Apple Executives Discuss M2 Chips, Gaming on Mac, Intel and More

[MacRumors]

Following the release of the Mac mini and the MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, Apple's platform architecture VP Tim Millet and product marketing VP Bob Borchers did an interview with TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino to discuss the new technology, the transition away from Intel, the future of gaming on the Mac, and more.

With the followup to the M1 chip line, Millet said that Apple did not want to set a precedent of a few percentage points of gain with each new chip generation. Instead, the company aimed to push to the limits of technology as far as it could.

"The M2 family was really now about maintaining that leadership position by pushing, again, to the limits of technology. We don't leave things on the table," says Millet. "We don't take a 20% bump and figure out how to spread it over three years...figure out how to eke out incremental gains. We take it all in one year; we just hit it really hard. That's not what happens in the rest of the industry or historically."

Borchers said that by moving Mac chip design in house, Apple is able to bring silicon, software, and hardware together without relying on outside vendors. Being able to work alongside designers, the hardware team, and the software team "makes all the difference" in Apple's ability to "really target" and add "things that matter" to Macs.

On the topic of Apple's former partnership with Intel, Millet and Borchers praised the company's willingness to accommodate Apple's needs, with Millet also suggesting that the relationship between Apple and Intel ultimately benefited Apple's competitors.

"Intel was a great partner through the years where we shipped the Intel machines. They were very responsive; they really actually were inspired by the direction that Apple pushed them. And I think our products benefited from that interaction. Of course, our competitors' products benefited from that interaction as well sometimes," notes Millet.

As for gaming on the Mac, Borchers says that Apple feels gaming is getting better with each M-series chip release. He said that Apple is adding in new APIs and expanding Metal with Metal 3, so there's "tremendous opportunity" for game makers.

Apple plans to continue to look at chip configurations and components through a gaming lens, and Millet said that while Apple is taking a "long view" on turning the Mac into a gaming platform, work began with the first days of the Apple silicon transition.

"The story starts many years ago, when we were imagining this transition. Gamers are a serious bunch. And I don't think we're going to fool anybody by saying that overnight we're going to make Mac a great gaming platform. We're going to take a long view on this."

According to Millet, Apple is working to build an installed base of strong GPUs. Apple wants the full Mac lineup to have "very capable GPUs," from the MacBook Air to the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra. He also believes that developers haven't yet adapted to M-series chips. "Game developers have never seen 96 gigabytes of graphics memory available to them now, on the M2 Max," said Miller. I think they're trying to get their heads around it, because the possibilities are unusual."

Panzarino's full interview, which can be read over at TechCrunch, covers additional topics that include the transition to Apple silicon, how the iPad Pro led to Apple's Mac chips, the relationship between teams, optimizations in design cycles with Apple silicon, the best time to buy a Mac, and the value of the Mac mini.

Article Link: Apple Executives Discuss M2 Chips, Gaming on Mac, Intel and More

 

[zedsdead]

This is all great, and we know 3nm will bring bigger changes.

The real question for the Mac is when is it catching up on technologies like cell modems and Face ID, touchscreens etc…

Also, the odd rumors surrounding the Mac Pro and the lack of a larger consumer iMac are still misses. No real colors still in much aside from the iMac (which feels neglected at this point). We got midnight on the air, but not on the pros…Mac mini on old design still…just some weird oddities.

In general however, the Apple Silicon era has been very exciting, I just hope they keep their foot on the gas. The battery life is incredible, and how cool they run is amazing.

I have my 14” MacBook Pro now hooked up to two studio displays, and it’s by far the best Mac setup I’ve ever used.

 

[AustinIllini]

I am just so used to my Mac being silent and cool and faster than all the PCs in my office.

So far, so good.

 

[uptownnyc]

Messaging from Apple has had a huge focus on gaming lately. Must be what they see as a critical element in order for their VR headset to be successful.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

M2 is old news. Tell us about the M3 already!

 

[djphat2000]

I wish they would have bought EA or Blizzard or Id. All of which would have assisted in making Mac more attractive to gamers. The hardware has always been there. Just needs a push.

 

[paulovsouza]

I really think Apple should buy EA, and start building up their gaming arsenal. They have to prove to the community their hardware is capable. Apple Arcade isn’t doing much for Apple, they need the IPs to help push them to the gaming word.

 

[Dan From Canada]

I've had Macs for almost twenty years. Started by building my own Windows machine in the late nineties and with the way that games are going am looking for a high end Windows machine.
Game manufacturers don't often write games for Mac. Sadly.

 

[singularity0993]

Macs will never be great gaming platforms unless they fix the pricing. For half the price you can always get Windows machines with much better graphics.

(Yes, 96GB of VRAM sounds attractive, but the truth is most people will get the 8/16GB configuration and there will be so few people gaming with 96GB VRAM that game developers will probably ignore them.)

 

[Matt Leaf]

Much like Apple produce their own content for Apple TV, you’d think they need to start making their own games if they hope to compete in this space (ie ‘desktop’ gaming)

As it stands I’m sure they make an absolute boatload from mobile gaming.

 

[now i see it]

And I don't think we're going to fool anybody by saying that overnight we're going to make Mac a great gaming platform. We're going to take a long view on this."

Yeah- 39 years and counting

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Sounds more of a marketing interview.

 

[HVDynamo]

"Game developers have never seen 96 gigabytes of graphics memory available to them now, on the M2 Max," said Miller. I think they're trying to get their heads around it, because the possibilities are unusual."

Meanwhile they are shipping macs with 8GB of unified memory... That 96GB is completely useless for game developers unless the majority of people have it. If they want to think that way about it they need to stop being so stingy with RAM upgrade pricing, and dump 8GB as an option all together (which should have been done with the M1 lineup anyhow). Nothing should ship with less than 16GB RAM now, especially since it's unified memory that is used for both Graphics and processor.

 

[jchurchill]

"We don't leave things on the table," says Millet. "We don't take a 20% bump and figure out how to spread it over three years." ... this is a lie. They literally do attempt to smooth out upcoming features and improvements so that each year the perceived improvements is about the same from the prior year. If they didn't, we'd be under the impression that Apple had lost its ability to innovate after 3 years of lackluster improvements after one big-bang year. Not doing so is poor marketing (not unlike Apple of the mid-90s ... or AMD for all of this century).

 

[klasma]

96GB of VRAM would be more interesting for running AI models (Stable Diffusion and friends) than for games, IMO.

 

[_Spinn_]

Apple is talking more about gaming but I’m still waiting for No Man’s Sky to come for Apple Silicon Macs and iPads. Last WWDC they said it would be out last Fall.

 

[sw1tcher]

Macs will never be great gaming platforms unless they fix the pricing. For half the price you can always get Windows machines with much better graphics.

The biggest issue for me is that you cannot upgrade the GPU on Macs since it's all integrated into Apple's chip.

With Windows PCs, you can upgrade the GPU whenever you feel like it (what I used to do was buy 1 year old higher end parts off friends who are upgrading to something newer at a nice discount). With a Mac, you'd need to buy a completely new machine.

 

[LiquidSpikes]

The biggest reason Gaming Dev sucks on Mac, total lack of Unreal Engine and it’s toolsets. So many AAA development houses have moved to Unreal and they simply cannot produce binaries for Mac due to the Apple vs Epic fallout.

 

[ninetyCent]

Macs will never be great gaming platforms unless they fix the pricing. For half the price you can always get Windows machines with much better graphics.

(Yes, 96GB of VRAM sounds attractive, but the truth is most people will get the 8/16GB configuration and there will be so few people gaming with 96GB VRAM that game developers will probably ignore them.)

🙄 Yeah yeah pricing blabla same ol thing that you just can't wait to parrot out again like pavlov's dog at the ring of a bell. There are users of highly specced macs who want to game on the same machine without having to buy another giganto tower. There are people with lower end machines who'd seriously consider paying to upgrade because it's cheaper than buying another computer almost solely for gaming. Portability is aweome on these devices. The GPU is pretty damn powerful at this point if only people would write games on it. There windows users who'd switch to a mac if gaming is great there, despite the higher cost of entry. There's money to be made for sure, just gotta fix the chicken/egg thing. Users/devs first. Seems like their user base is growing (albeit slowly) if you look at number of computes shipped.

 

[kwikdeth]

No one is going to spend $4k for a non-upgradable gaming machine with 96gb of ram on a platform with no real AAA titles. Just stop with that madness.

 

[Madhatter32]

When Apple gaming people talk of a long view, they must really mean a long view. A very long view.

 

[tongxinshe]

Ever since Apple released M1, Intel and AMD have released two annual updates of their chips with significant performance and efficiency advancements every time, while Apple has only released one update, with very very limited technology advancement, purely piling up more cores on bigger chips. How dare he say those words under this circumstances?

 

[Malus120]

Setting aside the cynicism people on this forum (or really anyone who's spent any significant amount of time trying to game on the Mac) have toward Apple and gaming, I do think this article touches on the very real possibility that this time really is different.

For the first time ever Apple's entire lineup is capable of AAA gaming. This isn't just about ultra expensive BTO configurations of the Mac Pro/Mac Studio, iMac, or MBP. Even the baseline Mac Mini and MBA are powerful enough to offer a reasonably good gaming experience.

Does this mean that Macs are suddenly a better value than a gaming PC you can build yourself? Of course not. But I think a lot of people are forgetting it's not about value, it's about install base. The issue wasn't that there weren't enough Macs out there, that no one with a Mac was interested in gaming, or that not enough people bought Macs exclusively for gaming. Even Apple not giving the APIs enough attention and ignoring game developers wasn't the real issue. The real problem was there just weren't enough Macs capable of delivering a good gaming experience because they either shipped with Intel Integrated Graphics or extremely weak dGPUs.

Now that all Macs ship with extremely fast CPUs and reasonably capable GPUs, if (IF) Apple puts in the work (and there's a lot that needs to be put in) the install base of AAA capable hardware is large enough that we could actually start to see developers and eventually gamers, begin to take the Mac seriously as a platform.

Again, not saying it's going to happen but I think it's silly to just dismiss the best chance we've had at gaming on the Mac actually becoming a thing since... Ever.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

We're going to take a long view on this.

😂😂😂 this is PR speak for "We will keep throwing spaghetti at the wall for an undefined period of time until something sticks and then retroactively claim success in the gaming arena".

 

[klasma]

When Apple gaming people talk of a long view, they must really mean a long view. A very long view.

M68000 long?