MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

I hope Apple currently has a team focused on macOS perf.

I worked on the team in charge of improving iOS (13) perf at Apple and IIRC there was no dedicated macOS “task force” like the one on iOS.

Luckily some iOS changes permeated into macOS thanks to some shared codebases.

> IIRC there was no dedicated macOS “task force” like the one on iOS

It's not surprising. Macs are less than 10% of Apple's revenue.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/30/apple-2q-2020-earnings/

Except all of Apple's other devices are built on macOS. Apple's clear de-prioritization of macOS based on revenue numbers is so insane I can barely believe it's happening. If developers, who use Macs in large numbers today, go to another platform, there's very real risk that their entire empire starts to come apart at the seams. And, this may just be me being naive, but it doesn't seem like that much work to keep macOS going, all they have to do is stop trying to turn it into iOS. They are literally doing a tremendous amount of active engineering work that drives developers away from their platforms.

They are risking their entire empire because (apparently) someone at Apple has an axe to grind with macOS's Unix underpinnings. And until they start getting real consequences (developer's leaving in huge numbers), it doesn't seem like it's going to stop. The tragedy is, if they ever do reach that point, where developers are leaving in huge numbers, it'll be too late. Platforms are a momentum game, you're either going up, or you're going down. And once you're going down, you're as good as dead.

Agree. That's probably also one reason why more and more people want to use cross-platform app frameworks instead of developing for iOS natively. That way, you can do most of the dev work on Windows and Android, and you'll only need to use Mac & XCode for compiling the iOS binary.

And I'd wager that some iOS games are released without the developer ever touching XCode: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityCloudBuildiOS.html

Signing and submitting apps to Apple is fairly annoying to do without Xcode.