Sketchup for Apple Silicon Macs

Analogous to a “classic” perpetual license, then. (It’s a joke!)

Man, where did they get that idea from!

I did read what else you get, and I suppose it’s good value. Hopefully SketchUp will let me expense it, if I get chosen, and if SketchUp do use it for testing.

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A Request for Sketchup and Trimble as the post from Jody worried me (we have no plans to drop the Mac at this point) . I have used the software on Macs since version 3 and love it, please don’t drop support going forward. Most of my industry uses Sketchup (Commercial Set Design) with a 90%+ share of it on Macs. This coupled with going subscription would shut out a huge amount high end creators who use Sketchup professionally for different things every day. In terms of the subscription, I don’t really like it but I am also fine with it if it means that the software is driven forward at a pace and the intergration with layout is improved (more than happy to pay the yearly fee in that case). I would though love to see Trimble release a free and ongoing translator from which ever current version there is in the future back to the last classic licence. This would mitigate people worries about not having access to historic projects. Anyway, I have rambled off topic but I am looking forward to seeing native Sketchup on Apple Silicon (at some point) and the rapid and impressive updates that the subscription model will bring (nudge nudge…)

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Thanks Dan,
"I don’t really like it (Subscription) but I am also fine with it if it means that the software is driven forward at a pace and the integration with … and **Layout is improved (more than happy to pay the yearly fee in that case).

I certainly agree with that - Trimble, please take ALL that new $ from your imposed subscription to DO something constructive - FIX Layout!

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Exactly. Leave Sketchup as it is fine. 100% work on Layout.

Mike

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+1000. Yes, for the love of god, fix/improve/bring up to scratch Layout. If it helps, I’ll make the tea!

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This gave me an idea. Some disclaimers before I start. I may say 10.16, but it could be 11.0 for all know. Either way, I mean the next update. Any version related things I say about SketchUp are hypothetical, and not in any way a roadmap…

10.16 will have Rosetta 2 built into it. Tim talked about a two year transition period. Taking the worse case, say that 10.16 is ready in October 2020, new machines during 2021, and in October 2023, in 10.19 they remove Rosetta 2. By that time all applications that need to run on the Apple silicon will have to be Universal or Native apps. Both of those requirements would rule out all existing versions of SketchUp.

I think that Rosetta 2 won’t emulate macOS 10.15, instead it recompiles 64 bit applications to be native on Apple silicon. It would not make sense for Apple to release 10.17 and 10.18, and require the old 64 bit applications to be updated to macOS 10.14 or later in order for Rosetta 2 to understand them. But, it may be that only apps that can run in 10.15 will be recompiled by Rosetta 2. For SketchUp that means 2017 and later.

So, my thought is that if you have Apple silicon and Rosetta 2, you should be good to go with SketchUp 2017 or later, until Apple remove Rosetta 2. That is likely to be more years from now than the same apps staying compatible with Intel Macs.

In other words, Apple give you that ongoing translator.

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Hi Simon,
Based on past posts, I think I may be running (and perhaps suffering?) under a iMac platform running SU similar to yours?.
In my case, it’s a iMac 27" 5K Core i7 4.0 Ghz, 32 GB ram, (Late 2015), which has an AMD Radeon R9 M395X graphics processor with only 4 GB of GDDR5 memory.
I was “considering” a rather expensive upgrade to an iMac Pro with the high end 16 GB Radeon graphics card, in the hopes that this hardware might finally at least slightly alleviate my LayOut performance frustrations.
Now, with Apples’ announced move to “ARM” chips, it seems it might be prudent to wait, once again …
This is really frustrating, as I was getting ready to move … I wonder what this shift in chips will do to the new iMac and iMac Pro lineup?
And, how fast (or perhaps I should say, how slow) is Trimble going to be in updating SketchUp compatibility with the new Apple ARM chip architecture?
Along with COVID 19, this seems to be a lost year, with no upgrades!
Beamer

I’m not the spokesperson for Trimble, but going off past releases, the general case seems to be that a SketchUp update appears at the time, or soon after, an Apple change that breaks SketchUp.

For the ARM thing, I have applied to get one of the developer machines. If Apple allow me to pay them that might increase the chances of SketchUp being native sooner.

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Your setup is much more up to date than mine. My iMac is late 2012 with an i5 processor and only 512Mb of VRAM.

I have been considering upgrading to one of the more powerful current iMacs but not an iMac Pro, which is beyond the budget I have set myself.

I was advised to await the announcements of the recent developers’ conference which included the expected announcement about a move to ARM chips. However, no new hardware was unveiled and Apple only expect to ship the first of the ARM chip machines towards the end of the year. As so much in the world economy is up in the air, my own suspicion is that, just like the much hyped VW iD3 car, it may not be until well into next year before we see any such machine.

As @colin has pointed out, he still has to see a Mac Mini with the new chip. If developers themselves are having difficulty getting their hands on it, there’s precious little chance of seeing an SU upgrade that will run on it any time soon. even Apple have said that they will be making Intel machines alongside the ARM ones for some time whilst the transition happens.

So my conclusion from all this is that, if you feel you need to upgrade, there is little point in waiting for something that may not be available and useable for SU in less than about a year. And even then, you’d be a bit of a guinea pig.

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Hi Colin, thanks for your your reply. In terms of the translator it was more to do with if you have made models in say Sketchup 2022 and then retire or move to another software you have lost access to all your historical work. If say there was a facilty on Sketchup viewer (free) that would allow a batch save as back to your last perpetual licence then I for one would be more comfortable about continuing my subscription for years to come knowing that although I may not have the lateset and greatest I would have access to my work from previous years. I think a feature such as this would help drive adoption and not stifle it

Many of us think so.

Thanks for your thoughts Colin,

We all appreciate your diligence to “get SU … native sooner” to Apples new architecture!

Yes Simon,

Apples’ intention to “parallel” Intel machines alongside ARM machines seems pragmatic, especially if things don’t go well! Perhaps a smart hedge during a potentially risky transition …
As far a us Mac users being “a bit of a guinea pig”, I’m kinda used to it, how about you?
Beamer

Well I hope Trimble takes the decision to make a native version of SU to run on the new Macs, I stoped using windows almost 10 years ago, I used it for a long time but I was always frustrated by its performance, I decided to try Mac, and thought they’re expensive, it’s completely worth it, my current MacBook is almost 8 years old and still is working like the first day, and using SU it has beaten to modern laptops with a lot more of “power”, I really really hope SU to make a native software for Mac, I won’t go back to windows anymore and if SU drops Mac support, I’ll have to move to a 3D software that runs natively on ARM. I love SU I’ve used it for over 10 years, and it would literally break my heart switching to another software.

Something is due to get to me by August 4th.

Thank you for your order.

We’ll let you know when your items are on their way.

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How is this process going? I am supper interested in seeing how difficult the transition process is to make between Intel and ARM. Additionally if the transition is smooth will an iPad version of Sketchup be possible because of the similar architectures and iPads mouse keyboard support?

I have my one, someone in development has one too. I’m checking into whether it will be ok to give any updates on how it’s going.

I just posted this to the live modeling topic. It shows the ARM64 Mac image on a 4K TV.

I’m wondering what Apple will do with OpenGL as they move to Apple Silicon? Apple has always provided their own OpenGL drivers rather than use the ones from myriad hardware vendors (which is a major reason Macs have fewer OpenGL issues than Windows PCs). For a while they have been threatening to drop OpenGL support, and conversion to Apple Silicon might serve as an excuse to carry out the threat.

Trimble has never publicly announced plans, so we can’t expect any reply from them. But I wonder if while dealing with the move to accommodate Apple Silicon they might also consider converting to Metal or to a newer library such as Vulcan that layers atop Metal.