ARM Mac App Store

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Just to let everyone know, Pleco will *not* be available on the Mac App Store when it initially launches for ARM Macs and a lot of iOS apps automatically show up in it. Some of the reasons for this:
  1. We aren't happy with how well the old version of Pleco works on it and don't want to be in a situation where people are judging our future desktop app by that old version or demanding we make it better (thereby distracting us from working on 4.0), particularly since we expect it'll take a while for a commercially meaningful % of Mac users to be on ARM.
  2. The status of a couple of licenses on Mac is ambiguous, and if nothing else we'd need to do a lot of auditing/research/renegotiation to figure out what was actually going to be available on Mac / gate it off from Mac users / explain why it was gated off; again we'd rather not deal with the distraction right now for a small # of users.
  3. Apple already screwed over Catalyst developers once when they added support for merged bundle IDs without a transition path, we aren't at all confident there won't be some other horrible compatibility break, and we'd like to give them a little time to shake things out before we commit to any particular Mac distribution path.
  4. When we support Mac we'd very much like to do it on ARM + x86 simultaneously, which this system doesn't support. (and per #3 we're not confident that switching from ARM-only to ARM+x86 will be something we can do easily)
  5. We have actually invested quite a lot of time into Mac support for 4.0 (most importantly by adding mouseover support to the reader), and we'd like to be able to recoup that investment (and support future Mac and other desktop development) by charging for it, or at least we're not confident enough that we *don't* want to charge for it to shut the door to that by giving our Mac version away for free;
  6. We aren't actually sure if we want to distribute through the Mac App Store at all, since we don't have to - we can simply offer it on our website. Frankly given Apple's attitude towards developers over the last year I'm strongly disinclined to do any more business with them than I have to.
 

Shun

状元
That's very understandable; since Pleco must be one of the most complex iOS/Android apps, a lot of technical and licensing hurdles need to be cleared first. It will also take a while until an appreciable number of Mac users have ARM hardware, anyway.

Are you willing to reveal in what ways the unmodified Pleco 3.2 on Mac currently offers subpar performance? (not disappointed if not) I could imagine that the navigation by mouse is suboptimal, or perhaps even the interface is still lagging, or there are random crashes. Thanks!
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Just ugly, mostly - doesn't look or feel like a desktop app, a lot of things are too small or don't really make sense with mouse clicking.
 

Shun

状元
Many thanks! I'm sure I will love to use a desktop Pleco 4.0 all with keyboard shortcuts. :) The same shortcuts could then be used if a Bluetooth keyboard is attached to an iPhone/iPad. That would allow much faster handling of Pleco than is currently possible with a touch interface, especially if animations are turned off.
 

smeds

Member
Thanks for the post guys - I really hope this comes out asap though, have been keen to see pleco hit my MacBook for so long! :)
 
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