Apple Silicon, macOS Big Sur, and Rhino for Mac

Sure, but trying to convince McNeel to stop developing for macOS, isn’t just “saying what you want”, but actively trying to make something go away for people using another OS than you!

Do you really know that much about their internal structure to determine this? Trolling much?

I get that. I suspect that many of the problems that Rhino allegedly has nowadays, stem from it being far too dependant on the Windows platform too. Once you scratch the surface a little, you quickly notice how deep these roots run.

This can not be true, at least when it comes to file support!! Blender even runs on Raspberry Pis, which technically is an ARM-based system, and there is a whole lot of supported formats.
Or look at Inkscape which supports even more formats in 2D.

In my opinion, if McNeel doesn’t manage to get Rhino working on ARM-based computers, it’s only a question of one or two generations, and they’ll be left behind for good. Not because macOS will surpass the user base of Windows, but because the current generation of youngsters now grows up with tablets that run iOS or Android, and most of them don’t even use a traditional computer anymore. As tablets and their OSes get better and better, there’s really no telling, if the traditional computer that we’re used to, is even a model of the future.
Microsoft has already lost in that division, since they don’t have a competitive mobile platform, but Rhino hasn’t. I’d plan for a fully working, no-bullshit tablet version in the next 5 to 10 years that can run on iOS and Android, and I believe that’s really sound advice!
If you think about the popularity of tablets and smartphones, it should become clear where we’re heading, and why what Apple is doing, in terms of unifying its platforms makes total sense. There’s not that much money to be made in consumer-driven desktop environments anymore. Microsoft knows that too and that’s why they’re focussing on the cloud.

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How many professionals (architects, designers, engineers, 3D artists) are using iPad’s and smartphones to do their 8 -10 hours work? Even the modern graphics cards are bigger than a smartphone and need a lot of energy. Not to mention my three 27’ monitors - without them I’m blind!

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No one is using tablets for productivity. There’s barely a market for android tablets. The future is convertibles which apple refuses to make. Since it would kill off off their tablets. I don’t understand why people support a company that has complete contempt for them.

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I just installed Linux on both my Mac machines. So much better! Finally I can use again my Nvidia eGPU! And the 32bit apps also. Only in one of them I still have Catalina in one partition to run RhinoMAC. I will be very pleased to have Rhino support for Linux, so I can totally switch to Linux.

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Well, it’s not just that annoys me, it’s quite disrespectful to come to this community, in which there are lots of Mac users, and ask to stop development just because you think that your beloved Windows Rhino will do a bit better if McNeel drop support for Mac. And as I said, it’s not the first time

Why don’t we wait until we actually know what this new direction means in terms of development before we draw any conclusions.

Lots of them/us! An iPad is a fantastic tool for many tasks, and many professionals has adopted it. As an architect, I love it for sketching and to communicate with clients. You don’t have to use something 8 hours a day to be considered a pro tool, if you benefit of using it, that’s enough.

So true! I always think the same when I see the face of my kids when they touch the screen of my desktop computer and nothing happens. They look at me as if there would be something wrong with my computer :rofl:

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Don’t take it for granted. For example, Rhino uses Autodesk’s binary to export/import FBX. If Autodesk doesn’t release an ARM version, Rhino ARM won’t be able to read/write fbx files. Besides Rhino uses binary from ArchVision to process RPC GIS files, etc.

Blender has implemented its own FBX exporter, iirc.

btw ARM Mac won’t support BootCamp, obviously.

Not very compelling. Macos won’t replace Windows in the foreseeable future. It has been trying to take over the status of Windows but so far no success. And Mac’s market share rises by 2% in the past 5 years. Revit ignored the Mac platform all the time but it’s still widely used.

Mobile computing is one another thing, though. Just as I said, I can imagine running Rhino on iPad and I’d love to. However, the change will be quickly accepted by indivdual designers, while it takes a very long time for the industry to adopt it.

A trend I witness is that devlopers are more locked onto the Mac platform. From whatever to Xcode, from OpenGL to Metal, from Obj-C to Swift. Obviously the moves have divided the dev community.

Yes, I agree…

I think José is right. It really depends on what you’re doing. The iPad is great for sketching (I use Concepts, for instance) and also for some modelling tasks (Shapr 3D) - and I’d love to have a ‘lighter’ Rhino version for iPad OS.

Philip

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You are obviously completely oblivious to what’s happening around you! First of all, many architects and designers already use tablets in parts of their workflows, others don’t even use a computer. Also I was talking about the next generation, which are still children at the moment and already using tablets at school in some classes. I don’t know about you, but that’s how I got started with computers in the first place.

… you’re joking right. :smiley:

My grandpa had a convertible once, and the textile roof used to leak like a mofo! Who knows maybe the iCar will have a retractable roof though? :thinking: I hope they’re gunning for a hard top.

Tell that to all the users that were basically extorted to upgrade to Windows 10, or the folks worried about the nice backdoor Microsoft has sneaked in to spy on you. :smiley:
Seems a bit childish to me to think that any company really cares about you, only because you buy their products. It’s more them caring about you buying than anything else really.

Good for you, although I think you overpaid a little to run Linux, since it basically even runs on a toaster. I’ve seen people running NVidia eGPUs on modern Macs though. I believe you need to install the web drivers.
By the way, you basically revealed yourself as a Linux n00b, because Linux users widely prefer AMD GPUs and don’t appreciate NVidia’s closed source shenanigans. :smiley:

Probably won’t happen, as tablet Rhino won’t? :frowning:

I wouldn’t worry about Autodesk, because they have lots of programs with macOS support. Maya even runs on Linux, and does Nurbs modelling. I don’t know about the RPC GIS stuff.
If Blender has done it, so could McNeel!

Do you know this for certain? I doubt that somehow.

You might not have read correctly! :scream:

This is true, but there are many great alternatives, with even better Rhino integration than Revit has.

True, but that’s more a move away from Unix, which is unfortunate, than anything else. Even Objective-C, if I remember correctly, was introduced by NEXT (later bought by Apple) and widely seen as controversial and proprietary.
But exactly the same can be said for C#, DirectX, and VisualStudio and exactly why I stick with Python and C++. :slight_smile:

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Congratulations, this is the most stupid post I have ever seen on this forum.

And to be clear: I usually appreciate your posts very much.

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You know Revit is a product from Autodesk. Revit is a shitty software but so many companys are using it so it won’t be replaced any time soon.

It’s actually 0.08% rise from 2016-06 to 2020-06 [source]. The number will vary from source to source but most likely remains in an one-digit range. Be advised I’m referring to macOS, rather than iOS, which makes the survey a little bit off our topic if we are talking about unifying macos and iOS.

I read it somewhere today. Saying that Big Sur will have Bootcamp components, but only for Intel-based Macs. However I cannot locate the page now. I can post it once I find that. It’s obvious that the best situation other than virtualization is Windows for ARM, which is as useless.

Mac is not based on Unix/Linux. It’s founded on Darwin, uniquely used by Apple, whose kernel is XNU and has a closer relationship to FreeBSD (yet still quite different from).

If McNeel has like 500 employees, certainly. You can see the “Future” list on McNeel Youtrack is getting longer and longer. Blender definitely has more developers contributing since it’s an open-source software. (McNeel has only 35? not sure)

Sure, I know. I didn’t say it was gonna be replaced, just that there are good alternatives for macOS.

Yes, but again, I meant that you somehow didn’t get what I wrote about! I didn’t say that macOS is going to surpass the Windows user base, but that as a whole, desktop environments will become less and less important (in my opinion). It’s not a niche (architects, designers, CG, etc.) that drives such developments, but mainstream consumers as a whole.

OK, yes, I should have written “Unix-like”. :slight_smile: As a macOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Windows 10 user, I can tell you that between macOS and these Linux distros, there are overall many similarities. Windows 10 is very different in many respects!

I don’t think so. I recently read an article about Rhino, Grasshopper, and McNeel and it was mentioned that they had a little over 150 (?) employees, if I recall correctly. And the article was from a few years ago.
Also we’re talking about FBX, which isn’t exactly rocket science and there are already examples out there, especially with Blender being open-source! Also rocket science is probably not that hard either. :smiley:

We are saying nothing crazy here, it is a fact that resources get invested to support Mac. It is also a fact that if those resources would not have been redirected, then probably or eventually they would have been invested into Windows version.

You can express yourself in favor of supporting Mac and redirection of resources towards it but I can’t express the contrary?

I don’t think that is disrespectful at all. On the other hand, I do find it disrespectful when people tell me what I can and can’t say with no authority.

I don’t need to know that, it’s logical. If you have two bins, A and B, and stop throwing stuff into B, then A will be filled faster than if you were splitting.

You acuse me of trolling but suddenly you work at Microsoft :rofl:

if you have 2 kids, and you stop feeding one, will the other one grow faster?

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i dont know if this is the right place for this comment but ill go ahead…theres a youtuber that designs apple phone cases. he asked special permission for dimensions and specs of iphone x to develop proper silicon cases (some 3d printable i think). he posted a youtube video of that apple document… apparently apple phones are multispan. please if you have any evidence to show im wrong please post. thanks

That is not a valid analogy. In developing, and pretty much anything that uses man-hours you can speed up things by having multiple people working on the same project.

But to amuse you, if you are short on food and find yourself splitting the little food you have, chances are that if you decide to feed only one individual, this one will grow stronger than if you were splitting.

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