Inverse's Raymond Wong today published an in-depth overview of Apple's increasing push towards high-end gaming on the Mac. The story includes...

Apple Discusses Push Towards High-End Mac Gaming in New Interview::Inverse’s Raymond Wong today published an in-depth overview of Apple’s increasing push towards high-end gaming on the Mac. The story includes…

  • Sprucie@feddit.ukEnglish
    43·
    11 months ago

    I’m curious who the target market for this is. When buying your own system you typically want to get the best performance for your money, and with the Apple tax included you’re always going to be paying a lot more for similar specs to something you can build yourself.

  • VerseAndVermin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    11 months ago

    For anyone new to this, Mac regularly talks about their efforts in gaming and then regularly does little for it. What’s the alternative, say aloud that gaming isn’t anywhere near a priority for you?

    • garretble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      We’ve been right on the edge of “Mac Gaming” since 2006 when they switched to Intel. Almost twenty years later and every year it’s brought up as something “right around the corner,” but during the Intel years they always had garbage GPUs.

      I guess we’ll see if/when games will be a thing on Arm.

    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      From the interview, the push is pretty clearly at encouraging developers to build games for iPhone, iPad, and Mac through one workflow, and a unified API that targets all 3 types of devices (potentially throwing in an Apple TV as well).

      Self identified gamers are pretty dismissive towards non-AAA gaming on mobile devices, but those types of games do make a lot of money.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        gaming on mobile devices, but those types of games do make a lot of money.

        They don’t just make “a lot of money”, they make more than the PC and console gaming industries combined.

    • JakenVeina@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I mean, yeah, they could do exactly that. “We cater to the needs of creative professionals and personal users that need a streamlined user experience” or some other execu-speak. Who are they gonna alienate, all those gamers that are already not buying macs for gaming?

      • VerseAndVermin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        People who dont know better. People still buy Macs with the intention of also playing some games. People also buy familiarity. It serves them in no way to say anything like that. Especially when they got all those sweet sweet mobile games coming there way. Lol

  • JungleJim@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    22·
    11 months ago

    I know Valve and others have done a lot of the legwork already, so maybe it won’t be so difficult for Apple to catch up, but it feels a little bit like Microsoft’s last attempt at making phones. It’s been a minute since the starting bell, the competition has the software catalog already, and it’ll cost the consumer more.

  • Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    11 months ago

    According to a quick google search the PC gaming share of Mac users is something like 1-2% and the compatible games list is mainly indies, but barely any AA or AAA titles.

    If it’s true then imagine the price tags they will put on these machines to make profit.

    • SinningStromgald@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      If it’s true then imagine the price tags they will put on these machines to make profit.

      Any chance to senselessly gouge their consumers is a good one for Apple.

  • Skunk@jlai.luEnglish
    14·
    11 months ago

    I’m not the audience for Mac gaming but I discovered that my “work dedicated” Mac mini M2 pro is an amazing machine for afk flying 14h flights on Xplane12. Specially during summer heat waves where the windows gaming rig is just a huge space heater.

    So yeah I believe the target is people wanting only one rig to do everything but still use MacOS as a daily. Probably those with a MacBookPro M3-something. You could already do it with streaming, now with the M chips you can play AAA locally as well.

  • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lolEnglish
    13·
    11 months ago

    Isn’t the problem that they are using ARM hardware. Like sure your x86 emulator can be good, but if you look at something like proton it’s taken years for it to get good. And that’s not even a different CPU architecture. So apple would have to make a wine equivalent, a DKVK, equivalent, and a really great X86 emulator if that’s even possible on current gen hardware.

    Somehow I don’t see them catching up with Linux gaming.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      The already have the best x86 emulator. They also have a lot of leverage over big game manufacturers. Especially ones that have iPhone apps. They are able to use carrot and stick to get Devs to develop for MacOs. I don’t think they will, they just don’t want to say they don’t care about gaming.

  • dukatos@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    A new technology built into the M3 family of chips is Dynamic Caching, which allows the GPU to allocate memory usage in real time.

    Sells it with 8GB of RAM…

  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    If Apple ever actually entered the gaming market, (and I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than them joining the gaming market)… I would fully expect that specific parts namely the GPU will have to be Apple approved. Probably nothing more than a small chip that authenticates it as Apple approved, much like they do with their laptops and cell phones currently. So if you think GPU price is are high the exact same GPU but Apple approved will have even higher cost. Because Apple is just a fashion brand really you’re going to pay the fashion tax.

    I honestly can’t see that big of a market for this. A 4090 is supposed to be $1,600 MSRP. I would fully expect the Apple version of that to be $2,000 MSRP at minimum for the same product just with the Apple approved stamp.

    • bamboo@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Apple doesn’t support add-in GPUs anymore since switching to Apple silicon. Their iGPUs though are better than other iGPUs, performing in line with mid range discrete GPUs. They want the experience to be more console-like than PC-like though, you buy a standardized set of hardware and that’s that.

  • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    The only way I can see mass adoption of Macs as gaming hardware is if Apple takes the walled garden approach to gaming a forces a tiered system so that Macbook A will run games with a developer preset for that particular Macbook series. Then they have the same for desktops. I can’t see Apple letting consumers take control of the visual settings in any significant way, because they would have to hire a full time staff just to deal with all of the Mac users that call in wondering why the latest EA game runs like ass on their new $5000 Mac. They’d be better off taking the Nintendo approach with curated games developed with Macs and certain settings in mind, and if they are going that far, they may as well buy a few studios for exclusives (which will inevitably get cracked and distributed to PC).

    • bamboo@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      It would be extremely difficult to get an arm mac binary to run on windows. Not impossible, but much, much more engineering than bypassing DRM. You’d need reverse wine, which the Darling project could possibly be, but after years of work barely supports GUI applications.

    • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      I think Apple dropped some stuff that would make it so 32 but apps wouldn’t work and a ton of games are 32 bit apps. But I’m not sure if they actually did that or just talked about it.

      • Skunk@jlai.luEnglish
        7·
        11 months ago

        They did it since at least 2 OS version. It is impossible to run a 32 bit software on latest MacOS unless you keep an older version on dual boot. Or Linux but it is still a dual boot.

        From memory it did not had a huge impact, most 32 bit software or games are old enough that you slowly start to forget about it and just use something else.

        • DJDarren@thelemmy.clubEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Using Whisky it’s possible to install the Windows version of Steam, after which even 32bit games will run perfectly. I had Portal running on my M2 Air.

          It’s just so clunky to have to jump through those hoops.