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

[rp2011]

I jumped into getting my very first Mac without hesitation because of my iPad Pro. My 2018 iPad Pro was best mobile computer I had ever owned by far. It made my Intel desktop feel slow as molasses. I knew there was was no going back.

Intel machines at the time were the absolute worst, and getting an Intel Mac would be getting the very worst of both worlds. But jumping on a M1 Mac I was willing to put up with nonexistent Mac versions of some of my apps so I could have the wicked fast iPad-like experience on a full blown OS. Going from my iPad Pro to my Intel desktop always felt like a huge step backwards.

And sadly, now that I have my M1 MacBook Pro, I rarely use my iPad Pro. It served it's purpose though. It led the way.

 

[Gengar]

All I play on my Mac is The Sims 4 so I’m good.

 

[redbeard331]

Someone should have asked them about iOS and when the iPhone will get the M3/4 chip.

 

[code-m]

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.

The perspective is skewed on both ends to Apple’s well paid HQ situated employees earning close to six figures or more annually a $4k+ machine is equal to paying in one’s mind a fraction of its cost say for example $2k. Add to that employee discounts and being constantly in and around a specific environment and one’s mindset does not see an issue with why people out of the HQ spaceship are unable to afford such an amazing machine at an “affordable” price. Compare this to the actual middle-class and in this economic environment things look different as $4k might be used for savings, emergency fund, survival, vacation, etc etc while a laptop with 96GB of shared memory is not a priority and neither is gaming. To this shrinking middle-class a $1k gaming machine would suffice however to people who have lost touch with reality of money and value perceive a $1K machine as much less compared to one in a different income class.

It’s similar to how a millionaire or billionaire views an expensive or luxury item such as a sports car, art, yacht, etc etc. To these people it’s within acceptable income/expenditure range compared to someone who would be unable to afford such items or take a lifetime or never.

Having large sums of disposable income changes one’s perception of costs and value.

 

[Naraxus]

Gaming on the Mac? El oh el. Apple has NEVER gotten gaming and they never will. Piss poor thermals, crappy coding like Metal, non-user upgradeability, laughable graphics cards, no AAA Titles or developers.

Gaming on the Mac doesn't exist. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

 

[Cowdoy]

Gaming on the M1 Pro MPB is excellent! I've managed to run the latest Nintendo Switch games at maximum graphics and it is the perfect gaming machine.

 

[Naraxus]

🙄 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.

Nothing in your screed disputes what was said about gaming. Windows gamers will never switch over to Macs for, el oh el, "gaming"

 

[InuNacho]

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.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."

Yea sure, 96GB of VRAM that only 0.0001% of the market actually has in their configuration.
Why would any game dev care about that insignificant part of the market now? I'm sure making a new game in 2023 for the ZX Spectrum would have a bigger audience than that.

 

[TechZeke]

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.

Most folks, even gamers, use laptops these days, so Apple's GPU being integrated is moot as long as the cooling can keep up.

Also, in my experience, by the time I notice a significant slow down in the stuff I want to play on my Gaming PC's, I have to buy a completely new PC anyway because of chipset changes and compatibility.

With Apple Silicon the gaming horsepower is there, but Apple is simply not taking advantage of their resources to make it a decent gaming platform.

 

[TimHalfCooked]

Gaming to Apple is ensuring the customer can spend an unlimited amount of money.

 

[Freida]

Sad reality is that M2 improvements are very minimal over M1. They've increased the number of cores on both CPU and GPU and they also clocked it higher. Not much of an improvement in the end.
There are some tweaks etc. but overall M2 is more like M1S.
Its embarrassing that they keep doing their usual PR crap talk as if they achieved something amazing.

 

[Zyphrax]

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.

Unreal Engine 5.1 provides experimental support for M1/M2

Running Unreal Engine 5.1 On Apple M1/M2 Hardware –

As of Unreal Engine 5.1, UE has support for the Apple Silicon (M1/M2 chips). Unfortunately you have to build from source to test it yourself.

gamefromscratch.com

It is not 100% there yet, for example the nanite system is quite unstable. But it is heading in the right direction.

Now Apple needs to add built-in ray tracing and other advanced features to the GPU (rumors have some of that planned for M3).

But I agree with what others have commented: Apple needs to buy one of the bigger game studios, like EA.

 

[sw1tcher]

Most folks, even gamers, use laptops these days, so Apple's GPU being integrated is moot as long as the cooling can keep up.

38% is not most.

Demand for PC Hardware Has Skyrocketed: Who Are the Gamers Looking to Upgrade? What Motivates Consumers to Spend? | Newzoo

Curious about the hardware needs, motivations & preferences of the most dedicated PC gamers? Discover the details & data in this article!

newzoo.com

We surveyed more than 9,000 PC gamers across six key markets (the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, China, and Japan). The research focuses on dedicated PC gamers, which we define as those who play weekly on PC.

As you might expect, most dedicated PC gamers use a desktop as their main PC. Just under a third built their own main computer, slightly more than the 30% who bought theirs pre-built.

Thanks to quickly evolving mobile chip technology, laptops are a viable option for many dedicated PC gamers. Around 38% of the group uses a laptop as their main gaming PC.

 

[saudor]

perception can be hard to break too. when i think apple gaming, i think freemium, candy crush, in app purchases, pay to win.

even games that run on mac run atrocious on the same hardware compared to windows. the market is just too small and devs are less likely to invest in the platform.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

What about the M4 Pro chips?

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Gaming to Apple is ensuring the customer can spend an unlimited amount of money.

With simply breathtaking re-releases of the same decade-old games you've paid for before, we think gamers are going to love subscribing to Apple Arcade Ultra +.

 

[Zyphrax]

Sad reality is that M2 improvements are very minimal over M1. They've increased the number of cores on both CPU and GPU and they also clocked it higher. Not much of an improvement in the end.
There are some tweaks etc. but overall M2 is more like M1S.
Its embarrassing that they keep doing their usual PR crap talk as if they achieved something amazing.

Apple is a company. They don’t create products just because it is cool or just to have insane specs. Their goal is to be competitive and make profit.

It makes zero sense to do frequent revolutionary upgrades when the competition is still trying to catch up. It wouldn’t even be sustainable.

Compare the performance of an Intel laptop on battery to Apple silicon. It is not even close. Sure Intel keeps increasing the speed of their processors but you need a small power plant to power the thing. I’m somewhat surprised that we don’t see lawsuits regarding the horrible performance of high-ends PC laptop on battery.

 

[TechZeke]

38% is not most.

Demand for PC Hardware Has Skyrocketed: Who Are the Gamers Looking to Upgrade? What Motivates Consumers to Spend? | Newzoo

Curious about the hardware needs, motivations & preferences of the most dedicated PC gamers? Discover the details & data in this article!

newzoo.com

We surveyed more than 9,000 PC gamers across six key markets (the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, China, and Japan). The research focuses on dedicated PC gamers, which we define as those who play weekly on PC.

As you might expect, most dedicated PC gamers use a desktop as their main PC. Just under a third built their own main computer, slightly more than the 30% who bought theirs pre-built.

Thanks to quickly evolving mobile chip technology, laptops are a viable option for many dedicated PC gamers. Around 38% of the group uses a laptop as their main gaming PC.

Fair enough; Although I guess I was thinking a more broad definition of gamer. Like the average joe/Jane who plays FortNite on their $700 laptop and probably has a console at home. I doubt most gamers in-general would classify themselves specifically as a “PC Gamer”, certainly not someone who would be gaming on Mac.

 

[RedTheReader]

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.

Friend: “Hey, wanna hear a joke?”

Me: “Sure!”

Friend: “Mac gaming.”

Me, a Mac gamer:

 

[svish]

Expecting increased gaming performance with M3 family of chips.

 

[theorist9]

“Game developers have never seen 96 gigabytes of graphics memory available to them now, on the M2 Max. I think they’re trying to get their heads around it, because the possibilities are unusual. They’re used to working in much smaller footprints of video memory. So I think that’s another place where we’re going to have an interesting opportunity to inspire developers to go beyond what they’ve been able to do before.”

They were talking about establishing a large installed base of gaming-capable machines, which makes sense. But the percentage of users that will have 96 GB RAM anyways for non-gaming reasons is going to be quite small; and, at what Apple charges for RAM, the percentage of gamers that will buy 96 GB RAM specifically for gaming will likewise be tiny. So it seems unlikely game developers will optimize games to take advantage of so much RAM. A more reasonable statement would have been to mention that having, say, 32 GB available for CPU+GPU is going to become increasingly common on AS.

 

[dgdosen]

Hmm - does that mean Apple will start to ship macs with 96GB of base memory?

 

[StoneJack]

Most folks, even gamers, use laptops these days, so Apple's GPU being integrated is moot as long as the cooling can keep up.

Also, in my experience, by the time I notice a significant slow down in the stuff I want to play on my Gaming PC's, I have to buy a completely new PC anyway because of chipset changes and compatibility.

With Apple Silicon the gaming horsepower is there, but Apple is simply not taking advantage of their resources to make it a decent gaming platform.

This is very true. I also have a PC in addition to my macs; everytime I have to upgrade my PC, I have to choose a new chipset and a CPU. For example, I have still quite powerful i7 8700 but when I wanted to upgrade, had to move to intel i9 10850 and 490 chipset; when I upgraded my son's PC, I had to abandon still working AMD chipset and move to Intel i5, 12th generation and its new chipset.

 

[JCCL]

Expecting increased gaming performance with M3 family of chips.

Yeap. So? There will be nothing to play on it anyway

 

[ilikewhey]

good new release triple A titles never gonna happen on mac for couple of reasons, the most obvious one is gpu on the pc side is simply going too fast of a pace for any mac to catch up since apple's gpu is all in house now, if you want the latest graphic fidelity you most likely have to upgrade your mac every couple of years like you do on the window gpu, that is just not economically sound.