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Apple M5 chip

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Re: Apple M5 chip

#62
I keep seeing all those crazy screenshots from games on Mac, and yet there are barely any big releases for this platform. I guess it benefits a whole range of software, not just games, but still that's a pity.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people blame the lack of OpenGL/Vulkan... but I really don't buy it. It doesn't pass the sniff test as an objection. PlayStation doesn't support OpenGL/Vulkan (they have their own proprietary APIs, GNM, GNMX, PSSL). Nintendo supports Vulkan but performance is so bad, almost everyone uses the proprietary API (NVN / NVN2). Xbox obviously doesn't accept OpenGL/Vulkan either, requiring DirectX. Understanding of Meta…

The primary reason is Apple's environment is too unstable for gaming's most common business model. Most games are developed, released, and then sold for years and years with little or no maintenance. Additionally, gamers expect the games they purchased to continue to work indefinitely. Apple regularly breaks backwards compatibility in a wide variety of ways (code signing requirements; breaking OS API changes; hardwar…

I've heard this argument, but it also doesn't pass the sniff test in 2025.

1. When is the next transition on bits? Is Apple going to suddenly move to 128-bit? No.

2. When is the next transition on architecture? Is Apple going to suddenly move back to x86? No.

3. When is the next API transition? Is Apple suddenly going to add Vulkan or reinvigorate OpenGL? No. They've been clear it's Metal since 2014, 11 years ago. That's plenty of time for the industry to follow if they cared, and mobile gaming has adopted it without issue.

We might as well complain that the PlayStation 4 was completely incompatible with the PlayStation 3.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#66
post #34
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memory capacity to me is an even bigger problem, at 32GB max.

That'll come in the MacBook Pro etc cycle, like last time, then you'll have 512GB RAM

Same with bandwidth though, usually pro/max memory has much higher speed

Re: Apple M5 chip

#67

And here I am, selling my Macbook M4 Pro to buy a Macbook Air and a dedicated gaming machine. I've tried gaming on the Macbook with Heroic, GPTK, Whiskey, RPCS3 emu and some native. When a game runs, the performance is stunning for a Laptop - but there is always glitches, bugs and annoyances that take out the joy. Needles to mention lack of support from any sort of online multiplayer, due to the lack of anticheat sup…

Good point. Many people (including me) switched to Apple Silicon with the hope (or promise?) of having just one computer for work and leisure, given the potential of the new architecture. That didn't happen, or only partially, which is the same.

In my case, for software development, I'd be happy with an entry-level MacBook Air (now with a minimum of 16GB) for $999.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#68

And here I am, selling my Macbook M4 Pro to buy a Macbook Air and a dedicated gaming machine. I've tried gaming on the Macbook with Heroic, GPTK, Whiskey, RPCS3 emu and some native. When a game runs, the performance is stunning for a Laptop - but there is always glitches, bugs and annoyances that take out the joy. Needles to mention lack of support from any sort of online multiplayer, due to the lack of anticheat sup…

Off the top of my head, here is what that needs:

  1. Implementing PR_SET_SYSCALL_USER_DISPATCH
  2. Implementing ntsync
  3. Implementing OpenGL 4.6 support (currently only OpenGL 4.1 is supported)
  4. Implementing Vulkan 1.4 with various extensions used by DXVK and vkd3d-proton.
That said, there are alternatives to those things.

  1. Not implementing this would just break games like Jurassic World where DRM hard codes Windows syscalls. I do not believe that there are many of these, although I could be wrong.
  2. There is https://github.com/marzent/wine-msync, although implementing ntsync in the XNU kernel would be better.
  3. The latest OpenGL isn't that important these days now that Vulkan has been widely adopted, although having the latest version would be nice to have for parity. Not many things would suffer if it were omitted.
  4. They could add the things needed for MoltenVK to support Vulkan 1.4 with those extensions on top of Metal:
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/issues/203

It is a shame that they do not work with Valve on these things. If they did, Proton likely would be supported for MacOS from within Steam and the GPTK would benefit.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#69
post #25

The modern Apple feels like their hardware teams way outperforming the software teams.

Well besides software that runs in data centers/ cloud most other software is turning to crap. And people who think this crap is fine have now reached to position of responsibility at lot of companies. So things would go only worse from here.

Except community-developed open source software, which (slowly, perhaps) keeps getting better and has high resistance to enshittification.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#70
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has always been a hardware company first - think of how they sell consumers computers with the OS for free, while Microsoft primarily just sells the OS (when comparing the consumer business; I don’t want to get into all the other stuff Microsoft does). Now that they own the SoC design pipeline, they’re really able to flex these muscles.

Not really. Back in the day you wouldn't buy a MacBook because it was powerful. Most likely it had a very shitty Intel CPU with not a lot of cores and with thermal challenges, and the reason you bought it was because macOS.

And in many decades past, OpenStep was slowly moving its GUI from Next hardware to software sales on various UNIX platforms and Windows NT.

And this would eventually evolve into MacOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep

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