AnyRail on the Mac

[David]

Mikael, I know people want it, but the investment is just too high (and Apple wants a 30% cut of anything sold in the app store).

[TrainzLuvr]

Do you really need to go through the AppStore?

According to Apple, you just need a valid Developer ID certificate to sign the application and it's good to go - Gatekeeper won't complain about it (https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/DistributingApplicationsOutside/DistributingApplicationsOutside.html).

I'm writing this from a Mac and I'd love an macOS version of AnyRail (running it in Parallels at the moment, but would prefer a native one  ).

[David]

Perhaps the AppStore is not a requirement, but we would have to redo much of the user interface the Apple way.
Also, the core system needs to be ported. This might- or might not be a problem, but we use many of the latest enhancements of C++.

All in all, it'll probably be at least a year of development, and it's totally boring work as well

We really prefer to spend that time on improving the Windows version of AnyRail.

[TrainzLuvr]

I don't think C++ standards compliance would be an issue, but if you say boring I can believe that.

Maybe you could outsource the porting?

As far as the GUI, there are other cross-platform options like Qt etc. Once you do macOS then Linux version is not far either.

[Don Cragun]

As someone who worked on UNIX operating system, library and utility software at Bell Labs and Sun Microsystems for more than 30 years, I understand the desire to just produce software that works in one operating environment.  Nonetheless, at various times we produced software that worked on DEC PDP and DEC VAX hardware, DEC VAX and WE 3B hardware, and on M68K, Intel, and Sparc hardware because that was what the customers wanted/needed.

Please be aware that creating macOS and Linux versions of AnyRail would be greatly appreciated and would open doors to larger markets for you product.

Paying MicroSoft for the privilege of creating all of the extra Windows sysadmin hassles to be able to run Parallels is a non-starter for many of your potential users.

[JBM]

For anyone interested:  I have installed Anyrail6 using VMware Fusion on an Intel-based (2018) macbook pro.  Anyrail seems to work well with Windows 10 in this emulator configuration. 

I have also installed Windows 11 using Parallels on an M1 Apple Silicon Macbook pro.  Windows for ARM is hard to locate, so I was not able to install with VMware, but Parallels seems to install it just fine as part of the install process.  I will test Anyrail with Parallels/Windows 11/ M1 silicon in the future and report back.