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Apple Executives Discuss M2 Chips, Gaming on Mac, Intel and More
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Apple could be successful if they bought Nintendo. Instant ability to play all previous and future Nintendo games (NES-Switch+ Future) on all apple silicon devices. iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Macs, and maybe even take Nintendo into VR as the hardware supplier for upcoming VR games. Nintendo has iconic games, amazing IP, instant recognizable characters and branding, and way more people play or have played Nintendo games than whatever AAA game is out from Ubisoft or what we the latest flavor of Call of Duty is this year.
This is where the money is at.
This is where the money is at.
I've got one, and it's really kind of amazing -- Steam library, plus dock it and you've got a full Linux desktop. It's been a while since I've done any gaming on my gaming PC.
I could add that the open-source game engine Godot is getting very close to its 4.0 RC1. They've spent years rewriting the rendering so that it's Vulkan-native, so that despite Apple's infuriating best efforts to make cross-platform game development fundamentally impossible, Godot + MoltenVK makes it possible again -- just not at the AAA level yet.
Well Linux supports all these gaming systems. Why doesn’t that environment get all this hatred?
That's what I'd like most. Apple's withdrawal from the Khronos Group was really unexplicable. Metal is almost ten years old, and Apple doesn't need to protect it through exclusivity.
But an official Vulkan driver is only good if we can count on Apple to maintain it, rather than letting it wither from neglect like they did with OpenGL. Because MoltenVK is open-source it could, I'd hope, evade the same fate.
Probably because Steam/Proton allows Linux players to play pretty much all the games that Windows Players can play (ignoring anti-cheat incompatibilities).
I feel like there’s 2 very obvious solutions. First is, Apple needs to either purchase a game studio or get AAA exclusives, something to draw in users. And then second, and a main one, Apple needs to create their own first party game controller, something that sets the standard. And it would prove that Apple is serious. It also needs the H1/H2 chip, or at least something similar that allows it to easily pair with all your Apple devices and switch back and forth between them just like AirPods, because trying to use the same game controller for both the Apple TV and the iPad etc right now is annoying.
They’re one of the only major studios left to purchase. They have a history of making mobile apps for Apple. And they still have big IPs.
UK regulators are suggesting that Activision/Blizzard needs to sell off some parts if they want the deal to go through.
That is true, but I am not sure Linux users are clamoring since for the most part Proton performance is close enough to Windows native.
Apple has had 30+ years to get it right and they've epically failed every step of the way. I specifically remember Steve Jobs boasting about how Apple was "Doing everything to bring gaming back to the Mac" and how they sat down with gamers and developers and "let them beat us in the head and told us what we need to do to bring gaming back to the Mac".
Everything of which Apple totally ignored.
Gamers want the latest and the greatest. They want chips and graphics cards that will go the distance. They want proper heat thermals
Apple brings none of this to the table, which is why gamers always look elsewhere
Unless Apple takes its head out of its rear end they will never be a gaming platform nor offering a place where gamers want to be
That would be a better choice (though they have their own set of controversies). I just don’t know, if they won’t let Microsoft buy them, they probably won’t let Apple.
The vast majority of people are just casual gamers. The point is that it shouldn't be a great gaming platform, but at least a decent one. In general, people buy Macs for productivity and work but this does not mean that they don't want to play some games in their free time on the exact same machine without the need to switch to a console or Windows machine. M2 is more than capable to run the 20 most played games on Steam with proper integration. In fact, the GPU performance of M2 is comparable or even better than to the one of the most popular GPUs on Windows according to Steam statistics. M2 10-core GPU is comparable to PS4 Pro in terms of raw performance, so the hardware is there, what we are missing is the software and the integration.
To see so much criticism of Apple on this thread is not surprising, but where we have to look at how Apple has progressed? For such a comedy of errors as some would suggest, its not done too badly as a company? If it was as bad as some suggest, it has not yet got round to the consumers.
Am I happy with Apple at present. NO.
However, I tested the M1 iMac base configuration, and for the price it was a really good cost effective device for many home users.
I do though believe the evolution to M2 has not been a great success. Perhaps chip constraints, lockdowns, pandemic, even Russia invading Ukraine has played apart in it all....and for the record I don't know.
What I do know is I've avoided the M2 as the M1 was so good and such a seed change, I suspect most people's expectation of the M2 was raised, as mine was. Personally I wish they'd not bothered and waited for a decent M3 where then hopefully the speed/performance bump will be very noticeable, and where again hopefully Apple will see to use an expression I dislike, PRO USERS demand more.
But what is a pro user? In my opinion its anyone who uses an Apple computer for business?
Some users will require heavy CPU usage, others in creative industry might wish to have much more emphasis on GPU and others expandability, which has rarely been an Apple objective.
Now we are seeing posts from gamers, but the fact we are having the discussion shows its on the agenda. Yes some might suggest PC's leave the current range of Apple kit in the dust, but whether the true price/cost comparison is as good as some suggest, I personally doubt.
If Apple are going to pursue the games sphere, and I have no doubt they will, then I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss that aspiration.
Its very hard for Apple or anyone else having a one size fits all and we should remember that Apple Silicon via the M1 range by computing standards is still in infancy, as is Apple's designing its own M range chips.
I do though look for a substantial improvement with the implementation of the M3 range, but still believe Apple are hampered by their own success with iPhones, where chips seem to be designed iPhone centric rather than computer centric, and then implemented on full scale computing devices with the inevitable chip Max, Pro etc. etc., rather than designing the base chip to achieve the best results on computing devices first, mindful of the varied needs today ranging from home user to various professional users with a multitude of different needs.
Am I happy with Apple at present. NO.
However, I tested the M1 iMac base configuration, and for the price it was a really good cost effective device for many home users.
I do though believe the evolution to M2 has not been a great success. Perhaps chip constraints, lockdowns, pandemic, even Russia invading Ukraine has played apart in it all....and for the record I don't know.
What I do know is I've avoided the M2 as the M1 was so good and such a seed change, I suspect most people's expectation of the M2 was raised, as mine was. Personally I wish they'd not bothered and waited for a decent M3 where then hopefully the speed/performance bump will be very noticeable, and where again hopefully Apple will see to use an expression I dislike, PRO USERS demand more.
But what is a pro user? In my opinion its anyone who uses an Apple computer for business?
Some users will require heavy CPU usage, others in creative industry might wish to have much more emphasis on GPU and others expandability, which has rarely been an Apple objective.
Now we are seeing posts from gamers, but the fact we are having the discussion shows its on the agenda. Yes some might suggest PC's leave the current range of Apple kit in the dust, but whether the true price/cost comparison is as good as some suggest, I personally doubt.
If Apple are going to pursue the games sphere, and I have no doubt they will, then I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss that aspiration.
Its very hard for Apple or anyone else having a one size fits all and we should remember that Apple Silicon via the M1 range by computing standards is still in infancy, as is Apple's designing its own M range chips.
I do though look for a substantial improvement with the implementation of the M3 range, but still believe Apple are hampered by their own success with iPhones, where chips seem to be designed iPhone centric rather than computer centric, and then implemented on full scale computing devices with the inevitable chip Max, Pro etc. etc., rather than designing the base chip to achieve the best results on computing devices first, mindful of the varied needs today ranging from home user to various professional users with a multitude of different needs.
Again, there are gamers, and there are those who play games. There are people who will tell you it's not really a car worth driving unless it can go 180MPH, and there are people who will tell you it's not really gaming unless you need a nuclear submarine to power your graphics card.
Apple isn't locked out of the desktop gaming world because of a shortage of FP32 tflops. It's locked out because of its lack of cross-platform graphics APIs or compatibility layers makes porting to the Mac too expensive a proposition.
Apple just needs to grease the wheels to get ports done and jump in early enough to get day and date releases.
This isn’t an Apple problem. PS3 had Cell processors and was extremely difficult to develop for. Switch games require so much downgrades due to the absurdly poor performance yet devs still do it.
Again as a dev running a business of a few people, it’s purely marketshare that’s the issue. Things will never be perfect. I don’t expect Macs to ever get God of War Ragnarok just like the Switch doesn’t. Heck even Windows doesn’t get all titles and the titles we do get outside of Microsoft platform exclusives, us PC gamers need to wait a long time. I’m still waiting for Horizon Forbidden West and my friends are waiting for God of War Ragnarok.
There are two approaches -- Apple either subsidizes the cost of porting a few games but otherwise makes no change of strategy, or it develops compatibility tools to significantly lower the cost of porting for everybody, not just the lucky winners of the Apple subsidy lottery. Both would require a big investment, but the latter would have a much better long-term affect altering the terrain. I think the smartest thing would be to do both, but at the end of the day I don't think Apple thinks it has a problem that needs solving, and certainly not many-many-megabuck solving.
I agree -- the Mac is not going to have parity in the game world in my lifetime. But I think that if the barriers to at least *some* good games getting ported are reduced, so that Mac ports aren't considered too kamikaze to even attempt, then Mac can become a healthy and sustainable minority position, rather than a boneyard. The Mac didn't have parity a dozen years ago, but that didn't stop me from gaming away on it, on games ported via OpenGL, a path Apple has since bricked up. Which is why I keep coming back to the foolishness of Apple deprecating OpenGL without embracing Vulkan.
Having said that, I can't help but think that this is a disruptive period for the gaming industry, with Linux/Proton and virtual-machine gaming finally showing signs of actual viability, and it's not impossible that things will look pretty different in five years than they do now.
Gaming on Mac has been a topic since… the beginning of the Macintosh. It was good and fun in the 68k era, not dramatic in the PPC era and started to decline severely in the intel era. However you could always install windows and that solved the problem. Now with the M series it will definitely by dead. Gaming on Mac will stay casual and a niche for bobo.
Gamers need a machine that you can tweak and evolve and one that is tuned for that purpose financially. The Mac is the opposite of that. You can’t change the hard drive (games take a lot of space) and you can’t change the memory. BTO is way too expensive for high memory/storage. Finally the Mac platform is too unreliable for long term planning in the sense that you cannot anticipate the roadmap, you cannot know whether the technology you are developing for will be here for 1 year or 10 years. The investment is high and the roadmap unreliable.
Gamers need a machine that you can tweak and evolve and one that is tuned for that purpose financially. The Mac is the opposite of that. You can’t change the hard drive (games take a lot of space) and you can’t change the memory. BTO is way too expensive for high memory/storage. Finally the Mac platform is too unreliable for long term planning in the sense that you cannot anticipate the roadmap, you cannot know whether the technology you are developing for will be here for 1 year or 10 years. The investment is high and the roadmap unreliable.