Another Mac port gets cancelled due to Apple's poor graphics support

[wubsylol]

What are you doing that is causing your system to thermal throttle? Do you have specific examples of situations which cause it?

I use FCPX/Motion and Premier Pro/After Effects heavily on an iMac (both at home and in the office) for work and have never once experienced this.

Also, I think you've missed the point about the error messages. Any OS can throw up weird errors; I have not seen the ones you posted, but find Windows to be painfully unstable and error-ridden. Anecdotal? Absolutely, and no in way indicative of the actual quality of the OS.
[doublepost=1464939626][/doublepost]Looks like the "Your system has run out of Application Memory" error is likely caused by an application with a memory leak.

Windows suffers from that too. Poor programming is not platform specific.

 

[Evil Spoonman]

What are you doing that is causing your system to thermal throttle? Do you have specific examples of situations which cause it?

I use FCPX/Motion and Premier Pro/After Effects heavily on an iMac (both at home and in the office) for work and have never once experienced this.

Some CPU things that bounce me off the thermal throttle on my MacBook Pro:

- Import and render previews in Lightroom.
- Almost anything in Photoshop.
- Encoding videos in Handbrake.
- File exports in Photoshop or Lightroom.
- Simulation passes in RealFlow.
- Chrome playing back video.
- Safari when it sees adverts.

A big problem is that people generally are not aware how often they are hitting PROCTHERM (throttling) with their Mac. Downloading Intel Power Gadget provides a bit more insight into this. I run iStat Menus and while the temps it reports are not entirely accurate, they are close enough to be indicative. This MacBook Pro throttles OFTEN and it is the latest top-spec model.

My partner's 27-inch iMac fares somewhat better than my MacBook Pro. Browsers don't cause as many problems, and transient loads are better controlled. There is more thermal headroom available to buffer. You can still get into trouble pretty fast, though. It will run into PROCTHERM doing half of those tasks above. Also anybody who says iMacs are quiet under load are super wrong. It is quite loud.

Also, I think you've missed the point about the error messages. Any OS can throw up weird errors; I have not seen the ones you posted, but find Windows to be painfully unstable and error-ridden. Anecdotal? Absolutely, and no in way indicative of the actual quality of the OS.

This is true, I concede that my experiences are just as anecdotal as yours and just as valid and invalid. I take my perception that OS X is buggy from the larger perception I see across the web and with my friends. Again, anecdotal. For me, Windows is like bedrock. Utterly unshakable. Weird. Then again my Ubuntu VPS is also that way, which is a bit more expected.

 

[wubsylol]

Interesting.

I've attempted to reproduce this on my iMac 14,2 and absolutely cannot. I threw just about every CPU intensive task I could think of at it, and even some GPU intensive just to heat up the internals some more, and couldn't get the CPU to throttle.

It's worth noting that iStat gives you ever sensor reading, whereas Intel's tool is (assumedly) reading one specific (unnamed) sensor. This may explain the temperature differences.

 

[Evil Spoonman]

Interesting.

I've attempted to reproduce this on my iMac 14,2 and absolutely cannot. I threw just about every CPU intensive task I could think of at it, and even some GPU intensive just to heat up the internals some more, and couldn't get the CPU to throttle.

It's worth noting that iStat gives you ever sensor reading, whereas Intel's tool is (assumedly) reading one specific (unnamed) sensor. This may explain the temperature differences.

Three screenshots attached. This is during a handbrake encode. The CPU is an i7-4980HQ, base clock of 2.8GHz.

In the first screenshot is has a lot of thermal headroom so it boosts up a bunch, then it pulls back as it rapidly heats up. This isn't throttling. It's trying to handle a transient load as fast as possible with boost.

The second screenshot is also not throttling. In steady state load it is constantly boosting up to 2.9GHz, 100MHz above the base clock. It can't maintain that level of boost, so it has to drop back down to the base clock pretty often. This is still getting you more than you paid for in terms of guaranteed performance.

In the third screenshot we have throttling. The machine is unable to maintain the base clock and begins to pull down on power and clock to keep thermals from being high. The load didn't change, computer is still on IGP doing an encode.

Note that it's pretty nice and cool tonight in the house, around 54ºF/12ºC. If I did this tomorrow at 2PM it would be a very different story at 93ºF/34ºC.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Interesting discussion above. I'm not surprised at all that a mobile computer would wind up throttling a powerful hot running processor under heavy load in such a confined environment. I don't know why anyone would be. I'm also not surprised the iMac would either because the thing is basically a laptop on a stand and thin is in, to the point of taking precedence over performance.

Meantime, a PC build is of course going to be superior considering the cooling options present and available which should negate any need to throttle processors in any build worth having unless a particular PC user also feels thin is in. In that case I'm sure there are AIO models made just for them that I'd expect to perform accordingly. Meantime, said PC as a bonus will cost considerably less money to purchase too.

I've come to feel that one has to really love OS X to consider Apple hardware anymore and the price tag that comes with it. The problem I have there is that as OS X is further married to what really counts at Apple, iOS, it has been loosing its luster in my opinion. I can't speak for anyone but myself but I think Jony Ive is out to lunch when he believes that we actually need flat, neutral, sterile everything in order to function and get work done on a desktop computer, that we need the simplicity of a mobile device to interact with on the desktop, that we need ever thinner and "cool" looking designs for house beautiful instead of decent looking computers that focus first on being excellent computers and second on their insides being stuck inside a functional box that looks okay. I do not need a designer statement sitting on my desk. I need value for my money to get stuff done whatever that stuff happens to be.

I agree completely about the myth of the whisper quiet iMac. Sure, it is whisper quiet until you ask it to do some real work. Then it gets plenty loud.

As fate would have it reading this today, I am selling my iMac and I plan to replace it with a PC because I give up. I love my iPad and iPhone and my Apple TV too but there is no way I'd buy another iMac for twice what a more capable PC will run me. What for, to run OS X? Why? Windows 10 is just as good at this point. Both are easy enough to use. It's just an operating system. I don't spend a lot of time messing with the operating system. I spend my time running software on it. As long as it is reliable, works well and is reasonably intuitive good enough. It's not rocket science to run any of them including modern Linux.

I have to confess that some years ago I did think the differences in operating systems were a big deal but that has really faded with the passage of time and become a lot less important to me when all of them are reasonably good now. It's all about can I run what i want to on it and in the case of Apple hardware vs anything else, is what I am buying a good value for the money? Maybe that is true for MacBooks but I don't need one of those. I can't say I think it is for Mac desktops today.

My perception of OS X after many years of Windows and some years of Solaris and Linux is that it does seem to have more than its fair share of bugs that go unresolved for long periods of time. No system is perfect and my assessment is obviously subjective so grains of salt in whatever amount you desire are fine but I'd rank them in order of how solid they are as follows: Unix/Unix variants (core OS), Windows 10, OS X. I get the distinct impression that Apple applies far more resources to all things iOS development related than they do OS X development related for obvious reasons and it shows.

 

[antonis]

Throttling is not mac's caveat, of course. Most laptops will do that under high pressure. However, when a machine is offered as a desktop, there's no excuse for it. Most users don't care if Apple manages to make iMac's case thinner and thinner. They need a desktop but they end up with a laptop.

Regarding noise, every computer gets noisy when fans kick in. Macs are no exception, including macbooks, imacs and - from a first hand experience, I assure you - mac pro (just use crossfire on windows to get both cards on pressure and you won't believe the noise it makes). The only exception is the 12" macbook which is fanless, but it can hardly be considered as a full computer. OTOH, if noise is a big consideration for someone, PCs have the option of water cooling.

I still like OS X. I also still like my MBP (the only mac I own now). I use it everyday at my work, running VMs with it, opening lots of applications at the same time, plenty of terminals spanned on multiple desktops, using gestures constantly - it is great for this workflow, linux on my office PC doesn't even come close to this. Making music with it on my free time, also a great experience. Windows would be a degrade for this.

But when I get home, I just need a gaming platform. A nice big screen and a raw muscle power to run everything maxed out without counting the frames, without throttling, with no compromises. And a peace of mind that when frames start to drop on latest titles, I'll just switch the gpu and it'll be as good as new. Windows 10 seem to be incredibly stable. Windows 10 is still windows of course, for whatever that means, but there have been huge leaps forward on this version. I can download and install the new nvidia drivers that will be optimized for the latest 'x' new title, while I read macrumors, and without the need to reboot (!) the os. Just an instant screen flickering and you got yourself the new drivers installed. It's rock solid and fast. It is well done and made. And they look good for a change. They really do.

The case is cubical, and it is separated in 2 compartments, dividing mb/cards with psu for better thermal management. It even looks decent from outside - nothing like the old legacy ugly PCs. And then comes the gaming. The effortless video capturing. The nvidia shadowplay. The ultra settings locked on 60 fps - the eye candy. The witcher 3 expansion released 3 days ago, that is so unbelievably beautiful that you can just sit and stare it.

Recently I decided to add another ssd so I can keep the games there, and leave the first only for the OS. Such a simple thing, I just got the ssd, installed it and get done with it. I missed that after so many years with the mac. Paying for exactly what you need. Building a machine that is 'yours'.

The wind of change has bypassed apple...

 

[iamtheonlyone4ever]

i decided to removed this comment.

 

[Evil Spoonman]

Just for fun, I ran the same workload during the day today. It is 84ºF/29ºC right now in here. After not very long the MacBook Pro is throttling significantly. Are we surprised? No. Is this horrible? No. Is this the design direction I want for my portable workstation? Perhaps not...

 

[Irishman]

Throttling is not mac's caveat, of course. Most laptops will do that under high pressure. However, when a machine is offered as a desktop, there's no excuse for it. Most users don't care if Apple manages to make iMac's case thinner and thinner. They need a desktop but they end up with a laptop.

Regarding noise, every computer gets noisy when fans kick in. Macs are no exception, including macbooks, imacs and - from a first hand experience, I assure you - mac pro (just use crossfire on windows to get both cards on pressure and you won't believe the noise it makes). The only exception is the 12" macbook which is fanless, but it can hardly be considered as a full computer. OTOH, if noise is a big consideration for someone, PCs have the option of water cooling.

I still like OS X. I also still like my MBP (the only mac I own now). I use it everyday at my work, running VMs with it, opening lots of applications at the same time, plenty of terminals spanned on multiple desktops, using gestures constantly - it is great for this workflow, linux on my office PC doesn't even come close to this. Making music with it on my free time, also a great experience. Windows would be a degrade for this.

But when I get home, I just need a gaming platform. A nice big screen and a raw muscle power to run everything maxed out without counting the frames, without throttling, with no compromises. And a peace of mind that when frames start to drop on latest titles, I'll just switch the gpu and it'll be as good as new. Windows 10 seem to be incredibly stable. Windows 10 is still windows of course, for whatever that means, but there have been huge leaps forward on this version. I can download and install the new nvidia drivers that will be optimized for the latest 'x' new title, while I read macrumors, and without the need to reboot (!) the os. Just an instant screen flickering and you got yourself the new drivers installed. It's rock solid and fast. It is well done and made. And they look good for a change. They really do.

The case is cubical, and it is separated in 2 compartments, dividing mb/cards with psu for better thermal management. It even looks decent from outside - nothing like the old legacy ugly PCs. And then comes the gaming. The effortless video capturing. The nvidia shadowplay. The ultra settings locked on 60 fps - the eye candy. The witcher 3 expansion released 3 days ago, that is so unbelievably beautiful that you can just sit and stare it.

Recently I decided to add another ssd so I can keep the games there, and leave the first only for the OS. Such a simple thing, I just got the ssd, installed it and get done with it. I missed that after so many years with the mac. Paying for exactly what you need. Building a machine that is 'yours'.

The wind of change has bypassed apple...

So, what do you think has happened in the minds at Microsoft to turn things around for PC gaming? Because you probably remember some years back when gaming press writers were all doom and gloom, predicting the end of PC gaming at every turn.

Microsoft was then in a similar situation to Apple currently: MS had Xbox, which was a market hit for gaming, and many saw as being the future of gaming. Apple has iOS now , which is a market hit for gaming, and many see as the future of gaming.

Maybe this is an object lesson for Apple, to learn from the course corrections that Microsoft made?

Or maybe PC gaming was never dying at all, and the tech press was just overreacting. And maybe Mac OS gaming isn't dying now, and we're just overreacting.

I don't know.

 

[MacAlien]

It was overreaction. The PC market was never is such a frail state as Apple is far as gaming is concerned, but like everybody has said, Apple could care less about games at this point.

 

[antonis]

So, what do you think has happened in the minds at Microsoft to turn things around for PC gaming? Because you probably remember some years back when gaming press writers were all doom and gloom, predicting the end of PC gaming at every turn.

Microsoft was then in a similar situation to Apple currently: MS had Xbox, which was a market hit for gaming, and many saw as being the future of gaming. Apple has iOS now , which is a market hit for gaming, and many see as the future of gaming.

Maybe this is an object lesson for Apple, to learn from the course corrections that Microsoft made?

Or maybe PC gaming was never dying at all, and the tech press was just overreacting. And maybe Mac OS gaming isn't dying now, and we're just overreacting.

I don't know.

Indeed, it's anybody's guess. Sometimes, it's just a matter of entering a market before the others. I don't know. All I could tell is that MS cared about gaming and promote their OS as such (just like Apple does with iOS but not with OS X). It's a bunch of things, really. MS has keep doing some right moves, over time:

1. They created directx and remained true to this, all these years. They keep perfecting it, so devs cannot turn away from it.

2. They opened their OS to any PC manufacturer. This opened the way for GPU upgrades, giving the best marketing motive for GPU vendors. GPUs love directx now. It's a strong established base. I'd go as far as to say that I believe the GPUs are more or less optimized for directx even on h/w level, now.

3. They kept the right attitude regarding the drivers. They let nvidia and ati/amd to take care of their drivers, evolve them, control them as they like. Now we have game-ready drivers, constantly updated and fully optimized for every triple-A title.

What they were lacking was an OS that would be reliable, stable and fast for all-around tasks. Eventually, after all these years, they got that right as well with W10.

Is iOS (or mobile in general) gaming the future ? Maybe, I don't know. What I know is that it is definitely not the present. Apple is constantly claims to invest in the future but, meanwhile, constantly misses the present, on s/w and h/w. Microsoft makes allies, Apple alienates themselves as much as they can.

I don't know, just some random thoughts that came to my mind.

 

[Evil Spoonman]

Just some comparative data from my PC tower. About 80ºF/27ºC so not cool, similar to the laptop throttling scenario.

Some things to note:
1. Temps are 20ºC cooler than the MacBook Pro (75ºC vs 95ºC). This is healthier for the processor, less thermal stress, smaller temp deltas hot to cold. This processor should have a substantially longer life.
2. Being an i7-4770K, base clock is 3.5GHz and boost clock is 3.9GHz. The computer never sees a reason to drop down from the boost clock, ever. Even under this fully threaded load (100% CPU utilization).
3. The TDP of this processor is 84 watts. It is consistently and happily consuming up to 90 watts.
4. This system is not overclocked at all. It's a small micro ATX tower. The cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper T4 which is a very inexpensive cooler. Stock case fans, everything is running at low speed and the computer is genuinely quiet. Not silent, but very much not bothersome.
5. I can run Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously for an indefinite period of time without any throttling or temp runaway. That qualifies as a pathological workload, essentially a power virus. This small tower therefore exceeds the cooling ability of the Mac Pro quite handily. As antonis mentioned, the Mac Pro hates aggressive mixed workloads.

What's the take away here? There is a form factor tax. When I buy a laptop I expect to trade off size for performance, and I do. When I buy a desktop, especially an expensive one like an iMac or Mac Pro, I really want all the performance available to me all the time. In my old 2009 Mac Pro, it was. Why have we had to accept a reduction in functionality along every vector a power user cares about? The iMac is a bit of a special case, maybe it's not meant to be a workstation.

 

[Janichsan]

So, what do you think has happened in the minds at Microsoft to turn things around for PC gaming? …

Maybe this is an object lesson for Apple, to learn from the course corrections that Microsoft made?

Has Microsoft really positively contributed to the current state of PC gaming? Last I heard, they flubbed hard – once more – with the restrictions they imposed on the UWP games they try to force on PC gamers. Microsoft keeps making pledges to commit to PC gaming (almost quite literally) every year, but so far, their efforts always turned out to be nothing but hot air, or even counterproductive.

If anything, PC gaming is still alive and thriving despite MS, not because of them.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

What turned around PC gaming which was in trouble at one time was Valve with the introduction of Steam and digital download games along with the appearance of some competing services. As the service grew that is the single biggest thing that brought PC gaming to what it is today along with Microsoft's continued commitment to Direct X development.

I remember the first non-Valve game sold on the Steam store which marked the beginning of what was to come really. You may or may not recall that game was the somewhat ill-fated Sin Episodes I think they titled it which I believe was a source engine game that looked quite good and was fun to play. I bought it when it launched and enjoyed it. I also looked forward to future episodes but sadly things unravelled with the developer and the rest never came. That's too bad and I don't remember what happened there but presumably it did not sell well enough. If I recall correctly it had adaptive difficulty which was something new at the time. I don't know if any other game had offered that yet or not. Anyway, it was one of those sad cases of a game that should have made it but didn't in my opinion. I don't remember what came next for games on sale outside of Valve's own but it wasn't long before major publishers began to release their games on Steam and then Valve built up the service's features and the rest is history as they say.

One can only speculate about what might have happened if Gabe didn't chart the course he did for Valve. Would somebody else have done something similar in time? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll never know but if somebody hadn't brought about digital the age of PC gaming around that time Valve did, it very well may have suffered quite badly. I find it hard to believe it would have died and no company would have stepped up to seize the day but again we will just never know. What we do know is that Valve took the initiative and I saw it make all the difference when PC gaming surely was hurting at retail. There is no question about that. The games were not there. The paltry amount of shelf space afforded them because they did not sell anywhere near so well as console titles said it all at the time. For a PC gamer it was a frustrating thing to go to the local store and see all the console games and just a small number of PC games when formerly there had been tons of them. There was no missing that when you went shopping.

I don't think the shifts in the market at the time were all about technology entirely. I think they were very much about cost and convenience as well. I think that remains a factor today in how well consoles and their games sell although the gap has closed somewhat as PC hardware prices have fallen over time to a point where a decent gaming PC can be built or even bought at a relatively inexpensive price for the power gained. I don't think that was true as much in 2004 when Half-Life 2 was the initial big draw to start using Steam along with Counterstrike-Source, etc.
[doublepost=1465073619][/doublepost]I wanted to just toss out a comment on mobile gaming while I am at it here in terms of whether or not it represents the future of gaming. My opinion is that no, it does not. My reasoning is that it is a new and different kind of experience that does not really directly compete with consoles or desktop computers. As such, I do not think we've seen mobile gaming cannibalize sales of other platforms in any significant way if at all. This makes sense because it cannot deliver the same experience other platforms can which is not to say it cannot deliver good experiences. It can and it does. I see it as an addition to gaming options already available, not a replacement for any of them.

 

[JoeG4]

Is this true of Retina? Mine has excellent graphics.

Retina screens are decently high resolution. The GPU in the iMac and the MacBook Pro are considered ok for running games on medium settings at 1920x1080.

High performance video cards do not really jibe with Apple's smaller, thinner, fanless design.

Fortunately you can build an inexpensive and pretty nice gaming desktop for less than $1000 and still have a Mac laptop and get the best of both worlds, but it's really a shame Apple hasn't at least tried their hand at the gaming desktop market. Even if it was just a shrug and selling a $150 copy of OS X for a handful of supported Intel motherboard chipsets or something.

 

[antonis]

Has Microsoft really positively contributed to the current state of PC gaming? Last I heard, they flubbed hard – once more – with the restrictions they imposed on the UWP games they try to force on PC gamers. Microsoft keeps making pledges to commit to PC gaming (almost quite literally) every year, but so far, their efforts always turned out to be nothing but hot air, or even counterproductive.

If anything, PC gaming is still alive and thriving despite MS, not because of them.

That is true. Microsoft didn't contribute anything to the pc gaming. On the contrary, pc gaming contributed a lot to the windows platform, establishing it as the ultimate computer gaming solution. But why did that happen ? Because windows is still the most attractive computer platform to develop games on (excluding consoles that are obviously an attractive platform anyway). I mean, if we just look at the alternatives, it's linux and mac. Realistically, where would a game dev company choose to go ?

 

[Paulk]

Retina screens are decently high resolution. The GPU in the iMac and the MacBook Pro are considered ok for running games on medium settings at 1920x1080.

High performance video cards do not really jibe with Apple's smaller, thinner, fanless design.

Fortunately you can build an inexpensive and pretty nice gaming desktop for less than $1000 and still have a Mac laptop and get the best of both worlds, but it's really a shame Apple hasn't at least tried their hand at the gaming desktop market. Even if it was just a shrug and selling a $150 copy of OS X for a handful of supported Intel motherboard chipsets or something.

When I bought my latest Mac I had no idea that Retina would be so good. I love the picture quality! Now I see the next generation of desktop Macs are all Retina, and are all called Retina Macbook.

 

[Ishayu]

Another sad event for what's left of the Mac gaming community.

For the people talking about Apple adopting Vulkan - it doesn't really matter whether they do or not. Because their design goals for Metal are very similar and they almost have feature parity, this has happened: https://moltengl.com

Basically, Macs will support Vulkan whether Apple likes it or not. Simple as that. Just the same as Windows supporting OpenGL and Vulkan whether Microsoft likes or not. There will simply be a kernel-space wrapper around Metal and that's the end of that problem.

The real problem we have with Mac gaming is the hardware. What the Mac needs for gaming is for Apple to pull a Razer Blade with OS X on it out of their hat. Until then, Mac gaming will continue receding. Simply put, there is no market for mac games when virtually no macs come with graphics hardware capable of running the game. How can there be? Yes there are the desktops and hackintoshes, I know, but there are very few of these.

 

[koyoot]

You do not to have Vulkan on OS X. Let Metal support HLSL/Shader Model 6.0 which is OpenSource, and Direct3D 12. And everything will be perfectly fine.

In essence you will have DirectX12 compatibility directly on OS X. Because DX12 is Direct3D12 + Mantle, with HLSL features.

 

[jeanlain]

Another sad event for what's left of the Mac gaming community.

For the people talking about Apple adopting Vulkan - it doesn't really matter whether they do or not. Because their design goals for Metal are very similar and they almost have feature parity, this has happened: https://moltengl.com

Basically, Macs will support Vulkan whether Apple likes it or not. Simple as that. Just the same as Windows supporting OpenGL and Vulkan whether Microsoft likes or not. There will simply be a kernel-space wrapper around Metal and that's the end of that problem.

A wrapper isn't panacea. In this case, an API (Metal) is used to emulate another API that is generally lower-level (Vulkan), which I supposed isn't ideal. And Metal doesn't support many Vulkan features, so converting them to Metal just won't be possible.

 

[Janichsan]

And Metal doesn't support many Vulkan features, so converting them to Metal just won't be possible.

I assume that in Metal's current state, this wrapper will only translate the subset of Vulkan's subsets tailored to mobile GPUs, similar to the OpenGL wrapper they also offer and which only translates OpenGL ES 2.0 to Metal.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Sounds like the new Cider to me and not something to get excited about unfortunately.

I'd have to agree with the comment above though in that the greatest single problem is the hardware and second to that the market share which is somewhat fed by the hardware issue insofar as gamers go. I consider it a bad sign when they start shipping Retina iMacs that do not even include a mobile GPU.

If AAA desktop gaming is a big deal to someone, how can they possibly even consider any Mac with a mobile GPU in it that cannot be upgraded at a very hefty price as well for the best one? For a system at home where gaming is a big consideration I can't see it now although I really did try to work around it for four years. I found ultimately it just doesn't cut it for me as much as I otherwise like the Mac and OS X.

Wanting anything even approaching a Windows gaming experience on the Mac is like beating your head against the wall really in my opinion. It is frustrating and hopeless. I hate to be so negative about systems I otherwise like from a company I like very much for all their other products but when this comes up now I don't know what else to say really. I mean, the best desktop you can get runs about $2,500. now doesn't it for a base model with the best mobile GPU? So you can reboot to Windows to get the most out of it?

If I had the money, I like the idea of a Mac Mini and a KVM or better still a MacBook for computing and a Windows box for gaming. For me though the expense of that is hard to justify when for my simple needs the PC is good enough even though I know I will miss the Mac.

I wish Apple would address our market but they just don't and they probably won't.

I am hoping I will wind up being happy enough with a combination of my iPad Pro that does have my favorite Mac apps actually but with a different UI of course and the Windows desktop otherwise who's primary function will be gaming. Maybe I will miss the Mac enough to want to do something about that later but even if I do I am not sure I could afford or justify the expense where I am not doing work earning money with the thing. I am just a casual home user with very simple needs. The closest I get to "work" is using Numbers for my elaborate budget spreadsheet and a personal finance app. Otherwise, it's really just an internet appliance. I do a little photo editing and music recording but it is just for fun and I can do that with any system including the iPad.

At the end of the day while this little bit might not be popular around here I can even understand where Apple is coming from. Because of market share including potential market share if a gaming Mac existed, it really would not be a very profitable venture in comparison with all the other fish they have to fry. The entire Mac line is small potatoes compared to their other endeavors. These guys are now into the IoT, making cars, Apple TV, trying to establish their own competitor to the likes of Netflix, Apple Music competing with Spotify and others, all things iOS and the devices that run it and more in R&D we don't even know about. Not to mention what they are doing with retail ventures, Tim Cook going to India, issues with China, issues with supply chain and working conditions at Foxconn and more. When you think about everything this company has going on and how few people would actually buy a Mac gaming computer it becomes easier to understand why they don't bother, particularly when you keep in mind that they are making money hand over fist with mobile gaming on the devices and operating system that is their area of focus.

The bottom line is that Apple is not in the business of delivering what we want here and that is not likely to change.

 

[Janichsan]

Sounds like the new Cider to me and not something to get excited about unfortunately.

Not at all. In contrast to Cider/Wine, this works at the source code level: you take your original source, add the Molten libraries to it, and on compilation, you get a native application.

As far as I know, most professional porting companies use something similar as starting point for their work when porting games from DirectX to anything else.

 

[Evil Spoonman]

When I bought my latest Mac I had no idea that Retina would be so good. I love the picture quality! Now I see the next generation of desktop Macs are all Retina, and are all called Retina Macbook.

If anything, Retina has only made the graphics problem worse. Macs didn't ship with the hardware to properly support standard resolutions anyways. Now everything has four times the number of pixels. Take the 13" MacBook Pro, it used to be a resolution of 1280x800, just over a million pixels to fill. Now it's 2560x1600, or just over four million pixels to fill. Yet the graphics hardware hasn't gotten much faster. Same is true for the iMac and 15" MacBook Pro.

It is impossible for any Mac today to game at Retina resolutions. You will always have to game at 1/4th the resolution at best. The high-DPI portion of the Retina brand offers only disadvantages for gaming.

Whereas the Mac Pro is its own kind of depressing, offering ancient and mediocre GPUs in the top level configuration.

Not at all. In contrast to Cider/Wine, this works at the source code level: you take your original source, add the Molten libraries to it, and on compilation, you get a native application.

While this might be how it works in theory, I've never seen any kind of porting infrastructure that actually requires "little work". It might help the process, but the burden of creating anything reasonable is probably still huge. A classic case of "if it sounds too good to be true..."

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Not at all. In contrast to Cider/Wine, this works at the source code level: you take your original source, add the Molten libraries to it, and on compilation, you get a native application.

As far as I know, most professional porting companies use something similar as starting point for their work when porting games from DirectX to anything else.

Okay, the new eON. ;-)
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While this might be how it works in theory, I've never seen any kind of porting infrastructure that actually requires "little work". It might help the process, but the burden of creating anything reasonable is probably still huge. A classic case of "if it sounds too good to be true..."

Agreed. I once ported a complex graphical application from Windows to Solaris using something along these lines and it was not a trivial or easy affair by any means.

Naturally it is beneficial and can save a lot of time but it's still plenty of work.