Mac Opinion for Development

[Rolando]

Best to all.

I have a product line rapidly coming up where we will be testing for a CD Rom artist's presentation program that will be developed on and for Windows and targeting Mac too.

This is something of a retro throwback idea. While there would be an online Android or HTML version (lesser) for promotions, one focus would be to have a version on the CD that is Mac.

Hybrid CDs were common back in the day, with a Win version and Mac version on the CD Rom for installation. This is a retro concept. But many artists use Mac rather than Windows, so here is the Q.

Regardless of the fact many new PCs of either brand are not coming with CD Rom / DVD players.

Q: Today's Macs now have Crossover, Wine, Virtual Machines, Bootcamp and Parallels to name some options to read Windows CD discs. I was considering on purchasing and working with the Mac Exporter and invest in the needed specs for the Mac to compile the mfa file for native use on this machine, but is it really needed? With all the options, I would think a Windows VM of any of these would be available on current Macs (within 5 years) and be able to install to the proper machine type on autorun.

Is the Mac exporter needed at this point. Please provide a few opinions or talking points.

[mattl]

People don't have Windows VMs by default and new Macs cannot run Windows natively. There is Crossover which can run the ARM version of Windows, but this costs $99.

[AND]

People don't have Windows VMs by default and new Macs cannot run Windows natively. There is Crossover which can run the ARM version of Windows, but this costs $99.

Crossover isn't a Virtual Machine, but it uses the open source 'Wine' technology to allow thousands of Windows applications to be installed with it on a Mac, Linux or ChromeOS machine. You can check which Windows software it supports here:

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/

Parallels is a Virtual Machine and literally enables you to install the entire Windows operating system on your Mac (within the Virtual Machine) and many other operating systems too. This means you can install all Windows applications just as you can on a Windows PC.

Neither of the above solutions are free, but you can download trials of each to decide which works best for you. Parallels is available on subscription or as a 1-time purchase.

There is a free Personal Use License version of VMware Fusion which also is a virtual machine that supports Apple Silicon, like Parallels. I haven't tried out the new version so I don't know how good it is.

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/e...er-personal-13

[Cobra]

mattl & AND have pretty much summed it up.

There are options that can allow us to run Windows software, but most are paid for and all are really a last resort if you desperately want to run something that simply doesn't have a native version.

Wine/CrossOver won't run everything, compatibility varies. (but will probably be fine for what you plan to release)
Then with newer M1&M2 Macs, and VMs, they can't just install any old Intel Windows CD they still have lying around. It'll have to be a newer ARM-compatible version of Windows.

CD drivers are somewhat out now. Thankfully nothing is stopping us from plugging in a USB CD-Drive, like myself. But probably not the most common scenario you'll come across.

[Phi]

I would recommend having a Mac separate app. In terms of performance, display, etc., emulation and the like use redirects and patches, the underlying hardware uses completely different interfaces (Metal vs Direct3D), and you'll lose a lot in the conversion due to the very different natures of how they work.
Fusion apps do fall back on simpler interfaces, but they do it invisibly; you'll have things that look like they're working not performing properly, e.g. if Direct3D isn't available, it falls back to Software, which means alpha blending doesn't work, shaders don't work, etc.

As a simple example of these conversion layers going south, the filesystem protection between Android and Linux are very different, despite Android being based on Linux. Android apps can access some filepaths with no problem, but need to request permissions from the user to access other paths (like READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, READ_MEDIA_STORAGE).
In Linux, that's not a thing; you either have access or you don't, there's no requesting to be had. Programs just report access denied and give up.
So someone making Linux apps run on Android, would have to write a hack that interrupts any of the app's filesystem access if there's an access denied error, checks for if an Android permission matches that path, and asks the user if they want to grant it. Meanwhile, the Linux app is confused because it's waiting several seconds for reading from a drive, something that should happen in a few milliseconds. Maybe that's recoverable, maybe it decides the path is too slow to use.

So yea, separate Mac app would be better.