Modern App development and PowerPC

[MysticCow]

I do occasionally do development on my PPC machines (as well as on NeXTStep), but nothing serious, just for fun.

We'd love to partake in some of this "fun" you're having developing for PPC.

 

[0248294]

I'm a professional Mac developer as well as a collector of old Macs (PowerPC and 68k).

I dropped PowerPC support in the last app I work on about 3 years ago. I started development of that app on a PPC Mac running Tiger in 2006, so the codebase was relatively easy to keep PPC compatible for a long time. That wouldn't be true with a codebase started a few years later using blocks, ARC, the modern ObjC runtime, etc.

It's not that supporting the PPC architecture itself is hard, rather, supporting Leopard means giving up usage of (very nearly) all of the many new and enhanced APIs in newer OS releases. For my own apps, the number of active PPC users is near zero, so it really doesn't make sense to spend extra time supporting PPC at the expense of new development that will benefit everyone else. I wish the situation were different, and I went out of my way to support the minuscule portion of my user base on PPC for a lot longer than most Mac developer, but it just isn't worth it anymore.

I do occasionally do development on my PPC machines (as well as on NeXTStep), but nothing serious, just for fun.

That makes me appreciate Roccat browser even more, given they're still developing it as Universal, thus not being able to use modern APIs. That takes some dedication.

 

[AphoticD]

I'm a professional Mac developer as well as a collector of old Macs (PowerPC and 68k).

I dropped PowerPC support in the last app I work on about 3 years ago. I started development of that app on a PPC Mac running Tiger in 2006, so the codebase was relatively easy to keep PPC compatible for a long time. That wouldn't be true with a codebase started a few years later using blocks, ARC, the modern ObjC runtime, etc.

It's not that supporting the PPC architecture itself is hard, rather, supporting Leopard means giving up usage of (very nearly) all of the many new and enhanced APIs in newer OS releases. For my own apps, the number of active PPC users is near zero, so it really doesn't make sense to spend extra time supporting PPC at the expense of new development that will benefit everyone else. I wish the situation were different, and I went out of my way to support the minuscule portion of my user base on PPC for a lot longer than most Mac developer, but it just isn't worth it anymore.

I do occasionally do development on my PPC machines (as well as on NeXTStep), but nothing serious, just for fun.

Thank you for sharing. I have a couple of questions out of interest.

1. What was the deciding factor for dropping Leopard support in your longstanding app? 2014 is a massive stretch for PowerPC support compared to most other Mac developers.
2. Was there a specific modern framework that became necessary during the app's more recent development?
3. After dropping support, did you rewrite/convert your app's codebase to use ARC, blocks and modern ObjC runtime features or did the majority of your codebase remain the same?
4. Did dropping Leopard/PPC support to use modern features and frameworks improve, or have any impact in the app's performance or usability on modern hardware?
5. What is your app? I'd love to see the PPC-supported and post-PPC evolution of the app.

I understand that commercially, it isn't going to make developers a lot of money supporting (much) older hardware. PowerPC support in a modern universal app like Roccat is going to be out of love/regard for the platform from the lead programmer or company director.

My interest is that I began teaching myself C, Objective-C, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch (in that order), 4 months ago and I now have a firm grasp on the language and am in the thick of fulltime development of a series of connected Mac and iPhone projects. I clearly had the option to go headfirst into Swift 3 and modern iOS/macOS development, but I made a conscious decision to step back from the bleeding edge and decided that Objective-C would be my starting point.

Once I realized that I could compile any old Objective-C code on modern Macs, it made me reconsider Apple's constant forward-pushing approach and I began re-writing my projects with pre-ObjC 2.0 support (Tiger) in mind. I have so far kept this supported range going during development (10.4 - 10.13 beta). I can clearly see the pitfalls, but have decided to persevere.

I may be wrong and I may be digging myself a financial hole, but I feel right about my direction. Part of what makes me who I am is an understanding that all worthwhile efforts require a solid foundation, mixed with good economy and should be derived from the heart. Armed with this mantra, I found that deciding to develop new *Mac Desktop Applications* with support for PowerPC was both an inspirational realization and a no-brainer for me.

Plus, I believe there are specifically still a lot of PowerPC Mac wielding creative types (Musicians, graphic artists, authors/novelists, etc) choosing to be "willfully retro" (as @Dronecatcher puts it), so I feel comfortable with my choice at this stage.

I'm not saying there won't come a time to hang up the PowerPC hat, as that is inevitable. But for now, while these beautiful old machines are still ticking, I would love to see more software written to support the platform.

...Because as you say, it's not all that hard to support PowerPC. Apple have provided amazing tools to seamlessly bridge architectures. And, the platform is NOT broken!

 

[z970]

Thank you for sharing. I have a couple of questions out of interest.

1. What was the deciding factor for dropping Leopard support in your longstanding app? 2014 is a massive stretch for PowerPC support compared to most other Mac developers.
2. Was there a specific modern framework that became necessary during the app's more recent development?
3. After dropping support, did you rewrite/convert your app's codebase to use ARC, blocks and modern ObjC runtime features or did the majority of your codebase remain the same?
4. Did dropping Leopard/PPC support to use modern features and frameworks improve, or have any impact in the app's performance or usability on modern hardware?
5. What is your app? I'd love to see the PPC-supported and post-PPC evolution of the app.

I understand that commercially, it isn't going to make developers a lot of money supporting (much) older hardware. PowerPC support in a modern universal app like Roccat is going to be out of love/regard for the platform from the lead programmer or company director.

My interest is that I began teaching myself C, Objective-C, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch (in that order), 4 months ago and I now have a firm grasp on the language and am in the thick of fulltime development of a series of connected Mac and iPhone projects. I clearly had the option to go headfirst into Swift 3 and modern iOS/macOS development, but I made a conscious decision to step back from the bleeding edge and decided that Objective-C would be my starting point.

Once I realized that I could compile any old Objective-C code on modern Macs, it made me reconsider Apple's constant forward-pushing approach and I began re-writing my projects with pre-ObjC 2.0 support (Tiger) in mind. I have so far kept this supported range going during development (10.4 - 10.13 beta). I can clearly see the pitfalls, but have decided to persevere.

I may be wrong and I may be digging myself a financial hole, but I feel right about my direction. Part of what makes me who I am is an understanding that all worthwhile efforts require a solid foundation, mixed with good economy and should be derived from the heart. Armed with this mantra, I found that deciding to develop new *Mac Desktop Applications* with support for PowerPC was both an inspirational realization and a no-brainer for me.

Plus, I believe there are specifically still a lot of PowerPC Mac wielding creative types (Musicians, graphic artists, authors/novelists, etc) choosing to be "willfully retro" (as @Dronecatcher puts it), so I feel comfortable with my choice at this stage.

I'm not saying there won't come a time to hang up the PowerPC hat, as that is inevitable. But for now, while these beautiful old machines are still ticking, I would love to see more software written to support the platform.

...Because as you say, it's not all that hard to support PowerPC. Apple have provided amazing tools to seamlessly bridge architectures. And, the platform is NOT broken!

Right, but they clearly didn't provide a seamless architecture bridging. Not anywhere near as seamless as it could have been. Most especially for the G5.

 

[AphoticD]

Right, but they clearly didn't provide a seamless architecture bridging. Not anywhere near as seamless as it could have been. Most especially for the G5.

Apple went to great lengths to ensure PowerPC->Intel was a smooth forward moving transition, with no intention for retrospective support. However, the tools they developed for this transition allow developers to seamlessly bridge architectures by creating universal apps which can be run on Tiger and up across both platforms.

 

[z970]

Apple went to great lengths to ensure PowerPC->Intel was a smooth forward moving transition, with no intention for retrospective support. However, the tools they developed for this transition allow developers to seamlessly bridge architectures by creating universal apps which can be run on Tiger and up across both platforms.

I'm sure.

But was it smooth for the consumer?

 

[Dronecatcher]

But was it smooth for the consumer?

Not if you stuck with PowerPC - a huge hike in system requirements for the new Universal software revisions :\