Gavin Hird

The discussion, also in this one, often ends up with viewer developers characterizing Mac users as lesser users because they don't own the "approved" kit. The problem with this is: a) Linden Lab actively develops and support these customers, so it is none of any TPV developer's business to "advice" these users to migrate to any other platform to use SecondLife. They are not TPV developer customers. b) Usually Apple users are in the upper quantile of disposable income. From the mobile market we know that each Apple mobile phone user generates 6X the developer revenue in the app stores over Android users. It is fair to assume these spending patterns are repeated also in SecondLife, where these groups of users generates a proportionally higher revenue both for Linden Lab itself, but also for content developers. It is therefore counter productive from a business standpoint to wish them away. c) As I mentioned above, the likelihood of the 2 billion Apple customers to switch platform is close to zero. To ask them to do so, is essentially to ask them go away. With that I end my part of this discussion.

In 2022, 900 million iOS users subscribed to one or more apps on the platform. There is a pretty much a one-to-one relation between a subscription (which is via an Apple-ID) and a unique customer. So only there we have doubled your estimate.

The discussion is about Henris lame claim about Apple customers. "Finally Apple is for the rich (overpriced, fragile hardware) and the snobs who prefer to buy the brand than to buy more performant hardware for the same amount of money." 2 billion snobs.

We can say that. Overstating such numbers in the financial statement by a listed company will have the SEC go down on it pretty hard. Of course there is overlap, but we are also talking about 47 years of customers buying their products.

Apple have in their financial statements cited 2 billion active devices (as in use). Add to that historical users since the introduction of the Apple I, I think we safely can state billions of people have chosen to be Apple customers.

It is not about permission, but about courtesy. Billions of people have deliberately chosen to be Apple's customers and part of their ecosystem. What you are advocating is for them to switch platform, because their choices are not to your liking or approval. Knowing they won't switch platform, you are in essence telling them to leave SecondLife; telling them to stop being customers of Linden Lab.

lmao - spit it out man 🤣 if you were not that cheap, Little Snitch would have saved you most of the trouble to block the “spyware”

I don't. I have worked in Apple. I know what their users think about Microsoft and Windows.

Make up your mind what it is. 😀 In any case the number of Mac users switching to Windows or gettin an additional PC for gaming is minute. Most Mac users use Macs because they want nothing to do with Windows and Microsoft.

All right. But in any case Apple is running the compositor at 60 fps on more or less all machines and displays, unless on a few models where it can slow it down to 2 fps or go up to 120 fps. The viewer code cannot support any of that because of the way it is built.

Of the hundreds of millions of macOS users, a small fraction may switch platform. You cannot base your business model on that. The other thing is that if LL invested in doing a proper port of the viewer, it will not only run on macOS, but also iOS and iPadOS. But again it is their business.

It does not really help because the tools are made for DirectX12 or lower games, while the viewer is OpenGL based.

The main reason for this is that macOS use double buffered output to the screen, where the desktop compositor add another pass with some overhead before the viewer output is sent to the screen. In Windows the viewer can draw to the screen in a single pass. Combine that with Apple's mediocre GPUs and you have less performance. From a business standpoint that is not so important, in that all Mac users will suffer the same performance penalty, and the likelihood of these users switching platform to use SecondLife is virtually non existent. What is important is to offer these users the best performance possible on the platform they already have chosen. – That is if you want them as your customers of course.

Then you should refrain from having and voicing any opinions on how these users interact with Linden Lab's product.

So what you essentially say is for Linden Labs to give up their entire business sans the 0.5% of users that fall in line with your sensibilities. Brilliant!

Why do you even make a macOS version of your viewer Henri? – You should just point them to your Linux version with some simple instructions on how to install Linux on their kit, if we follow your logic.

It is actually crossover, which is a refinement to wine, but semantics. That plus making sure DirectX12 runs properly on Rosetta2 and Apple GPUs, or shall we say are translated properly to run under Rosetta2 and Metal. What is new is they provide the tooling also in Windows versions, so it might work for some developers. The combined macOS + iOS ecosystem is getting closer to 2 billion devices and many wants to tap in to that.

Now I only need to fork up €4000 for the Apple Vision Pro headset (probably won't be able to lay hands on it for a year as availability will be limited to US only in early 2024)

No doubt, these guys have done a fantastic job with their Linux version given the processors are completely undocumented.

This experimental code isn't yet officially conformant against the OpenGL 3.1 or OpenGL ES 3.1 specifications but is working for those wanting to make use of it for running more primarily open-source games on Asahi Linux. OpenGL ES 3.1 support is expected to be achieved soon.

There is no Linux that can be installed with graphics acceleration, so for now. No. There is barely any functional Linux to install at all.

Apple is now providing the Game Porting Toolkit, but unfortunately for the viewer it is all about DirectX12 game porting, in addition to making DirectX12 run on Rosetta2 translation for non native games. There is some code provided at https://github.com/apple/homebrew-apple/tree/main/Formula but I don't think that is the official release of the kit as the developer page still has the download link inactive. More info can be found on this page

Apple dropped support for more Intel based Macs in the upcoming macOS Sonoma release, they will most likely keep Rosetta2 and OpenGL support around for another year (confirmation to follow at the Platform State of the Platform presentation later today). With today's presentation, Apple no makes or ship any Intel based systems. A chapter is closed.

I must have done something "wrong with the viewer,, haha

In my estimation a native viewer running a Metal renderer is in the oder of 10+ man years effort and 2 year wall clock development time.