Apple Silicon Software Development seems slow

It's been about three years since the initial M1-based machines from Apple became reality.  Why is development lagging?

Steam Hardware Survey

The other day, Steam requested my computer's details.  One is an AMD Ryzen 7 with Geforce RTX 3050 Ti (laptop version, of course), and the other is a 2020 MacBook Air M1.  In reporting, Steam shows AppleVirtual processor and 1440x900 resolution, which is far from the truth, unless of course, you don't care to make your software the best and take advantage of the actual power that is available.

I've only had my 2020 M1 MacBook Air for about a year, but it seems as though most applications are only compatible through emulation.

I could understand why Adobe wouldn't be quick about it.  They were dragging their feet on the way to Mac OS X in 2000.  They wouldn't port Premier Pro, and Apple brought out Final Cut and Aperture.

Intuit was also complaining, but then, they wanted us to move to Windows because they told people "the Mac is just too difficult to program" or some such, used to justify the higher price and lower functionality.

What got me over the years was that Microsoft was Apple's enemy and yet, their software was better for Mac OS X than that of Adobe, Apple's friend.

It's 2023, not 2003

It still feels as though little has been accomplished since the M1 and other Apple Silicon processors have been available.  The performance is so good that you might not notice the speed of Intel emulation.  Mouse cursor positioning doesn't seem all that stable, though, as of macOS 12.x.

It's been almost three years and I would expect that developers would want to show what their applications could do on better hardware.

Valve Software might not be doing as well as they want people to believe, but I suspect that they could buy a couple of M1-based Macs and update Steam for Apple Silicon.  If that worked out, they could re-jig Source to 64-bit compatibility, as well as Metal compatibility.  Apple might even help them, just to get more games on M1 Macs.  I should note the rumor that Valve and Apple talked about making Proton work on Macs and Apple refused.  Whether it happened or not, things need to be better than running Windows executables on another operating system.  Steam Deck with Proton works but it's not always wonderful.

It really wouldn't hurt Apple to create a division for games and keep it to help third parties develop outstanding games.  A couple of games I had for Windows are available in Apple Arcade but unavailable elsewhere.

It's interesting that Evernote is a Universal binary, but Dropbox is Intel-only.  Google Drive is listed as Apple Silicon, not Universal.  LastPass is Intel-only, but thankfully, Malwarebytes is Universal.

Serif's Affinity applications are Universal, but it seems a number of creative applications are not.  I'm thankful for Capture One Pro being Universal, as well as Affinity Publisher, Designer, and Photo.

How many years until Intel is completely gone from Apple machines?  When Apple pulls the plug on Rosetta 2 will they step up or step away?