Mac version performs radically differently than the Windows version

#1

I’ve been using Smart Shooter 4 for product photography for four years now. I shoot Nikon and run it on Mac. The software has always been sluggish and unresponsive, even on powerful Mac computers, but I always assumed these were just the quirks of a program from a smaller development team.

Today, fed up with the tug of war I was having with the program, I downloaded it to a spare Windows laptop. Lo and behold, this program actually works great. It’s snappy, it’s responsive, focus stacking doesn’t have to “think” for an eternity, and the focus square actually moves where it’s supposed to move. I’m flummoxed. Is it a known fact that this runs so much better on Windows? Or am I missing something with how I’m running it on my Mac?

#2

Thanks for reporting this, actually I was not aware that the app could perform so differently under macOS.

What model of mac computer have you been using it on?

We’ve not yet updated the app to run natively on Apple Silicon CPUs (M1 etc), I wonder if this is a symptom of that.

#3

Hi francis, thanks for the reply.

We’ve used a variety of Macs over the years, most of them intel based. We currently use it on a 2020 iMac (27", with high end specs) running macOS Monterey, along with an M1 Mac Studio, also running macOS Monterey. It’s performed about the same on past machines and OS’s.

If you don’t mind me asking, is the framework for the Windows version different from the Mac version? I know Nikon’s SDK is notoriously hard to work with, so I don’t know if that could be a contributing factor.

I would be happy to supply as many screen recorded examples as I can to work out how we can get it to run better on Mac. If you would prefer a more efficient means of communication (Slack, Discord, email, etc), let me know.

#4

If you don’t mind me asking, is the framework for the Windows version different from the Mac version? I know Nikon’s SDK is notoriously hard to work with, so I don’t know if that could be a contributing factor.

Yes we have to use a different API for camera communication on Windows and macOS. Actually we don’t use any of the camera manufacturer’s SDKs, and instead program directly to the API provided by the OS. But I don’t think this is the cause of the bad performance - all the camera communication happens asynchronously to the app’s UI, so it should not affect how responsive the app feels.

I think its more likely due to the app’s GUI code. So I need to investigate from that angle first.

Thanks for your offer of help, I’ll contact you directly via email…