There are problems specific to Mac users, such as with the retina display, extensions that will not load (Canvas), etc. I do understand that it must be difficult to contantly upgrade disparate operating system, but a separate forum for our issues would be a boon. Thanks.
Robert Barnett Newman
as a long time mac SketchUp user I believe a separate forum would do us a huge disservice…
SU is cross platform and ideally, so should all extensions, but that isn’t alway possible…
I have found the majority of plugin/extension authors strive for that goal…
I have written plugins that only work on mac, but only to fill gaps…
I also have cross platform ones…
what you have done with your forum topic is exactly what every one needs to be doing, flag your platform…
which canvas extension do you refer to?
BTW. currently, retina displays is a cross platform issue, not just mac’s…
john
I too am a Mac user.
I prefer the system used on this forum, in which there are multiple “categories” and you can select whether you want to see one or all mixed together. As opposed to other sites in which a “forum” is a completely separate list of topics and you can only visit one forum at a time.
My main concern if we broke out separate Mac and Windows categories is that people would post topics under one of those categories because that’s the platform they use rather than because the problem is really specific to that platform. In many cases the issue might not actually be platform-specific, but the original poster didn’t know that. A lot of duplication would result. Further, it is often valuable to see replies “that doesn’t happen on Mac/Windows” so that people using the other platform know. This forum has a reasonably good search function that you can use to find posts that specifically mention “Mac”.
Particularly when people build compiled extensions or rely on linked-in libraries, there will always be issues with portability between platforms. The majority of extensions are built by unpaid devotees who often can not afford to support both Windows and Mac.
That said, there are various differences between the Windows and Mac versions of SketchUp that can be annoying. Some of these are just OS style differences and there is little point in starting a religious war here about whether one is better or worse; that turf has been covered elsewhere for years. But there are other differences that seem arbitrary and unnecessary. The Materials window is the best example. The Mac version is so radically different from the Windows one that it is difficult for people even to discuss the concept of creating and editing materials. Having been a developer, I know that cross-platform portability is difficult, but it seems to me that Trimble does not devote much effort to unifying the GUI.
Well, if you go back over our history, we didn’t have the capacity, i.e. - manpower, to change that, a bit resource starved, you might say. That’s changing. You might not see it immediately in a big way, but you’ll begin to see it over time in subtle ways.