M1 Mac Chip Compatibility
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I created a feedback item for this, which you're free to vote for. Voting will help us see how important this is collectively to the Logos community, but it may not change the actual timeline, which is the fastest possible path to native support. See this clarification below.
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I can only speak for my own inclinations, but the adoption rate, for me anyway, is something of a chicken and egg scenario. At the moment, I don't need a new machine, but when FL releases a version of Logos (and Proclaim) that runs natively on Apple's ARM processors, then I would almost instantly buy a new Apple desktop. Logos is the main reason I even have a desktop computer. And once it runs natively on Apple's ARM, then I'm assuming performance would be enhanced. And I'm a huge fan of a faster Logos, so that would easily persuade me to upgrade my desktop. Maybe there's others that are in the same boat?
Also, I voted for that![:D]
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Thanks, for this and I stand corrected - the list Apple is updating is for apps that have been "optimized" for M1.
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Logos is the only reason I use a laptop and not an iPad Pro. I can adjust my workflow to work well with an iPad Pro for everything I do except Logos.
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Logos is the only reason I use a laptop and not an iPad Pro. I can adjust my workflow to work well with an iPad Pro for everything I do except Logos.
Which is more important to you, Logos 9 Mac native on M1 or the iPad app with all the features it's missing? What features are missing for you?
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Which is more important to you, Logos 9 Mac native on M1 or the iPad app with all the features it's missing? What features are missing for you?
For me, I would prioritize Logos running natively on an Apple Silicon Mac over enhancements to the Logos app on the iPad.
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The two mostly likely pathways to native support probably look like this:
- Mono adds support for Apple's M1 ARM processor, allowing us to generate and compile directly to ARM. Mono already supports other ARM platforms. I haven't seen any advertised time frames, but maybe this path could be 6–12 months out? That's a wild guess, so I wouldn't put much stock in it until we hear something official from Mono. But this path should be faster, since they already support other ARM platforms.
- We move to .NET 5 (planned to start in Q1 for other reasons) and then to .NET 6 a year later, which plans to add full support for Apple's Silicon: code generation, compiler support, official testing and support by Microsoft. .NET 6 is due in February of 2022, so this pathway puts us at least 15–18 months out, I'd guess.
A couple of clarifications:
- Getting Logos 9 running natively on Apple's Silicon is planned and very important to us. It's not a matter of if but when. The M1 shows promise for making Logos run faster on Mac, and we're excited about that.
- The two paths I laid out above are the fastest paths to native support. The two alternatives—rewriting the app and building M1 support into .NET 5 and/or Mono—would both take longer. The first alternative would probably take a dozen developers 4–6 years. Not sure about the second, but it's not a feasible path for many reasons.
So, we'll get to native support as quickly as we can, but we're blocked by .NET and Mono and can't go any faster than they do.
The priority for us right now, while we wait for these third parties, is making sure Logos 9 runs well via Rosetta 2. We have some work do to in our web views based on CEF's slow performance. We'll keep testing and working to make sure M1 users are well supported both now and after we're able to deliver native support.
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Which is more important to you, Logos 9 Mac native on M1 or the iPad app with all the features it's missing?
For me, it’s all about screen real estate.
- At most, you have a split view in the iPad app. To see a different pane, you have to swipe the current pane offscreen.
- On the desktop, there are many visible panes laid out in an arrangement of our choosing. Bible, Information tool, Factbook, Notes, Bible word study, Highlighters.
For that reason, the iPad can supplement the desktop app, but it can’t replace it.
As for missing iPad functionality, support for Apple Pencil would be a big deal. Highlighting, note taking, and markup.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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Good question - The Factbook is now on mobile I believe which is a very nice upgrade for mobile users. The main issue with Logos on the iPad Pro is an iOS issue. I want to have at least four windows on one screen. I can't do that with the iPad Pro. I fully understand that some Logos users couldn't imagine using such a small screen, but it's a trade-off for me. I really enjoy interfacing with the iPad. Anyway, with this in mind, the Mac is much more flexible than the iPad when it comes to Logos so I would like to see the focus on native M1 development.
With this said, I would think that FL would have development teams for each platform, and this wouldn't be an either/or scenario.
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I'm way out of my level of competence here, but it seems that FL is in a much weaker starting position than many other software publishers who are easily making the move to optimized M1 apps. Perhaps it's because Logos is a Windows-first app and the third party development tools used by FL are not as flexible for Mac development? I have no idea.
Anyway, I tried several Bible software apps/solutions before committing to Logos. Logos was the most expensive and by far the slowest on Mac, with Accordance being the fastest, and Olive Tree being the most user-friendly, but I chose Logos because I get more out of the Logos platform. No offense to folks that love other platforms, but I personally feel Logos is superior in their efforts to provide their users with the very best Bible study platform.
I can't help but feel Mac users are a bit of a second-class citizen in the Logos ecosystem, but maybe this will work itself out one day.
I'm thankful for the clarification on FL's commitment to working natively with Apple silicon. The initial FL post regarding Apple Silicon commitment seemed very uncommitted.
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I'm way out of my level of competence here, but it seems that FL is in a much weaker starting position than many other software publishers who are easily making the move to optimized M1 apps. Perhaps it's because Logos is a Windows-first app and the third party development tools used by FL are not as flexible for Mac development? I have no idea.
Yes, Logos was developed on the Windows platform and used the open source ports of Microsoft's .NET to macOS to deliver Logos on Mac. That puts them behind the curve of other software that was developed on the Mac using Apple's Xcode.
I checked GitHub and there are projects underway for both Mono and .NET 6 to support Apple Silicon. .Net 6 should be out in Nov 2021. That means we'll likely get Logos on Apple Silicon in 2022 if FL waits for .NET 6. That's a long time away.
Mono already supports the iPhone, which is the same hardware (but different APIs).
I left software development almost a decade ago, so I have no clue what approach FL will take. We'll get a native Apple Silicon version eventually, but not as soon as I would like.
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For me, it’s all about screen real estate.
- At most, you have a split view in the iPad app. To see a different pane, you have to swipe the current pane offscreen.
- On the desktop, there are many visible panes laid out in an arrangement of our choosing. Bible, Information tool, Factbook, Notes, Bible word study, Highlighters.
For that reason, the iPad can supplement the desktop app, but it can’t replace it.
I agree. I have an iPad Pro 12.9‑inch with the Magic Keyboard with the trackpad, and iOS just can't do all the things that macOS does. I will use the iPad for simple reading of a resource. But if I want to do anything more than just reading a text, I'll use the Mac.
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I'm way out of my level of competence here, but it seems that FL is in a much weaker starting position than many other software publishers who are easily making the move to optimized M1 apps. Perhaps it's because Logos is a Windows-first app and the third party development tools used by FL are not as flexible for Mac development? I have no idea.
Yes, Logos was developed on the Windows platform and used the open source ports of Microsoft's .NET to macOS to deliver Logos on Mac. That puts them behind the curve of other software that was developed on the Mac using Apple's Xcode.
I checked GitHub and there are projects underway for both Mono and .NET 6 to support Apple Silicon. .Net 6 should be out in Nov 2021. That means we'll likely get Logos on Apple Silicon in 2022 if FL waits for .NET 6. That's a long time away.
Mono already supports the iPhone, which is the same hardware (but different APIs).
I left software development almost a decade ago, so I have no clue what approach FL will take. We'll get a native Apple Silicon version eventually, but not as soon as I would like.
Thanks for the clarification and confirming. Decisions made years ago are now coming back around to make this a difficult task.
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Anyway, I tried several Bible software apps/solutions before committing to Logos. Logos was the most expensive and by far the slowest on Mac, with Accordance being the fastest, and Olive Tree being the most user-friendly, but I chose Logos because I get more out of the Logos platform. No offense to folks that love other platforms, but I personally feel Logos is superior in their efforts to provide their users with the very best Bible study platform.
I have both of the competitors to Logos that you named, and I think Logos far surpasses them in power and functionality. I am very happy with Logos.
As to speed, I've found that you need to throw more hardware at it than it's competitors. Logos runs great on my two existing Macs:
- 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2.3GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 memory, Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, 1TB SSD storage
- 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, 3.6GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory, Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory, 1TB SSD storage
I ordered a 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple M1 chip with 8-core CPU and 8-core GP and 16-core Neural Engine, 16GB unified memory, 1TB SSD storage. I think Logos will run OK on it under Rosetta in most cases. But I am looking forward to a native Apple Silicon version of Logos.
I know it may take FL some time to get there, and I understand why. I just hope FL assigns the appropriate number of development resources to this project and makes it a priority. FL's priorities may not line up with mine. After all, they are a business and a lot of their user base runs Windows.
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Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter than the 4–6 year developmental timeline for Logos running natively on Apple Silicon delineated by Phil @ Faithlife. If so, that could prove to be a considerable logistical challenge.
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Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter than the 4–6 year developmental timeline for Logos running natively on Apple Silicon delineated by Phil @ Faithlife. If so, that could prove to be a considerable logistical challenge.
Looking back, Apple supported Rosetta 1 for 5 years after the transition to PowerPC was complete (which took 2 years). If those numbers hold, Apple’s commitment might be slightly longer.
But if support did get dropped while FL was still working on the native version, Logos customers can hold off on upgrading their OS to a non-Rosetta version until FL is done.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter than the 4–6 year developmental timeline for Logos running natively on Apple Silicon delineated by Phil @ Faithlife.
The 4-6 year option (rewriting the entire program) is what Faithlife is not doing, per Phil.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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I would think that FL would have development teams for each platform, and this wouldn't be an either/or scenario.
We do, but we can scale teams up and down based on priorities.
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The initial FL post regarding Apple Silicon commitment seemed very uncommitted.
I'm sorry. I was still gathering facts and didn't want to overcommit before understanding the options and timeframes.
In my experience, it often works something like this:
What Faithlife says: "We hope to get to this in the next year or so."
What (some) users hear: "We promise to get this done right away."
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Decisions made years ago are now coming back around to make this a difficult task.
There are tradeoffs with every technology choice, and we don't regret using Mono to deliver Logos on Mac. We don't have the luxury of being able to write Logos natively on five platforms. It's heavy use of code sharing that makes it possible for us to build and maintain such a robust app on five platforms. We have roughly 25 developers working on Windows, MacOS, iOS/iPadOS, and the web app (while maintaining responsibility for a variety of other apps, services, and technologies).
We use Mono to share code between Windows and MacOS. We used Xamarin to share code between iOS/iPadOS and Android, though we've dialed back from that for various reasons. We're using Flutter to build a mobile app for Faithlife Courses on iOS/iPadOS and Android. We use WebAssembly (Wasm) to share desktop code with the web app. And we're making heavy use of web technologies to share code between desktop and web—and with Factbook even with mobile.
These features are all written as shared web components:
- Atlas
- Bible Browser
- Canvas
- Charts
- Courses
- Factbook
- Homepage
- Media
- Notes
- Sermon Builder
- Sermon Manager
- Text Comparison
- Workflow Editor
Our interactive resources are another form of HTML-based code sharing between desktop and web.
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Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter than the 4–6 year developmental timeline for Logos.....
If you have any links to support this I would love to see it. As far as I can tell, Apple has made no commitment or announcement at all on how long Rosetta 2 will be supported. They have said the "transition" to 100% Apple Silicon and away from Intel chips will be approximately 2 years. Have you seen anything specific on the life of Rosetta 2 from Apple a reputable site quoting Apple?
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Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter than the 4–6 year developmental timeline for Logos running natively on Apple Silicon delineated by Phil @ Faithlife.
The 4-6 year option (rewriting the entire program) is what Faithlife is not doing, per Phil.
Correct. Sorry for not being clearer.
There are two viable pathways:
- Mono adds native support (6–12 mos. ???).
- .NET 6 adds native support (12–18 mos.).
And two nonviable pathways:
- We rewrite the app natively (4–6 years).
- We build the support into Mono and/or .NET 5 ourselves (???).
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The initial FL post regarding Apple Silicon commitment seemed very uncommitted.
I'm sorry. I was still gathering facts and didn't want to overcommit before understanding the options and timeframes.
In my experience, it often works something like this:
What Faithlife says: "We hope to get to this in the next year or so."
What (some) users hear: "We promise to get this done right away."
Understood.
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https://medium.com/nerdtastic/macos-big-sur-the-new-rosetta-2-282df45eca11
I humbly suggest reading the article again. It says:
Rosetta 2 is not a long term solution.
Apple is urging developers to create native apps for their arm-based Macs.
Apple ended the support for OG rosetta only after 3 years of its release.
But it also says:
They didn’t even announce how long will they be supporting older Intel-based Macs.
Nowhere in that article, these statements or others, does it say Apple mentioned a commitment timeframe for Rosetta 2 support. I was just wondering why you said "Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter". No worries.
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Decisions made years ago are now coming back around to make this a difficult task.
There are tradeoffs with every technology choice, and we don't regret using Mono to deliver Logos on Mac. We don't have the luxury of being able to write Logos natively on five platforms. It's heavy use of code sharing that makes it possible for us to build and maintain such a robust app on five platforms. We have roughly 25 developers working on Windows, MacOS, iOS/iPadOS, and the web app (while maintaining responsibility for a variety of other apps, services, and technologies).
We use Mono to share code between Windows and MacOS. We used Xamarin to share code between iOS/iPadOS and Android, though we've dialed back from that for various reasons. We're using Flutter to build a mobile app for Faithlife Courses on iOS/iPadOS and Android. We use WebAssembly (Wasm) to share desktop code with the web app. And we're making heavy use of web technologies to share code between desktop and web—and with Factbook even with mobile.
These features are all written as shared web components:
- Atlas
- Bible Browser
- Canvas
- Charts
- Courses
- Factbook
- Homepage
- Media
- Notes
- Sermon Builder
- Sermon Manager
- Text Comparison
- Workflow Editor
Our interactive resources are another form of HTML-based code sharing between desktop and web.
Interesting. Admittedly, I'm catching on (barely) to the challenges that FL is facing porting the app to Apple silicon. It seems allowing the FL Mac development team to develop Logos in Xcode from the beginning would have been a massive task, but would've made for a more optimized Logos Mac app and a much easier transition with this current challenge, but the cost would be the inability to share code between development teams and maintain parity between the Win/Mac apps. If I'm correct in this, then I can understand that there are plusses and minuses to each scenario.
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Please read through the earlier postings on this thread. That’s the context for my previous statement.
As for my most recent link to the article in question, which I recommend you reread again *carefully*, it says the following: “Apple ended the support for OG Rosetta only after 3 years of its release" (emphasis added).
So, one potentially valid inference is that the above could parallel the length of time Apple decides to sunset support for Rosetta 2. Ergo, the potential validity of my previous observation that a FL 4–6 year developmental timeline could prove to be logistically challenging.
I stand by my previous observation/s.
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There are two viable pathways:
- Mono adds native support (6–12 mos. ???).
- .NET 6 adds native support (12–18 mos.).
Thanks for providing initial development estimates. These are the estimates for when the runtime and tools will natively support Apple Silicon on a Mac. I would assume there would be additional time for the FL team to get Logos up and ready for distribution to their user base.
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Please read through the earlier postings on this thread. That’s the context for my previous statement.
As for my most recent link to the article in question, which I recommend you reread again *carefully*, it says the following: “Apple ended the support for OG Rosetta only after 3 years of its release" (emphasis added).
So, one potentially valid inference is that the above could parallel the length of time Apple decides to sunset support for Rosetta 2. Ergo, the potential validity of my previous observation that a FL 4–6 year developmental timeline could prove to be logistically challenging.
I stand by my previous observation/s.
You said - "Apple’s commitment to supporting Rosetta 2 seems significantly shorter"
“Apple ended the support for OG Rosetta only after 3 years of its release" - So what they did with another product 11 years ago is a commitment to supporting Rosetta 2?
"So, one potentially valid inference is that ..." - a personal inference is not Apple's commitment.
Your inference, observations, etc. are perfectly valid - and your previous observations are worth standing by, to be sure. My question is not with them, but with your mention of "Apple's commitment". Apple has made no such commitment. I just think it's important to be accurate in what someone else, person or company, has said. People on these forums might make decisions or judgments based on a statement that is just not true.
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