so I got really excited about the 5.1 version beucase it promised a native app for MacOS and I thought that together with the Ventura update it could make developing on Mac a little bit better.
But then I noticed the funky little note in the roadmap that Epic won’t let us download the Mac version from the Epic client and we would still have to build it from source? Is this some kind of aftermath from the Apple vs Fortnite beef? Or am I just dumb and the note talks only about the preview version?
I doubt it’s related to the legal battle with Apple, seeing as the purpose of that battle is to make Apple’s platforms more friendly to the people who want to develop for them. Apple and Samsung worked together (Samsung provided components to Apple, primarily) while engaged in a pretty stupid and hypocritical series of lawsuits. I’m a lifelong Apple user (no longer exclusively, but still) and greatly prefer their UX to anything else, but I absolutely despise Apple as a business. Acting out of pettiness gains nothing. I have zero knowledge of why Epic made this decision, but I guarantee it has nothing to do with the legal battle they’re fighting on behalf of developers for Apple platforms to get them more money. There’s no way they’d make our lives harder when their goal is essentially the opposite.
If I had to guess, though, I’d take the clues in the release notes and say they just didn’t get it done in time. If you look at the instructions for building from source, they tell you that you have to build it as a native Apple Silicon binary or as an Intel binary to run under Rosetta. They do not tell you that you can build for both. Steinberg released a native Apple Silicon version of Cubase awhile ago and I still run it under Rosetta because of one plug-in that requires Rosetta. You can’t run the app natively while having it emulate plug-ins with Rosetta. Epic’s release notes make explicit mention of a lack of marketplace plug-in support for ARM processors. I think the decision to require building from source indicates that 1) Epic wanted to get 5.1 out before they had enough time to properly test Apple Silicon support and 2) to provide some time for plugin developers to be able to actually update their plugins to work with a native Apple Silicon version of Unreal Engine that they can build themselves.
I’m disappointed that this is what we’re getting after such a long time, but it’s ultimately good news. They still gave us a native version. While some experimental features do get abandoned, it’d be a considerable waste of time to rewrite their editor for ARM support and then just dump it. While I’m not happy that this is how we got native support, if Apple offered Epic the kind of help they offered Adobe or the Blender Foundation we might actually have seen greater progress by now. To me, this situation looks more like Epic’s struggling to add support and Apple isn’t prioritizing them because Unreal Engine doesn’t bring them customers on the level of the software produced by companies they devote resources to. Without significant demand (that can translate into revenue) this is just going to remain a lower priority for both companies.
I am sorry to interrupt your thoughts… however - I feel these assumptions were/are mostly wrong… Based on the mentioned 5.1 version and +1 year later… Of course, I am also sad that Epic didn’t have the right feelings for other DEVs… or am I wrong here? (and there are any public plans/roadmap which I overlooked?).
