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What's the story with iOS apps available for mac on M1?
I'm sorry if I missed the discussion, but looking at the App Store on my M1 MBP, I see that some of my iOS apps are available under the "Mac Apps" tab ... Animoog Z, Model 15, and SK-51 among others. I figured this would be a good forum to ask about it. Many but by far not all of my iOS apps are under the "iPhone & iPad Apps" tab. Haven't messed with any of them yet.
I downloaded Moog Model 15 to my mac and it's a splitting image of the iOS app on my ipad. Made an IAP on the iPad and immediately was able to restore purchases to the mac.
Is anyone aware of a list of apps that are available like this? I knew iOS and MacOS were converging, but what a pleasant surprise to find some of my purchases from the ios app store carry over onto the mac desktop. It makes the IAPs that much more interesting.
Now if only you could run them in your DAW as an AU or VST ... or AUM could be used on a mac.
Comments
Well, the Animoog Z app is also completely cross compatible. Moog is doing a great job so far of adapting their synths to multiple platforms. I trust they'll do the same for the Model D at some point, which would be fantastic.
And I sure wish more developers would at least make an effort to "click the button" in Xcode to allow their apps to function on macOS, even if not in a completely clean cross platform way. I have a ton of synths and effects I'd love to be able to use on desktop.
Another app I'm able to fairly reliably run on an M1 iMac is the SoundFonts app. It used to crash regularly, but now it seems pretty stable, even though it is not advertised as being "verified for macOS".
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soundfonts/id1453325077
@j_liljedahl (the AUM developer) started a thread and asked if anyone wanted AUM for the Mac... you should add your vote:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/47812/aum-for-mac/p1
Just did. Thanks for the heads up.
So that's the secret, Apple added a button in Xcode to make it seamless? Any way to know which apps have the functionality before purchasing or is there a list or some clue inside the App store? Seems like a USP for developers and they'd want to advertise it.
Of course I’m drastically simplifying things, but Apple has attempted to make the process of getting iOS apps onto macOS simpler. I’m sure some developers could weigh in on how “easy” or difficult this is in reality.
Apple didn't add a button in Xcode to make it seamless for developers to make their iOS apps available on macOS. They added a button on the Apple store interface that's lets developers indicate that they want their iOS apps made available on the Mac App Store for M1 computers. The problem with this approach was that it didn't involve any testing or verification. I personally didn't allow my apps to work this way because I didn't have an M1 Mac yet to test with. When I did get one to test with it turned out that every AUv3 from iOS crashed on the M1 Macs. That seems to be mostly fixed by now. I still don't have my AU's available this way though.
Apple does have another way to let you bring your iOS apps to the Macs and that is through using Mac Catalyst to make a port of your iOS app. In general, this is a much better path that leaves the dev in control of the process. Note that not all audio units that are ported from iOS to macOS are going to be sold or hosted on the Apple Store for Mac. Mine aren't as an example. I have them directly on my website.
As far as using AUv3 audio units on the Macs goes, not all hosts support them at this point. This is the same for iOS AUv3 or direct Mac AUv3. The only hosts currently on the Mac that I know of that support AUv3 audio units are GarageBand, Logic, MainStage, Reaper, and Hosting AU.
Do you know how Moog was able to get their Animoog Z app to download from the macOS App Store and still function as an AUv3?
I naively suggested Toneboosters offer their plugins as macOS App Store apps before and he said it was not possible. Apparently it is possible now.
@NeonSilicon thanks for the detailed explanation. Any idea how an iOS app ends up in the App Store under Mac Apps rather than Iphone & iPad Apps? Is that where Mac Catalyst leads? I figured the latter would be generally dodgy, and sounds like the case.
Also how would I load an AUv3 audio unit inside Reaper, like how do you notify the DAW that an AUv3 supporting plugin is available? Is that via auval from the command line?
I assume that Moog has done a complete ground up rewrite of their apps to be Mac native. They could be Mac Catalyst based, but it doesn't seem like it to me for some reason or other that I haven't really thought about.
I don't know of anything stopping a dev from selling AUv3 apps on the Mac App Store. That could be different with version 2 AU's. So if Toneboosters' AU's are version 2, I wouldn't be surprised if they can't be put on the Mac App Store.
Once you do have an app that is both a Mac app and an iOS app, you can indicate via the dev App Store interface how you want them tied and available on the different platforms.
If it's on the App Store as a Mac app then it has been ported to the Mac either directly or as a Mac Catalyst app. It doesn't matter either way. Mac Catalyst apps are a pretty good way to bring all sorts of things to the Mac from iOS and it works really well. There's some specific stuff that may need reworking having mostly to do with mouse and keyboard events, but that can be done in the same Xcode project with some conditional code.
I can't remember the first times I loaded an AUv3 into Reaper, but I can't remember doing anything special. It mainly works just like any other plugin. One thing you do have to do with AUv3's is open the container app first before you try to load the AU in a host. This seems to register AU with the system. I've even had the disappearing AU thing on the Mac and had to solve it with reopening the container app. This isn't just true for Reaper. It happens in every host including sometimes with auval. I only moved to Monterey yesterday though, so maybe this is less of an issue now.
I had to open Model 15 before it showed up in Reaper, but there it is. Downloaded Animoog Z and it showed up in Reaper even before I opened it the first time. They show up as AUI and AU. Also found the VST wrappers on Moog's website. Now the Animoog Z IAPs are an instabuy for me, that I know it can work inside Reaper. Epic!
I do not see SK-51 but not clear if the IAP controls that function. Need to do more research.
[EDIT: The moogs also show up as Audio Units in Studio One but fail to launch]
While many apps are available in the Mac App Store, only a few work properly/well.
As long as the Macs do not have touch screens, it is silly to have touch-based iOS apps on Macs.
Not really, the Moog apps and Drambo all translate nicely to keyboard and mouse.
Plus using Logic Remote you can control them from the iPad.
The harder problem would be the reverse, desktop apps on a touch screen device, UI rewrite.
I agree. The Moog apps are adapted brilliantly.
Are all the iOS apps adapted equally brilliantly on M1 Macs?
All the Moog apps, yes. Or should I say, the two Moog apps available so far.
You are taking the example of one or two companies with deep pockets.
Have you seen any small, indie developers with limited resources port their iOS apps to Macs brilliantly?
On the other hand, how many iOS apps support dark mode, yet?
How many support resolutions of various iOS/iPadOS screen sizes?
Look, I don't want to get into an unproductive argument with you, but the SoundFonts app also works great for me as AUv3 on both iOS and macOS, even though it is not specifically sold as being cross-platform.
I agree, but using the members of this forum to determine what is viable on both platforms would be a great opportunity to diversify.
There is another possible complication that might be what you are seeing in Studio One. I don't own Studio One so I can't test to try to figure it out. But, there are two types of v3 audio units on the Mac. The type that are on iOS are sandboxed AUv3's. The Mac can have these and AUv3's that run in process like the older v2 audio units. It could be that Studio One has added support for AUv3 but will only support in process types when they actually go to launch them.
It's easier than a complete port. It's infinitely more work than "ticking a checkbox". Also, for me the hesitation is the potentially much higher support load (answering emails and solving problems with more different hosts and OS-update related misery) when adding a new platform into the equation.
And all for no extra money
Desktop developers by large produce PC and Mac versions of their software, that has to be more difficult to produce and maintain, so it’s doable.
Indeed. Also, for an app like AUM there's a lot of things that needs rewrite and conditional code, because while the checkbox in xcode makes it easy to port most UI stuff, it's not the same with CoreAudio. Things doesn't work the same way, there's no RemoteIO AU and accessing multi-channel interfaces is not the same, etc.
For an AUv3 plugin it's easier, but it can be a lot of work making the plugin pass auval. We don't have anything like auval on iOS, so many plugins that happens to work on iOS will not pass auval because it tests things and configurations not commonly used by hosts on iOS.
All this combined with the additional support load is the reason I'm going to make any Mac versions of my apps and plugins as separate purchases.
The good thing about Mac Catalyst is that it works for both M1 and Intel macs.
These are usually done with cross platform libraries and that's part of the reason that new OS features and formats, like AUv3, can take so long to show up in audio apps.
The money side of it would be down to if you thought you could get enough new users on macOS that you don't have on iOS. I don't know how realistic that is, but the Mac App Store isn't nearly as used as the iOS store is. I think you would have to put quite a bit more effort into promoting your stuff on macOS to get the same level of exposure.
Would love to use Mozaic in place of the Logics scripter plugin as a midi effect but appreciate it may cause a lot of support issues.
Using different interfacing / input methods on different platforms is inconsistent which is why I said it is a silly architecture with lack of touch interface on Mac. On iOS, we use touch and if need to use keyboard/mouse-only on Mac, that is inconsistent and will retard our technique. Keyboard and mouse inputs can be bonus interfaces on both platforms but there should be one common and most-used interface on both platforms which is "touch" and currently Mac doesn't have it.
As an example of consistency, in a dB app, if we maintain a table of data on a screen in a specific grouping and sort order, it should follow the same grouping and sort order when the same data is used to create a report or the same data is used inside a dropdown which also ensures positional integrity. That is a consistent and expected UX/behavior and no brainer.
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That’s very interesting and surprising for me. From a naïve point of view I would expect that to be the other way round. I see lots of differences in the UI between iOS and MacOS, last but not least the touch vs. mouse operation. I expected that an interface like CoreAudio would be much more similar if not identical because I see no reason why audio should be different on a mobile device. Is iOS CoreAudio a subset of its MacOS counterpart or are there even conceptual differences?
I can see a growing number of original iOS apps that are n the Mac appstore on my Intel Mac and look exactly the same. Moog apps and the fingerlab synths for instance. The only thing is that they don’t work as AUs in Ableton for whatever reason.