MMH on MacOS (progress)

[HomerJAU]

An update on releasing Music Media Helper (MMH) for MacOS:

I‘ve spent a few days over last couple of months moving MMH from .NET 4.8 Framework (Windows only) to .NET Core 5 (platform independent: Windows, MacOS, Linux support). It went reasonably smoothly, better than I’d hoped).

Today I purchased a Mac Mini with frequent flyer points. So by end of June I’ll have a MAC to develop the user interface which needs the Apple Xcode development environment.

I‘m planning to initially work on the following tools for first MMH MacOS release late this year:

• Split MKV and Rename (Used for Concert videos)
• Extract Audio from MKV (Convert audio to FLAC, M4A, WAV etc)
• Rename/Tagging (Tag & Rename any music file)
• Chapter Editor (Auto name chapters, create CUE files)
• Musicbrainz Tagging (lookup concert and album releases online and tag/rename files)

I’ll post here when I have something running and looking for MAC users for alpha/beta testing.

 

[François]

Fabulous news! A little nitpicking point, as it is known to bother Mac fans (I’m one of them!): it’s Mac, not MAC! It’s short for Macintosh, not an acronym.

By the way, I have some experience developing for the Mac (AppleScript, Objective C…), if you have questions, don’t hesitate!

 

[jimfisheye]

I'll bite and help test some things.

 

[EricKalet]

Sounds great!! Count me in too to help test!

 

[JediJoker]

Intel Mac user here. Happy to help with testing.

 

[HomerJAU]

Just over 12 months since my last update.

MMH was fully ported to .NET 6 in January 2022. (.NET 6 is a development framework that supports Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and mobile devices). So the underlying MMH 6 code can be used on MacOS.

The next/last piece of work is now building the user interface (UI) for MacOS and nothing I’ve tried is trivial, or the UI would be compromised (more like a mobile app than a desktop application).

It now looks like I can reuse my existing Windows UI on MacOS in a major update from my the 3rd party UI component vendor which has been announced for November 2022 release. The UI components will support ARM processors used on Mac!

I’m hoping this will be fairly straight forward and I’ll have a pre-release version of the UI components for testing in October. Around that time I’ll be looking for QQers to test MMH on MacOS.

 

[MrSmithers]

Wow, great stuff Garry. Very appreciative of all your efforts. MMH is like the Swiss Army knife for everything music and mch related. Will be super to be able to use it on a Mac as well. Happy to step forward for beta testing on Mac in October. Is Arm the new M1... chip thingymejib?

 

[Davey-J]

I’d be more than happy to test the MMH MacOS version when ready...

 

[ar surround]

Garry, I must have missed your post from over a year ago and was about to nag you regarding MMH for Mac. I am also willing to be a beta tester...that is if you want to see how it works for someone who's not so hot with computers.

 

[HomerJAU]

Is Arm the new M1... chip thingymejib?

Arm is a type of processor using a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) architecture. All the non-Intel processor Mac computers are ARM based. The new Apple M1 and M2 are ARM and have other performance benefits.

In the past migrating code between processor types was a nightmare. .NET support across operating systems and processor architectures is a game changer.

 

[JediJoker]

All the non-Intel processor Mac computers are ARM based.

All the *new non-Intel Macs—that is to say, all Macs with Apple Silicon processors, which currently includes all flavors of M1 and M2—are ARM. The first Macintosh computers were built around Motorola 68000-series processors. Starting with the first Power Macintosh, they made the switch to PowerPC processors. Then, they moved on to Intel x86, until finally coming around to their own in-house ARM designs.

 

[HomerJAU]

Thanks for the clarification @JediJoker

MMH won’t support those early non-ARM and non-Intel processors.

 

[madscot]

Garry, i’m happy to be a tester as I need something to back up my growing collection, for an old man i’m pretty good with computers if I get clear instuctions, so happy this is happening

 

[humprof]

Add me to the list of testers if you like, Garry. A lifelong Windows user, I recently bought my first ever Mac and am learning the new ecosystem anyway, so I might as well use this as an excuse to learn MMH too. (Have only read encomiums from others but have been somewhat daunted by all the features and customizability . . .!)

 

[ar surround]

...A lifelong Windows user, I recently bought my first ever Mac and am learning the new ecosystem anyway...

An aside: If you plan on doing spreadsheets (to keep track of an ever expanding surround sound collection!) you might want to get the Microsoft Office suite for Mac. I didn't put the suite on my newest machine and I'm using Apple Numbers and Apple Pages instead. I don't find those programs to be as user friendly as Excel and Word.

 

[humprof]

An aside: If you plan on doing spreadsheets (to keep track of an ever expanding surround sound collection!) you might want to get the Microsoft Office suite for Mac. I didn't put the suite on my newest machine and I'm using Apple Numbers and Apple Pages instead. I don't find those programs to be as user friendly as Excel and Word.

I'm with you. Luckily I can get the Office suite (the standalone, not the "rental," version) for next to nothing through my institution.

 

[kap'n krunch]

for the life of me, I really don't know why people choose to willingly use such a horribly unstable OS like Windoze...Mac to me is such a user friendly OS... , I can't STAND having to go to my PC to do ANYTHING!

 

[impetigo]

Any updates? MMH for Mac would be amazing... can't wait!

 

[HomerJAU]

Nothing until next year. I’ve got other commitments until at least February.

 

[Bob Smith]

Waiting patiently for the eventual goodness.