narwhal

My delay was I'm switching from Cocoa to Catalyst for my macOS apps. It's a lot of work. I think I've figured everything out now, but the learning curve is long. For one thing, Xcode 12 GUI doesn't support building for both macOS 10.15 (Intel) and 11 (Intel and M1), you need to tweak the project in a text editor. For another, you need to implement the old Mac help system in your Catalyst apps, including Help Indexer, and there's zero support for it in Xcode. Another thing is, Apple didn't post sample code showing how to implement menus on Catalyst apps, so it's a guessing game getting it working. There's zero sample code for the transition -- which is insane. Some frameworks simply don't work in Catalyst apps: you can forget about StoreKit and GameKit, they don't work on M1. There's more, I could make a longer list, but now that I've figured everything out, I'm busy releasing apps.

Xed said:

You could afford the $500 for the DTK but not the $600 for an M1 Mac mini?

That's a good question. I *CAN* afford a $600 M1 Mac mini, but it's better as a test machine, not a dev machine. The higher-end 16GB M1 Mac mini would be better for a dev machine, but it's back-ordered 3 weeks. The way I see it, with Apple's plan, if I want to use Apple's $200 coupon, I'll be without an Apple Silicon machine for between a week and a month. And I *MIGHT* be forced to buy 2 Apple Silicon Macs this year -- the low end one for testing (because it's available now) and a higher end one later for dev.

Ideally, Apple would send us DTK leasers a 16GB M1 Mac mini, then have us send the DTK back to them in the same box. I'd be willing to pay some dough for the price difference. But the current offer is a joke.

I’m surprised Apple announced this on a Wednesday. This is the type of news a government or unscrupulous corporation announces Friday evening before a long weekend.

coolfactor said:

The fact that Apple is returning nearly one half of the original fee is more than generous, i say. Again, how can someone complain about this? It's a gift.

Just out of curiosity, are you a small developer who ported his apps to Apple Silicon using the DTK, and is now faced with going without an Apple Silicon machine for a month? I have to PACK UP my DTK, wait for apple to issue a coupon, then order an M1 Mac mini (wait time is 3 weeks now for 16 GB version). It would make a LITTLE more sense if we could replace the mini before sending it back; but going a month without an AS dev/test machine is CRAZY!

This is great for developers running ads who never update their apps. But for developers who update their apps regularly, their apps will appear to App Store customers as more intrusive and dangerous. Apple should add information to older apps too stating that their privacy settings are undetermined due to the age of the app.