I’m just wondering if this will affect Unity for Mac apps. Are we ready to go?
By May 2015, "all Mac App Store submissions will … be restricted from using garbage collection in favor of the Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) compiler feature. "
Came here to ask this myself. Here’s the official Apple announcement: Mac Apps That Use Garbage Collection Must Move to ARC - Latest News - Apple Developer
As usual the platform rules are changing. As usual Unity Technologies is aware of these changes, and is working on a fix as we speak.
The change will be incorporated to the engine as fast as is is humanely possible. Most of us on the developer end will barely notice the bump.
Moving along, nothing to gain by starting a new thread every time a platform changes. This is business as usual for Unity.
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I really doubt that the standalone OS X used Cocoa’s GC. First, GC was an “experimental” feature that was recommended for all of maybe a year before 10.6 to recommend using ARC. Second, it doesn’t appear that they are removing manual reference counting with release/retain only if the app used the GC.
Even if they did use it, the amount of wrapper code for the Standalone OS X deployment should be very minimal. So unless there is a lot of wrapper code that I’m not aware of, or if the Mono runtime is for some reason using the Cooca GC (something even more crazy since it has its own internal GC). I think we’re going to be OK. Plus with the Unity 5 player dropping 10.6 player support, they seem to be actively developing the standalone version so I don’t think this change is going to be a problem.
it didn’t use it, the whole engine is c++ code base, with some objc/++ on os x for platform specifics
the above is imho, maybe some intern would clarify %]
Sure, but do you actually work at Unity?
We have never used the automatic objective-C GC in Unity so there is no problem.
We also have a great relationship with Apple now where we meet weekly to adress any upcoming issues and make sure everything is well aligned.
Clearly Apple is incredibly important for Unity, so there are fulltime people dedicated to these relationships.
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It’s good to know Unity has a weekly meeting with Apple … that makes me feel a lot better about the platform. 
You talk to them each week? Please tell them to fix their OpenGL on desktop. It is a real joke.
Cool!
I agree with jshrek - it’s comforting to know there’s more dialogue with Apple. The same way devs rely on Unity, Unity relies on other companies. Things like the 64bit requirement came relatively out of the blue. Most of todays games need the cooperation of several different companies software and services, so this dialogue is more important now than ever.
Great about the ARC too:)
I think they’re perfectly reasonable questions, even if the answer to most of them is indeed “business as usual”.
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