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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
64 bit version for Mac
- Thread starter Tekwych
- Start date
It's kind of sad that it has been commonly known for over a year that 32bit support would be going away and this was never placed as a priority for the business. They updated the iOS version to 64bit when iOS11 released and they were forced to, why did they ignore the desktop client?
I imagine it is because of their current staffing reduction combined with an application that probably doesn't sell very well any more. If it took them 3 man months (~ $40k) to do, how long to recoup their costs?
Their current staffing doesn't explain ignoring it for a year+ prior to those staffing changes. Its just another example of how they have diversified themselves into irrelevancy because they now cannot keep up wit the demands of modern times on their software development.
Their development has been underwater for the last two years.
I don't know, because I don't use it, but is AB worth the the investment at this point? How well does it sell? Assuming 40K to fix it, will they sell 1000 Mac copies (because it still runs fine on windows) to break even?
So you are saying that the cost to recompile an app from 32bit to 64bit needs 1000 new sales to pay for that cost? As for AB, it was the core of Lonewolf sales and what paved the road for Herolab and others. No matter what you say to support them, it’s still crap that they knew for over a year this was coming and never bothered to address the situation. it’s just par for the course for Lonewolf. I have been around long enough I feel comfortable saying this is our norm. It sucks, but it is what it is. Unless we want to use other tools, we just have to accept our purchases have limited shelf life here. AB is dead, CV is dead, RW is Dead, and HLC is dead. It’s just a matter of time for HLO to fall by the wayside and LW move on to the next shiney they promote.
Technically, I said 1000 new MAC sales. This is from experience on 64 bit conversion which I have done now to two large c++ projects at two different companies. Plus the app still works perfectly fine on 90% of PC's out there, plus whatever percentage of mac users that won't/can't upgrade to the latest and not greatest (from what I have read) version of Mac OS.
As a fellow developer, moving to 64 bit isn't always just a matter of recompiling. And, of course, they can't really afford to release even a recompiled project without extensive testing. They don't want the headline of the day to be "New version of Army Builder released. Melts user computers when Japanese language settings turned on. Lone Wolf possibly holding anti-Japanese sentiment?" 
And this is my point. I get it. Other maintainers continue to support and defend poor planning. I’m just tired of doing it and am calling it out now. Since the Realmworks fiasco, the constant excuse of developer this and developer that, I just can’t excuse poor planning with a year+ alert. If AB is dead and no longer being supported, then they should be saying that and not selling it with the expectation of continued functionality. Sucks if you’re a new Mac owner. I guess go buy an old Mac and run an old os that isn’t patched for security purposes now cause AB isn’t being update.
This seems silly if you like AB.