x86 Macs are a better analog than iOS CI on x86 Macs. So I am wondering how large the group is that needs an ARM based CI host for Mac builds.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Which, in Apple’s view, would be addressing the gap with Xcode Cloud.

XCode Cloud will be very useful for developers inside the Apple ecosystem but useless for developers outside the Apple ecosystem. It will remove the pain of self-managing a mac mini for CI/CD pipelines, but it won't help FOSS projects that need XCode to compile its application.

 

[jjcs]

Why is every post of yours on this website so bitter?

You've read everything I've posted here?

I view this as a wasted opportunity on Apple's part, although I'm no longer a direct shareholder so only indirectly care.

I don't take your line of work particularly seriously and that isn't going to change, but its the market Apple seems to value. Not actually useful things. Same trap that SGI went into, but they didn't have the consumer sales to make up for it.

 

[jjcs]

I'm certain it varies by field (and likely by institution), hence why I listed fields I can personally speak to (either from direct experience or close proximity). I will say that I have a friend who did an undergrad in fluid dynamics with a MacBook Pro for running simulations, and that the guy I collaborated with from the PyTroll satellite data processing project was also a Mac user (we had a shared Python dependency that had been abandoned by its original author), but they could very well be outliers.

Anything can be made to work well enough, but it devolves to this:

(1) are you trying to do the job on a Mac

or

(2) are you trying to do the job

Command line codes and Python scripts are pretty cross platform, so that would not be a problem.

You friend didn't likely "do an undergrad in fluid dynamics" specifically. That's not a specific degree, at least in the US. Undergrad level work like that tends to be model problems (as it should be, really - you're learning how the problems are solved). It'd be aerospace, mechanical, or possibly physics. Either way, it can be made to work, they just don't have the market presence they probably should have.

Apart from offering ECC and more RAM, what else can Apple do to encourage CAD and CAE applications to be ported to macOS? I mean, I have no experience with CAD (apart from some basic AutoCAD they taught us ages ago in High School), but my understanding from talking to others is that it's the software companies failing to provide drivers and not bothering to port their software (or doing a poor job of it) that are the main barriers to adoption, which is something Apple doesn't have much control over.

(1) Market to the industry
(2) support companies to port their products
(3) commit to supporting industry standards and not demand that everyone switch to their proprietary APIs.

All things Apple is unlikely to do, as they aren't interested in that market. The walls around the garden are going up. Some parts of that market can make things work within those limitations, but, personally, Linux is the better OS for much of this. It just lacks MS Office, but I'm rather willing to live with that to have access to all the other commercial tools... Midrange CAD, unfortunately, is a Windows domain, but high-end CAE and CAD is Windows/Linux.

 

[StudioMacs]

I don't take your line of work particularly seriously and that isn't going to change,

i have seen your account history, and it’s full of bitter, uninformed tripe like this.

You don‘t even know what my line of work is, yet you don’t take it seriously.

What line of work am I in?

 

[jjcs]

i have seen your account history, and it’s full of bitter, uninformed tripe like this.

You don‘t even know what my line of work is, yet you don’t take it seriously.

What line of work am I in?

I presume some sort of video/audio/picture editing work, Mr "I Am The Billable!" (I'm reminded of Stallone with "I Am the Law!"... hehe) and everyone else is "overhead". What's to take seriously there?

You don't take the "boring" people doing non-Apple "pro" things seriously, so not sure why it bothers you that someone might not take your field, whatever it is, seriously in return.

 

[jjcs]

I remember Genentech once (or maybe still?) used a lot of Macs, and Arthur Levinson is Apple's Chairman of the Board.

Anecdotally Ken Thompson and Brian Kernighan, two prominent computer artists (/s), use Macs.

It really does figure into what field of work one is in. They do make good low-end machines (as in desktop/laptops).