iOS & Apple support suffers long time now... WHY?

Unity Engine
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hello,
well i’m a Unity user since version 1.5 … when it was Apple only…
since version 3.5 … when those Windows folks can in the support for Mac startet to suffer…
i’ll know the 3 founder … one comes from my neighbourhood and had also written a open letter to David what will happen … and it became all true … many good people left Unity… eg Higgins who cared about the forum very well … but nobody did from Unity after… so it is now… questions doesn’t get answered…
Windows support became the main goal … and Apple was out :frowning:
you can see that on the bug reports…
Unity was born to give Apple user a visual game editor … right?
and now?
in all the years … the only little money i’ll made was from Apple Store … iOS & Mac …
on Android and Windows it was a joke… because those User prefer to get it somewhere for free…
in all the years since 3.5 the Apple support went down… no Playstation no Nintendo SDK etc…
Xcode template in Unity was is still old and not updated … Silicon support… etc…
don’t know what is up @ Unity … but WHY is the Hub 432 MB in size and still INTEL ???
it takes around 30 seconds to launch… we Apple user are really disappointed … because a amazing Unity user showed that it is possible to do it native (Silicon & Intel) with around 15 MB in size … with same functionality … how is that possible… you have to be really motivated to code it for free in your free time only to show Unity that it is easy possible and help those Apple user where Unity doesn’t care about…

now what’s really annoying that Unity introduces old fixed bug’s in LTS versions…
what was the reason for LTS version ?
right but why can’t we rely on it?
i’m still @ 2021.3.21 LTS because all other above introducing the same old bug noted here:

same bug still in 2022.3.1 LTS …

so my question is:
does Unity don’t do bug testing anymore ?
should the User who pay for the Software that it works also find the bug’s, take the time (time is money) and make repro projects download dozens editors to test… and finally find out that reported bug’s get closed and introduced again and again… it’s not the first time that this bug pop’s up…

to me Unity should split up in Windows and Apple/Linux teams… and develop native Editors and get rid of Mono … Unity’s biggest problem still is using Mono because of cross compatibility made easy… lol

than another question:
why Apple users can’t develop for Nintendo Switch? ( SDK is there for Apple … i’ve talked with Nintendo !)

it looks really like and we saw it with the slow silicon switch and Hub that there is not much interest in the Apple users.,…

but let me ask who pay Unity ? the indie dev’s who do Mobile on Android & iOS or the not so big Game studios where Unity most care about … those AAA blockbuster that always got done with other tools…?
was and is there anything really outstanding that is done only with Unity that makes it worth to spend all energy to support the lastest Nvidia features ???
since version 3.5 you develop separate and it’s not Unity anymore !
so why not better make it more native on Mac & Windows ???
you don’t support the same features in all editors…
Mono is still Intel on Mac and sucks !!!
why ? i’ll don’t get it… it’s slow and blows up memory and cpu… for nothing…

to be honest… you leave a big hole for Apple users … and if you don’t act someone will fill it with a native game editor that does the job on Apple platforms much better because it’s native and doesn’t use Mono… it’s not that complicated anymore… the other big company has also silicon support and it works very well now… they also see where the most profitable games are made for… → Mobile market iOS and than Android !
but Unity sleeps… iOS duhhh ok we support but no… we focus on Windows and last Raytracing and Physics and good looking games that looks good but have no real game play/story lol… and also other markets like architects and industry … but Unity is too complicated for those… it’s not easy 3 step to get a nice rendering or a view from a 3d obj … i’ll help some here to get it work but they all stopped … to time intensive (time is money) to get a result that is worth… or a walk through …

like i’ll said to David when he left Unity … Unity will loose focus on what matters… and so it happened…
you did & do not care about those who pay Unity to stay alive… it became to big… too many people @ Unity that don’t know what the others do… Profit is the only goal … critical post got deleted and people shut down like me and many other Apple users …
don’t forget we made Unity … because of us it became Unity3d !!!
so sad … to see how it went down all the years for Apple users till now
M.

Unity Hub 3.5 → 439 MB !!! for what??? and WHY still Intel??? → just one example of what is wrong…

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They don’t really, they passed that responsibility to their suckers users. It costs nothing and shifts the blame for bugs away from them.

Nah you’ll be happy to know that the Windows stuff is also half assed and that the hub is a bloated slow useless pile of shit in all its versions. They are not dropping the ball when it comes to Mac. They are dropping the ball, period. Have been for years.

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june 15 2017 … the last love letter i’ll got from David & Unity…

@AcidArrow … thx for confirmation… we are not alone :wink:
M.

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Please… Don’t… Write… Like… This…

It’s horribly annoying to read, but there’s some people out there that write like that. I just straight up don’t read any posts with more ellipses than periods. I can’t! I get too annoyed!

So this is more of a PSA: you’re probably going to get ignored a lot if you don’t tone down the ellipses.

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There is a lot here to unpack, but let me answer the best that I can. For platforms generally, Editor or Runtime, we do our best to prioritize where most of our users are, and ensure those teams are resourced the best we can. An overwhelming majority of our developers use the Windows Editor, so more attention does generally go there. That said, we of course do care a lot (and invest a lot) in macOS and iOS. The truth is the transition to Apple silicon has been quite difficult. We are very familiar and accustomed to porting our runtime to new places, but the Editor needs porting less frequently, so we do not have the same process and architecture in place to bring the Editor to new platforms.

Supporting both Intel Editor and the Apple silicon Editor at the same time has also been challenging. As Intel starts to lose marketshare overtime, this will get easier for us, and we will have more time to invest in Apple silicon.
It is not lost on us that quality is not where it should be for the Apple silicon Editor in particular, and we are working hard to improve that.

I can’t comment deeply here on our support for NDA platforms for obvious reasons, but in deciding which Editor platform to support for which Runtime platform, we generally aim to support all platforms on all Editors where we can, but due to resourcing constraints we will prioritize where we see the most demand from developers. Please do give feedback in our respective platform channels if you want to see support for building one of our Runtime platforms on an Editor platform that we don’t support today.

We have ported mono to Apple silicon, it does not run under Rosetta, though there are a few smaller libraries the Editor depends on (plus the Hub) that have not been ported yet. They will be.

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You can delete the Hub. I think it’s the first thing to do on Apple Silicon, for sanity.

You can “alt + click” your Unity icon in the Doc, to get the prompt asking which project you’d like to load.

Projects previously opened in a different Editor give you the right warnings, and a way to cancel opening it.

Generally speaking, these labour excuses just don’t cut it. We’re WAY down the path and timeline of Apple Silicon, and it’s proven itself as a truly incredible step on in hardware, and changing the capabilities of iPads and soon creating a whole new world: VisionOS.

And Apple has begun taking gaming somewhat seriously on the Mac precisely because of the power and prowess of their Apple Silicon.

Unity should be spearheading the charge to exploiting Apple Silicon, for these reasons and because they have no real competition on the iOS/Mac/iPad and now VisionOS, and because it’s where they originated, and because it’s the most lucrative market for Unity users.

And yet… here we are…

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Perhaps___WRITE___Like___This___Instead___?

I happen to like ellipses… and the people that think and write in this manner… etc…

…maybe because it’s… I dunno, relatable… and provides some insight into that which is not being said… but is thought, perhaps.

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If I’m reading right, the OP is complaining about not being able to develop for Nintendo or Sony using a Mac? If so, Unity has nothing to do with that. Sony’s and Nintendo’s development tools only run on Windows and Visual Studio, end of story.

Not sure where the OP saw that there’s a Nintendo SDK for Mac, because there’s nothing about that on their developer portal.

If want to do console development, you need Windows, no way around it. Use an emulator like Parallels if all you have is Apple hardware.

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This is unusually low effort reading on your part. That was mentioned in passing, but isn’t core nor tenet to anything the OP is saying, merely an observation, from a bygone era.

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The OP asked a bunch of questions in the middle of their ranting, I answered the one I could.

If one… wants good answers…

…they need to make…

…good questions.

… and learn…

… to communicate better.

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It’s in the title.

I don’t know the answer, beyond seeing how Adobe also treated Mac users similarly during the same period.

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if you can not read & think… before… plz don’t comment so stupid… don’t want to repeat… YES it’s there for Mac … and shut up kid

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many thx for reply :slight_smile:
but well it doesn’t answer my main questions …
forget about the SDK … it was just a example where i’ll asked Nintendo about Mac OS X SDK …
i’m a registered dev for switch :wink:

the biggest issue is the Editor and the builds on Intel & Silicon… old bugs get introduced again and again → why than LTS if nobody proof’s → QS @ Unity? why every 2 weeks a new build that doesn’t fix the noted bug’s → often 10 versions later… like the bluetooth bug … took you x versions and 3-4 month to fix this… that showed me again that there is not much interest in Apple…

the question was not the biggest User base… the question is who pay Unity3d

a few years ago we had more than double Windows user but the same amount like on Mac who pay for :wink:
and here is where it matters… care plz about those who pay Unity…
if you move on with Windows first… than you loose more and more Apple user… it makes the round… and meanwhile there are a bunch more tools/frameworks for Mac to build app’s for mobile … like Flutter etc… and Xcode becomes better and easier … Apple is focusing on Gaming more… and the Arcade Games sell well… but there also… it took long time before Unity was usable for it…
and that’s my point… Unity lost focus on what matters … AAA with Mono → likely impossible → i’ll know that some Gamestudios told you already … you can not win the race with a old motor… a new hull doesn’t matter → it’s the performance on device… and still it drains the battery much more on mobile and laptops as native → spinning cube example
if you continue with Windows first and don’t adapt new things/frameworks in time like VisionOS → i’ll see more and more leaving the platform and look for other working solutions → meanwhile there is much more available as some years ago and others see the potential on Apple as well → those who never cared before about Apple do now → why? there must be a reason :wink: but Unity looks like to have other priorities → that is sad for Apple user working or want work with Unity…

Conclusion for all Apple User who read this:
We have to think about if we continue with Unity for future projects if there is not a future for us with Unity…

the problem is if you build on Unity and rely on because you choose Unity.
if you need to update your App and you have to wait long long time because Apple is not of interest…
you’re lost… you loose the customers and your app game get’s abandoned. sure make a one time hit, but ask the dev’s here that have some games on iOS and Apple TV
really wonder that this doesn’t count or matter for Unity…
time have changed like i’ll noticed but that it has become like this for us Apple user → never mind
where is the old spirit that made Unity ?
M.

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Lying and name calling won’t help getting useful answers to your ranting.

I too am registered Nintendo developer and there’s no downloads for Mac whatsoever. Searching for “MacOS” on their website only brings occasional thread posts asking if there is a Mac version of the SDK, for which the answer has always been “no”.

https://developer.nintendo.com/html/online-docs/g1kr9vj6-en/document.html?doc=Packages/SDK/NintendoSDK/Documents/index.html
Clearly states the development environment requires Windows 10, no mention of Mac or Linux whatsoever.

But if you do have a link, I would love to be proved wrong.

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Also, I’ll tell what Unity staff can’t:

  1. Upgrading Macs is expensive and companies like Unity still have a ton of Intel based Macs in use, so only a fraction of the developers can properly test on Apple silicon.

  2. Outside of Apple die-hard fanatics, nobody likes having to deal with Apple’s development pipelines. So devs will drag their feet on porting their apps for ARM for as long as they can get away with, specially apps that aren’t performance-critical like the Hub. Until Apple removes Rosetta entirely, which will happen at some point.

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Your first point is applicable to all of us.

On your second, the hate for Apple is real, I know. We all know. But it’s also often a better experience than working with Microsoft stuff…

Regardless, many attempts are frequently made to dismiss each successive success of Apple as some kind of fluke or brand spin or transitory fad. At a certain point, we all gotta admit they’ve done what they do well, and their users both deserve and expect first class experiences on their (quite often) truly superior hardware, and are more willing and able to pay for those experiences than any other computing consumers. Anyone needing a source for this isn’t paying attention.

The M1 / M2 era are amazing changes in what battery powered devices can deliver in terms of power per watt, and now becoming seemingly great workstation devices, too.

This is a generational hardware jump in both forms of capability (performance and performance per watt) and huge shifts in Apple’s recognition of gaming. Not just on the Mac, but also in what’s possible with VisionOS, and iPad, and no doubt the upcoming iPhones, too.

Regardless of your opinions of Xcode (I happen to like “old” Objective-C and the way it autocompletes and how fast iterative development just works within Apple’s Frameworks), the bigger truth is this: a whole new gaming market has just opened up, in whole new ways, and Unity’s slouching on the latest generations of Apple hardware has just become a barrier to entry into those markets, when it shouldn’t, it could be a home run derby for Unity, and a return to much needed good form and, in turn, good faith.

Instead, the Mac Unity Editor is horrifically unstable, juddery and unreliable on Apple’s newish Silicon, the Hub is unusable and there’s almost zero progress on all the things that would help use of the extra cores of Apple’s chips (or Android chips, for that matter) in the pipeline for Unity; we’re gonna have to roll some things ourselves in DOTS/Burst/Jobs at this rate.

Audio, Animation… what am I missing?

The new MegaCity demo is a visual downgrade of epic proportions, to show off 64 player networking, that’s probably better solved by an external party, at the expense of work on Audio, Animation and low latency, highly performant input detection, too?

Who knows where Unity’s focus is at. It’s not Apple gamers, on any of their platforms, that’s for sure.

What’s DONE and “just works” in terms of Apple Silicon class leading gaming facilities coming from Unity? We’re more than 2 and a half years into the release of this new kind of chip. It’s obvious Apple is committed to this approach, and that it just works.

Why is the Silicon Unity Editor so full of foibles and so little being done to fix it? Anyone serious about Macs, iOS and iPads is also looking at the VisionOS release, that Unity partners with Apple on, yet it feels unserious, tokenistic. And is one of the few pieces of software can frequently crash the whole computer!

Some of us have to make choices about how we get our Unity games optimised for Apple’s platforms. And are watching very closely because years of work and much money are in the balance, and we have only 3 choices… Unreal, Unity or ARKit/RealityKit/SceneKit, and would like some kind of indication of Unity taking Apple’s newish silicon and directions seriously.

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Yes, the first point applies to everyone but it’s different when you are a small studio with 10 people versus one with hundreds or thousands. The logistics of mass upgrading hardware is much harder in larger companies, where even OS updates happen much later than in smaller companies. This means that ensuring good Apple Silicon support needs more than simply developers putting in the effort.

This combines with another problem: Apple’s original claim that making Apple Silicon version of existing apps being as trivial as recompiling them turned out to be not accurate at all. In real life, on large codebases that rely dozens or even hundreds of 3rd party libraries, tons of compatibility and stability problems cropped up. This is not isolated to Unity, some major software took quite a while to release non-Intel binaries. For example, Unreal only got an Apple Silicon editor support with their latest version, and it’s not a smooth experience at all.

I’m not defending Unity: they are the undisputed leader in the mobile game engine market, and it’s where their biggest paying customers are. They have to do better.

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I guess for editor part still using legacy tech that make it very hard to port to new platform. Does official has any plan to fully embrace C# .Net too for editor and remove all the non C# dependency like Node.js to make editor moving faster and easier to support new platform?

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At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they announced they are rewriting the editor to use electron or something.

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I am honestly surprised anyone replied to this. It looked like a random post from r/copypasta at first.
We are mainly using Windows at our company and only using a Mac for builds. I don’t seem to be able to read properly I guess to know what the op’s problem is. The editor on mac works fine. It’s just the terrible workflow Unity>xcode>build that sucks a**. And that is not a Unity problem but a problem with Apple’s ego that doesn’t want anyone use other hardware to build apps for iOS.

Another problem I have with development for iOS is their hardware. It’s 2023 and their last generation of $1000 phones finally upgraded from 4GB to 6GB???
Doing anything 3D with high detail in a larger scene is impossible. Our company specializes in virtual showroom that sometimes require high detail and we have to do unholy amount of optimization to even run it. Our client came to use with his “new” 2021 iPad and told us that our app crashes… We found out it was because it had 3GB of RAM. That happened last year where even a $150 budget phone would have 4GB minimum.
Finding out what was wrong was also fun. When iOS kills the app there is no error, no crash no nothing. I thought testing on TestFlight was supposed to give us a feedback. It gives us feedback from users when there is something wrong with a product or something but knowing the device doesn’t have enough RAM? I can only dream of that I guess.

Sorry, had to rant a little as well. Developing for iOS is hell. When using Firebase it brings even more problems because of how the shitty Mac package cocoa pods thing is.

Unity Hub is nice in my opinion. I guess it can be bad for MacBook user that buy a very expensive laptop that has lower capacity than my phone but it works and that is all I need. It brought the “install missing version” which I love. It turns on in 3 seconds for me.