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RunsOn Mac — Weekly Dev Update
Sep 20–27
This week was heavily focused on the backend, data reliability and launch infrastructure of RunsOn Mac.
⚠️ = still in progress / not fully implemented or verified yet
⚙️ Three Major New Backend Systems
Three larger backend systems were designed this week to make RunsOn Mac much more scalable and reliable.
⚠️ Validation & Consensus Engine
A central system for validating benchmark data before it influences performance results. It groups comparable tests, detects duplicates and outliers, checks plausibility and builds consensus from independent evidence instead of trusting individual results blindly.
⚠️ Automatic Game Enrichment
A provider-independent system for identifying games and completing missing catalogue information automatically. Unknown or non-Steam games can receive an internal RunsOn Mac ID and be enriched with metadata and artwork from multiple sources while duplicate detection and uncertainty handling protect the database.
⚠️ Autonomous Benchmark Research Crawler
A controlled research pipeline that can discover public Mac performance reports across the web and convert them into structured benchmark evidence. Every observation keeps its source/provenance and passes through validation, deduplication and strict limits before it can become usable data.
These systems are designed to work together:
Research → Enrichment → Validation → Comparable Evidence → Confidence
📊 Benchmark Confidence Architecture
Alongside those systems, the new Confidence architecture is being developed.
- ⚠️ Confidence based on source quality, independent observations, consistency, completeness, recency, validation and outliers
- ⚠️ Separate Confidence values for Community and Web Benchmarks
- External reviews and Steam ratings remain independent from performance confidence
- Expanded structures for benchmark sources, devices, evidence and validation
The goal is simple: RunsOn Mac should show not only what the available performance data says, but eventually also how strongly that conclusion is supported by evidence.
⚖️ Legal & Launch Infrastructure
A significant amount of work also went into making RunsOn Mac ready for an actual public release.
- Terms & Conditions / AGB infrastructure added
- Regional Terms handling prepared
- Download flow connected to the applicable Terms
- Legal and release-related website structures expanded
- Preparation for direct distribution of the Mac app through RunsOn Mac
- ⚠️ Final legal content and release checks are still being reviewed
🌐 External Data Infrastructure
- Expanded support for public/web benchmark sources
- Separation between Community Benchmarks, Web Benchmarks, External Reviews and Steam data
- Improved source attribution and filtering
- Additional automated tests for benchmark and external-review handling
- ⚠️ Further pipeline integration and validation still in progress
🎮 Game Reports & Big Picture View
- New detailed game view directly inside the catalogue
- Game reports now replace the card area instead of opening over the entire interface
- Search, filters and navigation remain accessible
- Benchmark count, tested devices, latest tests and evidence sources integrated
- Community and Web results can be separated
- ⚠️ Final layout and responsive behavior still being refined
🗃️ Catalogue & UI
- Catalogue expanded to 87 games
- Steam ratings, review counts, prices and discounts integrated
- macOS availability separated from actual performance data
- Game cards received a smaller visual and structural refresh
- Improved handling of games without benchmark data
🖥️ RunsOn Mac App
- Continued preparation of the native Mac app
- Intel + Apple Silicon
- macOS 11+
- Website download flow prepared
- ⚠️ Distribution, final integration and release preparation continue
🔧 Technical Cleanup
- Continued frontend modularization
- Accessibility and keyboard-navigation improvements
- Expanded automated testing
- Responsive layout fixes
- Design and copy audits
- General catalogue and report cleanup
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This week moved RunsOn Mac significantly further toward the core idea behind the project:
Not just telling you whether a game runs on Mac, but building a transparent evidence system for how well it actually runs.
Current catalogue: 87 games
Target launch: ~October 15
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