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World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

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Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#61

Post by falcolas »

bathtub365 wrote: post #32
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those games you list are bloated games that are really only fueled by nostalgia players now. When is the last time Blizzard really innovated and made something we all had to play like Diablo I and II, Starcraft, and of course WoW? I don’t think it can anymore. It sold its soul to Activision and all the passionate people are gone, judging by their recent games.

Since World of Warcraft they’ve released Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch. Those all seem to be quite popular (though admittedly D3 took some time to find its footing).

Of those, one is active, one in “slowed” development, and the rest have been put into maintenance mode. The downside of live services; they get shut down eventually.

Plus, WoW was released 16 years ago? And their most recent - Overwatch - almost 5 years ago now.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#62

Post by oneplane »

usrusr wrote: post #47
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably more complicated than that: Microsoft’s customers have traditionally been very different from Apple’s, and they valued perpetual backwards compatibility over Apple’s approach.

Basically Apple is selling a cozy computing environment that some people really like, whereas the operating system division of Microsoft is selling a compatibility layer between a bazillion of long tail niche applications and every single piece of hardware in existence that isn't either significantly smaller or larger than a PC (phones, supercomputers) or made by Apple. If Microsoft had an LTS version of Windows 2000…

Microsoft is trying to have it both ways; turns out that's not what people really want (and when it's all about people they just fail -- Windows Phone anyone?), but because business clients (which generally doesn't mean the actual business end-users but some other department) tend to buy whatever looks good on paper.

It all just keeps going on with no real improvements. This disconnect between people and products has many forms, be it an IT project that is over budget and doesn't deliver the right stuff (often comes down to business people making impossible promises and requirements that were never properly gathered and keep changing).

Getting something that is good for the user instead of getting something that is short-term good for the business would be a good start.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#64

Post by alexgaribay »

wmichelin wrote: post #5
NoPicklez wrote: post #2

Wow, I'm surprised! Great job Blizz Blizzard has always been good at supporting Mac's, even going back as far as Warcraft 3.

Except for Overwatch, RIP. Also Diablo 3 has always run terribly on MacOS. Pretty much only WoW runs decently. Maybe Starcraft 2 used to be okay but it since became way worse.

I'd LOVE to have a native macOS client for Overwatch. Since I upgraded to a 2019 16" MacBook Pro, my eGPU no longer works in Bootcamp due to the dreaded Error 12 and I can't resolve it. My eGPU works flawlessly in macOS. Plus, I hate using Windows and want to avoid it if at all possible.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#65

Post by tw04 »

oneplane wrote: post #62
usrusr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically Apple is selling a cozy computing environment that some people really like, whereas the operating system division of Microsoft is selling a compatibility layer between a bazillion of long tail niche applications and every single piece of hardware in existence that isn't either significantly smaller or larger than a PC (phones, supercomputers) or made by Apple. If Microsoft had an LTS version of Windows 2000…

Microsoft is trying to have it both ways; turns out that's not what people really want (and when it's all about people they just fail -- Windows Phone anyone?), but because business clients (which generally doesn't mean the actual business end-users but some other department) tend to buy whatever looks good on paper. It all just keeps going on with no real improvements. This disconnect between people and products has…

>(and when it's all about people they just fail -- Windows Phone anyone?)

Everyone I knew who had a windows phone seemed to love it. If MS were taking a run at it today it would likely succeed. The nail in the coffin was Google refusing to write a Youtube app for Windows Phone and THEN blocking the app that MS wrote themselves.

I'm still shocked the EU didn't tear them apart on that move. It's about as anti-competitive as it gets. Honestly I'm still sad they gave up, we could've used a third player, even if they were going to always be a minority player.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#66

Post by stu2b50 »

cdolan wrote: post #55
slg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You won't get the highest end AAA games, but those games usually aren't coming to Mac anyway But even if they didn't come to Mac they were always available through bootcamp or emulation. Is it simply not an option on this new hardware? That seems like an important step back.

I never found Bootcamp nor Parallels/emulation to sufficiently play a modern video game. A $3k mac always underperformed a $500 desktop windows PC in my experience

What does that mean? Bootcamp is just running windows on the machine. You're gaming on an Intel cpu and an AMD gpu. That doesn't change because Apple installed another OS on the system.

Sufficient or not is a weird way to put it.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#67

Post by andreasley »

slg wrote: post #11

This is a related tangent, but I haven't seen this addressed anywhere else yet so might as well ask it here. What does Apple silicon mean for the future of gaming on Apple hardware? With the death of bootcamp and the apparent difficulty with emulation, is the only hope for individual developers to update to native support like Blizzard is doing here? And what does the future of GPUs look like? Are there expected to b…

Gaming on the Mac was basically dead and will be revived with Apple Silicon, I believe. Even the MacBook Air now has enough power to run modern games smoothly, and more powerful models are to follow. A considerable amount of iOS games are suddenly playable on the new Macs, too. And yes, native support for Apple Silicon and Metal is clearly the way forward.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#68

Post by lotsofpulp »

will4274 wrote: post #57
aidenn0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft cares because if Mac laptops have twice the battery life of windows laptops, nobody will blame Intel

Won't they blame Dell/Toshiba, not Microsoft? In my experience, users think of the vendor as being entirely responsible for battery, even when the software may be using it inefficiently.

Users will see all their friends using Apple products getting much better battery life, and their friends not using Apple products getting much worse battery life.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#69

Post by Arcuru »

ogre_codes wrote: post #56
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case Windows-on-ARM already has 32-bit x86 emulation - and 64-bit x64 emulation is coming soon: * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on... * https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emul... I haven't looked too deeply, but it seems to use the same WoW (Windows-on-Windows) mechanism that's been present in…

Running x86 code via Rosetta on the MacBook Air is significantly faster than it is running on the previous generation. With the Surface X, that isn't remotely the case. It's a pretty major gap. This is from the Verge's review of the Surface Pro X: > The worst part is that even if an app installs, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great experience. Photoshop installs and opens just fine on the Surface Pro X, but…

Rosetta seems to have a similar performance hit to Microsoft's solution (10-30% overhead compared to native, depending on the workload).

The difference is that Microsoft is locked into using Qualcomm chips, which just aren't very close to Apple's performance.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#70

Post by Aperocky »

yyyk wrote: post #31
aidenn0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft cares because if Mac laptops have twice the battery life of windows laptops, nobody will blame Intel

It still doesn't make sense for MS to push ARM that way - Apple isn't offering its ARM processors to 3rd parties. The best non-Apple processors are obviously x86 right now.

Is it though, or is it lacking the software investment that Apple made.

There are a good amount of chipsets that are now on 5nm processing. But only Apple made a full desktop OS to go with it.

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