Grasshopper on Mac

Grasshopper
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Hi! What is the current status of Grasshopper on MacOS? I have the impression for some reason that the version of Grasshopper on Macs is older and that many plugins don’t work. Is that correct?

I am in the market for a new laptop and was thinking of trying a Macbook Air. I have never used a Mac before. I want something silent and fanless that still performs decently and has good battery life, partly for audio applications too, which are problematic on a Windows machine with an Nvidia card (DPC latency issues). The only problem for me is that I want to use Rhino and Grasshopper and I have Rhino 7 still. I really hesitate to upgrade to 8. That’s a lot of money for just a few extra new features like shrinkwrap I really don’t need. Obviously, on a Mac, the incentives of upgrading are bigger, since it runs natively on Apple Silicon if I understand right.

I would much prefer a Windows laptop, but battery life sucks on anything that performs decently, and fans are noisy, which is bad for audio stuff.

Anyway, what would I be missing on a Mac in Rhino/Grasshopper 7 or even 8?

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Anyone?

I’d really appreciate any insight on this. I am having a hard time finding a clear answer. When I search Google for “Grasshopper on Mac”, I get this page: link

It says, " Grasshopper for Mac

It does exist…

A very early version of Grasshopper for Mac is available in the Rhino for Mac (5.4) for testing and feedback."

But I am not sure if this info applies to Grasshopper as included with Rhino in versions 7 and 8. I am guessing that the version included with newer Rhino versions is current, but I am not sure. If I ask Copilot, it says this:

" Rhino 8 for Mac includes Grasshopper, and it’s not an older version. In fact, it’s faster than ever, running natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, using Apple Metal display technology. The User Interface on Mac is also closer to its Windows counterpart. Rhino 8 brings new modeling tools, better drafting tools, a faster Render engine, and new Grasshopper data types1. So, you’ll have a consistent experience across platforms!"

But I don’t trust what an LLM says.

I see on Food4Rhino that some plugins are available on Mac and some are not. Parakeet doesn’t show a Mac version. However, in the comments, I see that people seem to have gotten it to work.

In general though, how do the two platforms compare? Aside from a few Grasshopper plugins, would I be missing anything else on Mac?

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Hi JNO512,

You are correct that there are some gh plugins that are built specifically for windows. The major ones of note are bigger 3rd party offerings such as RhinoCAM, Orca & Vray.

Another feature of note that is not available on MacOS is worksessions.

If those are parts of your workflows Windows is going to be a better choice.

I’ve always been a windows user but i do really enjoy my macbook pro. Its really nice going back and forth between Rhino versions on the Mac, if i need to install a previous version for testing I don’t have to uninstall like you have to in Windows.

One of the drawbacks on MacOS is the frequent breaking changes to the OS and lack of control over video drivers, which are part of the OS. If you get an a Lenovo nvidia RTX laptop you can pretty much guarantee its going to run Rhino in 5++ years, i can’t say the same thing with Apple products.

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Thanks for your help, Japhy!