Looking at the statement from November 25, this gave me a sinking feeling:
Rosetta doesn’t work with Rhino, yet. Many of the issues are OpenGL related, and may be OpenGL driver issues. We will file driver issues with Apple as we get more information. Problems we can fix, we will fix in Rhino 7.
What this doesn’t mention is, OpenGL has been deprecated on Mac for years. It was already deprecated when Rhino 6 was released; I think Apple had announced that before there even was a Mac Rhino. It wouldn’t have been a total surprise if they hadn’t supported OpenGL on the M1 at all.
I understand that a truly native Mac version of Rhino would mean a lot of work, and if the cross-platform approach works OK, that’s fine with me. But it sounds like that technical debt is already a big problem, and Metal still isn’t even on the roadmap. As far as I can see, by September, Rhino might simply not be able to run on new Mac models.
I’m not trying to be the voice of doom here. Rhino is delightful to me, and I will be upgrading to version 7 as soon as my local reseller is back in the office. I’m just saying, if the Mac Rhino developers need to spend a year or two on technical debt instead of new features, I support that, because more than anything, I want to be able to keep using Rhino the next time I upgrade my computer.
(I literally just replaced my aging 13" MBP. I really wanted the M1 model, but I had to get the significantly worse and more expensive Intel version, mainly because of Rhino, which is why I am feeling very aware of how much I depend on the fine folks at McNeel)