Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#2I love my MacBook Air M1; it's small and lightweight and simple, no moving parts, no dust, and it's fast enough for me.
But it clearly lags in 3D gaming performance; the silicon just isn't there to the same degree. It might compete with low-TDP SoC graphics such as AMD's APUs, but it's not a gaming device.
(...and now I resume reading the article...)
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#3I love my MacBook Air M1; it's small and lightweight and simple, no moving parts, no dust, and it's fast enough for me. But it clearly lags in 3D gaming performance; the silicon just isn't there to the same degree. It might compete with low-TDP SoC graphics such as AMD's APUs, but it's not a gaming device. (...and now I resume reading the article...)
My Intellivision is a gaming device and has no 3D support. There's tons of games that don't require recent hardware. :-D
Not to mention the M1 Air is the or near weakest A.S. Mac you can buy.
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#4[dead]
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#5I love my MacBook Air M1; it's small and lightweight and simple, no moving parts, no dust, and it's fast enough for me. But it clearly lags in 3D gaming performance; the silicon just isn't there to the same degree. It might compete with low-TDP SoC graphics such as AMD's APUs, but it's not a gaming device. (...and now I resume reading the article...)
My Intellivision is a gaming device and has no 3D support. There's tons of games that don't require recent hardware. :-D Not to mention the M1 Air is the or near weakest A.S. Mac you can buy.
As I wrote my comment above, I suddenly thought of Nintendo's strategy: sufficient hardware to support a fantastic experience.
Nintendo plays like Apple builds. It's clearly a great way to make games.
And of course, "casual" games on Apple's handheld devices can be successful. Even spawning new game paradigms like Niantic's Pokémon Go -- yes, that's from arch-rival Google, but there's no denying Apple's influence in powerful handheld device design.
Unified memory architecture, resemblance to console design...
So yes, actually: there's plenty of hardware capability even in the lower-end Apple Silicon platforms, enough for great games.
Sigh. I remember it as if I were in the room at the time, I knew a couple of people who were there in 1999 when Bungie, already Mac-famous from Marathon, demoed Halo ... then Microsoft bought it. Holy dogcow...
Apple didn't have the cash then to attract game studios, and the longevity of their platform was still a legitimate concern. It's a very different playing field now.
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Intellivision is a gaming device and has no 3D support. There's tons of games that don't require recent hardware. :-D Not to mention the M1 Air is the or near weakest A.S. Mac you can buy.
As I wrote my comment above, I suddenly thought of Nintendo's strategy: sufficient hardware to support a fantastic experience. Nintendo plays like Apple builds. It's clearly a great way to make games. And of course, "casual" games on Apple's handheld devices can be successful. Even spawning new game paradigms like Niantic's Pokémon Go -- yes, that's from arch-rival Google, but there's no denying Apple's influence in…
> Unified memory architecture, resemblance to console design...
Console design ca. 2001, right down to having its own graphics APIs that nobody else uses
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#7It'll never happen. Gaming depends heavily on backwards compatibility... something that makes Apple employees shriek and run in terror.
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#8> “losing” in gaming for decades has not been fun for Apple
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. It's given them an excuse to ship sub-par graphics and helped make the big bust-up with Nvidia less painful.
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#9It'll never happen. Gaming depends heavily on backwards compatibility... something that makes Apple employees shriek and run in terror.
It’s insane they don’t have a compatibility layer for 32-bit macOS apps, so many games were never ever ported to 64-bit.
Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise
#10There's a lot of false information even in the premise of that introduction. Jobs didn't announce Halo as an Apple exclusive, he announced a simultaneous release with Windows. Microsoft didn't poach Bungie. Bungie was failing financially before the acquisition and Halo wasn't anywhere near complete at the time.
Microsoft saved Halo.
If the premise is that flawed, I'm skeptical of the rest of the piece.