6.12.2: Hardware Survey

[jack_norton]

In a similar topic, I'm considering dropping support for PPC Macintosh, as it's been 5 years since Apple ceased selling them.

Yes definitely you can drop that. With the "aggressive HW/OS update policy" of Apple I'm sure nobody has those devices anymore!

[papillon]

With the "aggressive HW/OS update policy" of Apple I'm sure nobody has those devices anymore!

I do. That's my development/testing Mac. Dropping support for it means that no HanakoGames product can use later versions of RenPy. (Or at least, that I would be unable to test any mac releases.)

Why would I buy a newer Mac? My laptop still runs. It plays games. It plays videos. It runs text editors. It accesses the internet.

[jack_norton]

well sorry but you're not definitely the average mac user though personally I'm fine keeping the PPC support, I guess the main benefit would be only a reduced file size (about 1-2mb max) or there's something else? (asking pytom in this case)

[papillon]

Of course I'm not the average mac user! But we do have customers who aren't hardcore computer users, or even customers who ARE but have old laptops because the old laptop still does everything necessary for the limited range of functions they need while away from their home base...

(Spiky, of course, has an OLPC for his laptop - and that's not even strong enough to run most of our games!)

I suppose I could eventually be talked into upgrading but it seems a shame to chuck out the current one while it still WORKS. Also macs are expensive

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Of course I'm not the average mac user! But we do have customers who aren't hardcore computer users, or even customers who ARE but have old laptops because the old laptop still does everything necessary for the limited range of functions they need while away from their home base...

(Spiky, of course, has an OLPC for his laptop - and that's not even strong enough to run most of our games!)

I suppose I could eventually be talked into upgrading but it seems a shame to chuck out the current one while it still WORKS. Also macs are expensive

Yeah, I guess the issue is really how far back do you continue to provide support for? I would say 5+ years is right at that cut-off point.

I certainly don't want to see Hanako Games impacted, since I love the games you make. And I will admit that telling someone to update their 5 year old Mac isn't the same as telling someone to update their 5 year old PC, since Macs are 200-300% more expensive than PCs. Though, in relation to what we were talking about earlier, that means almost certainly that there are fewer Macs in 3rd world countries, probably much less than the world-wide average of 7.4%, versus nearly 90% PC use. (Linux and iOS make up the rest.)

With all due respect to you, Papillon, I still say we should push ahead with the updates. You can always continue to use the current version of Ren'Py as it exists now until you upgrade again, which is likely to be in the next 2 years anyway (I've never go more than 7 years between computer upgrades personally.).

I also wanted to chime in agreement with Jack - if Direct X is on the table for consideration, I'd prefer it over OpenGL personally, for the reasons he stated. Of course, I develop on PC. (I know OpenGL is the priority since it is cross-platform - I'm fine with that.) Direct X 8 has been around for a decade, and even Direct X 9 has been around and stable for 7 years. Those of us making heavy filmstrip and sprite use at higher resolutions can't keep trying to wring adequate performance out of software rendering.

[PyTom]

The main benefit in killing PPC support would be the reduced filesize; and the lack of any sort of commitment by me to fix bugs with it. In practice, I haven't been doing much PPC-related for a while, anyhow, but dropping it would make that official.

There are also issues with other parts of the toolchain losing support for PPC macs. For example, I don't think the text editors I'm considering for inclusion in future releases can be run on the mac. Similarly, the latest version of the Xcode toolchain will drop support for PowerPC development entirely.

When I do a rebuild of Ren'Py, the mac version finishes last, since it has to build two versions of the code.

Finally, the Mac App Store doesn't accept applications that include PowerPC code in them. I'm not committing to support that at any time in the future, but it's at least a consideration.

Why would I buy a newer Mac? My laptop still runs. It plays games. It plays videos. It runs text editors. It accesses the internet.

Does it? I mean, sure it can run the games you bought a while back, and Ren'Py games - but how many games are still being released with PPC support. How many text editors? It might be able to access the Internet, but it can't run supported versions of Chrome or Firefox, and support for Safari (along with security support) will be dropped this fall.

From a testing perspective, I'll point out that you're not actually testing the code that your users are running. It's close, but so is (say) the Linux version. (You _are_ testing things like integration with the finder, but not with the newest versions.)

The thing here is that we have a dead platform - one for which no new hardware will be released, ever. How dead does a platform have to be for me to drop support for it, since there will be operational PPC macs two decades from now? I mean, I have a working Apple ][e in my parents' basement.

The last PowerPC mac was discontinued in August 2006.

I'm curious as to if people have a sense for how many end users are still using Power Macs. I really don't want to disenfranchise people like Papillon or her users, but at some point, I think it's time to end support for the platform.

[Counter Arts]

Hmm... that is an interesting issue.

I guess my opinion is that if official support has long been discontinued, the non-power-users wouldn't be left with options if warranties expired and something goes wrong with their computer. Trying to fix it might be more expensive and require some power user knowledge.

Macs are expensive but that's probably paying for the support included with the hardware. Inventory, customer support and the training are probably much easier if there is a very very limited amount of hardware and configs of hardware to learn about.

[papillon]

With all due respect to you, Papillon, I still say we should push ahead with the updates.

It's okay, I'm not going to throw a huge fit or anything. (I'll just pester poor Spiky to make custom builds of everything that will still work on it! So yeah, we'd probably be stuck on an old version or a mutant fork until I could justify buying another expensive computer that I will almost never use...)

I am aware that PPC is a pretty small fraction of what's out there and depending on the headaches it causes, it may be reasonable to drop it going forward. I was mostly responding to Jack's statement that NOBODY would still have such a computer. When the very first Game Maker for Mac tests went around, they worked on both, but by the final launch it was Intel-only. There was a scattered handful of whining; I'm certainly not the only person who is still using one. But it's a pretty small fraction.

Does it? I mean, sure it can run the games you bought a while back, and Ren'Py games - but how many games are still being released with PPC support. How many text editors? It might be able to access the Internet, but it can't run supported versions of Chrome or Firefox, and support for Safari (along with security support) will be dropped this fall.

*grin* Because I'm *not* a real Mac user, I've never looked for the latest and greatest things for it and I've never bought mac-specific software. I've mostly been using free stuff and/or things I bought that came with crossplatform versions. I bought the stupid thing for RenPy purposes to begin with!

As for testing, I don't feel comfortable selling a game for a platform if I haven't at least verified launching it on some sample. Sure, it's not completely exhaustive, and neither is my Windows testing - I don't have a Vista box, for example. But I have at least once smacked into a stupid Mac problem that would have been missed otherwise. Also, some of the more complicated projects we've worked on (like the Cute Knight Kingdom port) had to be built on a Mac, afaik... (that's not pure RenPy obviously).

[jack_norton]

If you want to use other programs, then yes you need to update your mac mostly yearly. Honestly I am not going to update anymore (I got the last MacOS but when installing it, decided that my macmini didn't have enough RAM and refused to install itself!). But this because in future I'm going to use only cross-platform languages like Renpy or maybe Flash/HTML5 which will let me know the game works on mac without the NEED to constantly throw my hard earned money at mr. Jobs!

[PyTom]

Thinking about this, I'm probably going to move PPC-mac into an "unsupported" status for at least a few releases. I won't actively remove the code, but I'm not going to spend any time on it, either. If I get into a situation where removing it would make my life noticably easier, that's when I'll actually remove it.

[hugolino]

For the record, I'm a happy Mac user who runs Mac OS 10.6.7 and Windows Vista on his Intel machine as well as Ubuntu on a netbook.