There was a discussion about when/if we’d change to Arm builds only for Mac, rather than the Intel we use now. I’m curious if we have a lot of people using Intel-based Macs still.
If you’re on a Mac, please let us know what you use.
My Intel Macbooks are the old machines I use for CNC, however, Autodesk just stopped supporting the version of OSX they run so sooner or later I’m going to have to upgrade anyway. It’s only Carbide Motion I’m running on them from Carbide and if I have to stay on an older version then that would be OK.
One of each at the moment. New M2 macbook pro that I do design work on, ancient intel mac in the shop that drives the CNC.
I use a 2023 MacBook Pro M3 for design and a 2012 MacBook Pro with Intel Core i5 for my shop.
The 2012 does not have vent slots for cooling, that is why I use it in the shop.
Got rid of my 2009 iMacs for the new M1 Macs.
However, I don’t use C3D software.
I use my desktop M-series Mac for Carbide Create, and then transfer my files to an older, used Intel MacBook that’s in my workshop for Carbide Motion. I’ll bet that situation is fairly common among Mac users, so I hope you continue to support Intel Macs for Carbide Motion even after you port Carbide Create to M-series Macs.
What Karl said. I also expect that’s a common situation.
4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 ~ Radeon Pro 575 4 GB ~ 48 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 ~ 1TB NVMe drive ~ Ventura 13.7.6 using RDP across a mesh network to talk to a Win 11 Pro box dedicated to only driving my standard SO3 via Carveco Plus and gSender.
I voted M-series because that is my new Mac on my desk. However, I was thinking to take my 2018 Intel Mac out to the shop. However, I suspect the current OS (Sequoia) is the last so it may slowly become less useful. Apple typically releases compatble OSes for about 7 years after end of sale of a device. We are about there for the last Intel Mini. But they did continue to sell the Mac Pro up to 2023, which means they could support Intel until 2030.
It has been 30+ years since I developed for Mac so my experience with dual-architecture binaries is purely as a consumer. How hard is it to make a “Universal” app? I would think that creating an app for the latest OS on Apple Silicon and also supporting trailing edge MacOS releases like Monteray could be problematic. Is it hard to just have two separate executables? People would need to choose when downloading.
The multiple architecture binary thing is something Apple inherited from NeXT, which back in the day, worked perfectly in my experience.
For Mac OS (X), it’s quite simple if using Xcode (née Interface/Project Builder.app), but for cross-platform QT apps, this is sufficiently complex that I didn’t find a satisfactory answer with a quick search, so I suspect “it depends”.
My Intel-based Mac was purchased in 2020, so really not that old. I haven’t run into any programs that no longer support it (for instance, I have Adobe Creative Suite), so I feel it’s far too early to think about terminating support.
I use both Intel and Apple procs. My office machine is an M3 pro but my workshop machine, which I use to control the CNC and run Carbide Create Pro, is an i7 with 64G of RAM so it continues to run everything nicely.
I use a couple 2013 MBP for the machines in the shop. Using Opencore they are up to date and cost less than $300. Hard to find a more capable computer for twice that imo. Using cncjs though.
I still have an old Intel MacBook Pro that I have Windows installed on via Boot Camp, but that’s JUST for using Vectric Vcarve Pro. However, I’m probably going to ditch Vectric entirely because they don’t support macOS at all, let alone Apple Silicon.
When that happens, I’ll toss the Intel Mac. It’s like 7 years old at this point, and probably the oldest piece of tech I have in my possession.
I use both as many others. please keep both as long as possible.
I have the IMac that I use for my 5pro and for my lasers (Co2 and Fiber) Being a PC guy most of my life. I listened to my daughter about the ease of Mac’s for creative things. And not to lie learning how to use a Mac was a huge learning curve for me. Things that should have worked ABC was all over the place and at times I hated this thing. But Ive found a comfortable flow of working on the Mac. I figured out how to create on my Android tablet send it to my Mac or PC and then import the files to my 3D printer, laser, or CNC. So for me alone if they dropped one platform for another it would be no big deal. But I think it would be a huge mistake as they would lose the business of half the market. Spending a few grand on a cnc then have to buy another computer just to run it. People will buy from another company that’s more open.
I have a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro which I dedicated to my Shapeoko Pro when I bought an M-series Mac for my everyday use laptop. I do design work both on the intel laptop and the M laptop. The intel laptop runs Carbide Motion. If you switch to Arm builds only, I can easily use the M-series laptop to run Carbide Motion for the Shapeoko as well so switching to only Arm software would only be a minor inconvenience. There may be other Mac users who own both Intel and M-Series Macs who are able to make the transition easily and are willing to do so.
I use my M1 MacBook Pro for both CC and CM.
That 2012 MacBook Pro was a beast of a laptop. Last year you could upgrade all the internals on your own for a fraction of the price of the Apple overlords.