By now, I'd treat Apple-exclusive app developers for Stockholm syndrome.
I used to build a Mac-only native app for real-time audio processing, which was great for battery life, snappy performance and had no latency. But the work that Apple pushed on me just to keep things running okay-ish across OS releases was too much to bear compared with the meager revenue of only serving 10% of the addressable market.
By now, my app is using a cross-platform C++ framework so that I can compile the same code for Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows and surprisingly Linux pay for development of new features, while Mac is more of a prestigious afterthought. Needless to say, I'm not using native Apple frameworks anymore and battery life on OS X has suffered. But finally, the same C++ code will compile nicely across OS X versions, the app is profitable, and I'm not stressed by every WWDC anymore.
And then when Epic showed me what I had feared all along - namely that Apple is happy to sacrifice their loyal developers in the name of profits - I was just glad that I had taken the jump off Apple-specific development tools early enough.
Most of the product moves now are just BOM reductions or ways to milk more service revenue. Calling it now, the Native Mac OS App this blog post champions won't exist in 10 years. Apple will kill it because iPads and iPhones outnumber Macs, the norm for Apple now is to get a cut of software sales and the sort of Native app Sketch represents doesn't get them that cut.
The future of MacOS is it's the place you go to multitask "the iPad apps you know and love". This will be a bitter pill for myself and everyone here to swallow but if you believe I'm wrong then what you actually believe is that Tim Cook understands the value of an open operating system enough to justify not getting a cut on all those software sales, do you truly believe that?
Why is what I'm proposing doom? The iPad is a more popular and modern platform than MacOS, MacOs users should be happy they now get to take advantage of that beloved ecosystem. (Well that's what the PR will say anyway)
Think you're missing the point what I'm making and passing it off as just general Apple negativity.
Spatial Audio Designer + it's virtual sound card. As heard in Red Tails by Lucasfilm, for example. Or the Expendables 3 bluray.
LAWO hardware mixing desks are Linux based, so the broadcast world demands Linux tools.
But the whole thing started out as an Apple exclusive app to be used together with Pro Tools. Ironically, Pro Tools has also had lots of problems with new macOS releases, so when their Windows presence grew, we observed our most important customers jumping ship and decided to follow them.
The C++ framework is JUCE. I'm a big fan of its visual editor and how easily you can extend that to support your own GUI components.
As far as I know, we're the only ones offering this. Both on Windows and on Mac. We used to have healthy profits on Mac before the problems started. Then, as our customers moved from Mac to Windows, so did our revenue.
I was with you until you mentioned Epic. What Epic did was a violation of a contract in a way it knew would bring about a confrontation. The judge hearing the case agreed that it was purely self-inflicted pain by Epic.
To be clear, many App Store rules seem arbitrary and ill defined (and enforced), but Epic is not the one to support here for what it did.
I agree that Epic is not innocent here. But what I worried about was Apple's reaction to them. Kicking Epic out is OK, but when they decided to use Epic's Unreal Engine customers as leverage by threatening to prevent future security updates of the engine, that was a clear sign that the current Apple management does not value the indie studios that build the apps.
I used to build a Mac-only native app for real-time audio processing, which was great for battery life, snappy performance and had no latency. But the work that Apple pushed on me just to keep things running okay-ish across OS releases was too much to bear compared with the meager revenue of only serving 10% of the addressable market.
By now, my app is using a cross-platform C++ framework so that I can compile the same code for Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows and surprisingly Linux pay for development of new features, while Mac is more of a prestigious afterthought. Needless to say, I'm not using native Apple frameworks anymore and battery life on OS X has suffered. But finally, the same C++ code will compile nicely across OS X versions, the app is profitable, and I'm not stressed by every WWDC anymore.
And then when Epic showed me what I had feared all along - namely that Apple is happy to sacrifice their loyal developers in the name of profits - I was just glad that I had taken the jump off Apple-specific development tools early enough.