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Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

inverse.com

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Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#11

Post by musicale »

watersb wrote: post #2

I 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...)

> it's not a gaming device

If only the M1 Mac were as powerful as gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. Or the iPhone, which can run games like Resident Evil Village or Death Stranding - not to mention mobile titles like Genshin Impact, or a bunch of great Apple Arcade games.

No idea what Apple is thinking. ;-)

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#12

Post by musicale »

starkparker wrote: post #6
watersb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> having its own graphics APIs that nobody else uses

It's amazing how many games are written for, or ported to, those APIs on iOS.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#13

Post by musicale »

exabrial wrote: post #7

It'll never happen. Gaming depends heavily on backwards compatibility... something that makes Apple employees shriek and run in terror.

It's a shame how much of my iOS game library is no longer playable. (Not to mention every 32-bit game on iOS and macOS.)

Unlike other platform vendors, Apple's strategy seems to be to ignore backward compatibility and instead dump a yearly maintenance burden on developers.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#14

Post by shzhdbi09gv8ioi »

watersb wrote: post #2

I 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...)

I'm pretty sure a Steam Deck or say a Switch is lesser hardware than a M1, yet they seem to pull it off.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#15

Post by musicale »

Apocryphon wrote: post #9
exabrial wrote: post #7

It'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.

It's very disappointing compared to Windows, which has compatibility environments for XP etc.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#16

Post by musicale »

ursakhiin wrote: post #10

There'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.

I'm not sure that what you are saying is incompatible with what is written in the article.

Note that "stole" is in quotes.

Delaying Halo for the Mac deflated Jobs' claim that gaming was coming back to the Mac platform.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#17

Post by sho »

They're not pushing anywhere near hard enough. I don't even really want to play new games, I'd settle for just being able to play old games. It's funny the article mentioned Halo - I can't play that on my M1 Max at all, even though I own the mac version. It could probably emulate it fast enough. Hell, it could probably emulate the windows version fast enough. But nope, it doesn't work and I'm not willing to jump through hoops to somehow maybe hack it into working, I want to play a game sometimes, not configure UNIXy stuff, that's what I'm playing a game to take a break from.

And I like the screenshot of Steam. Almost none of my Steam games work, even first-party stuff like Portal or Half-life. FFS, the steam client itself has not even been updated for arm64. That right there tells you how seriously Valve takes the mac gaming market.

If Apple were serious, they would do as MS has repeatedly done and back up to Valve's (and other's) offices with a dump truck full of money and just do whatever it takes to make it work. Until they start to take proactive steps, not this "build it and they will come" mentality which has never worked in the past, I think mac gaming will remain the backwater it is. I'd love to see that change, but I don't think it will.

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#18

Post by gloryjulio »

musicale wrote: post #11
watersb wrote: post #2

I 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...)

> it's not a gaming device If only the M1 Mac were as powerful as gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. Or the iPhone, which can run games like Resident Evil Village or Death Stranding - not to mention mobile titles like Genshin Impact, or a bunch of great Apple Arcade games. No idea what Apple is thinking. ;-)

There are already many triple A games that runs on ios. Technically they would run easily on Mac and apple doesn't even bother with these low hanging fruits

Re: Apple's Push to Transform the Mac into a Gaming Paradise

#20

Post by beenBoutIT »

What timing. Somebody at Apple needs to buy a PS5 and spend 10 minutes with the dualSense controller in ASTRO's playroom. Mac and PC won't ever get the full dualSense experience and that means they're outmoded.

Sony found a way to make everything without dualSense feel old and obsolete, including their entire back catalog of games from the PS1 to the PS4.

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