Oculus Rift Won't Support Mac Until Apple Releases a 'Good Computer'

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I think thinness is a problem with Apple right now, but it's also the market. I'd saw the biggest part of buyers of all computers prefer thin over anything else. So I can forgive them for making the standard Mac as thin as they can. I just can't figure out using mobile parts in what they call a Pro machine.

Yeah, I get it. They're catering to the biggest common denominator. But the Mac Pro is for a niche market of professionals, and they have crapped all over professionals for years now. The average consumer isn't going to buy the Mac Pro, so why keep the same idea of thinness, smallness, and non-expandability for a product that is meant to be the exact opposite of all of that? It really sucks where Apple's heads are at in regards to the Pro market.

 

[samcraig]

VR has to be the biggest gimmick ever. And honestly, if people want experience things, go outside and touch leaves. Jump in a lake. Thats reality. Virtual reality is going to make people more anti-social, and society as we know it is doomed. Also:

If this is what VR does to you, and makes you gain at least 50+ lbs. I'm out. As it is North America is facing an epidemic of obesity, and chronic illnesses. This idiot Palmer is just going to make kids/adults more fat and sick.

Perhaps you're just being funny. But it's a fallacy to make the leap that VR is what caused his weight gain. Further - I think the world is already headed into "The Naked Son" (Aasimov) land. VR can be a tool - just like anything else. There will always be people who "overdo" tech

 

[CFreymarc]

In all honestly, they are setting the bar way too high for performance of their device. The pre-Facebook Occultist Rift worked fine on a Mac Mini with the rendering speed an order of magnitude or two below what they are specifying now.

IMO, some marketing blowhard is pushing the platform beyond the market expectations trying to start a street fight with Apple. The Cupertino boys know not to play with these street dogs.

This can generate a huge "wow" effect in the marketplace but it can also backfire being too exclusive. Then potential customers are upset they can't buy it. Another game in town shows up at a lower performance level and price, these angry customer buy into that and "Mighty Casey strikes out" again.

 

[Opi-Poi]

The problem is their obsession with thinness. They really take form over function. OS X is great, but if you're handicapping the potential of your hardware by the eternal pursuit of thinness, something is wrong. I really wish they would at least make another expandable Mac Pro. I would buy it in a heartbeat. In the case of the iMac, having a 5K display driven by a mobile GPU just seems counterintuitive to me. A gorgeous display that doesn't have the hardware it deserves.

This is all true but even Apple made a total amaze-balls gaming Mac, there's the problem of the game developers not being proactively engaged by Apple. And the smaller market share, recoding, investment...
Not imposible, but i just don't see happening anytime soon.
Kick ass hardware is great but it needs software development. And it wouldn't happen on it's own like iOS game development i think

 

[\-V-/]

This is all true but even Apple made a total amaze-balls gaming Mac, there's the problem of the game developers not being proactively engaged by Apple. And the smaller market share, recoding, investment...
Not imposible, but i just don't see happening anytime soon.
Kick ass hardware is great but it needs software development. And it wouldn't happen on it's own like iOS game development i think

I am not even referring to gaming at this point. Just the direction they're going.

 

[uid15]

I don't blame VR, I'd like to blame facebook. In my mind once they got bought out he got hooked on farmville or candy crush.

People need to take accountability and quit using scapegoats as "reasons" for their poor choices. There are SO few traits that make a REAL man (reponsibility, love, compassion, kindness, long suffering, patience, self-control) left in "men" today, it's a sad sad state of affairs that people are frittering away their lives on these ridiculous, time-sucking depressing examples of negativity and "escapism". Have you SEEN THE WORLD OUTSIDE? Why would you want to ESCAPE IT? Only if you think the WHOLE WORLD is like the one you've become deceived into believing is "real", by being stuck inside a video game all your life, would you think REALITY is so terrible... it really isn't.

SO glad not to be a gamer - my idea of gaming is Tetris or Mario, and even then, I'd rather learn something with REAL world, transferrable skills, like how to upgrade the firmware on the latest iPhone, how to change X component in an iMac, or taking photographs OF REAL things - I love photography. NOTHING you learn in these games is OF ANY use, outside of your pretend, fantasy life.

Wow... wake up, deceived people. You are WASTING God's precious gift to you - life.

 

[952863]

Perhaps you're just being funny. But it's a fallacy to make the leap that VR is what caused his weight gain. Further - I think the world is already headed into "The Naked Son" (Aasimov) land. VR can be a tool - just like anything else. There will always be people who "overdo" tech

I'm not trying to be funny. I'm just being real. I guarantee its the cause of his weight gain. The fact that he sits on his ass all day in his VR world shoving doritos into his fat mouth doesn't help. I feel sorry for his chair. I really do. RIP Chair.

 

[samcraig]

"overdoes tech" *looks at thread, sees PC Gamerzzzz* agrees. VR probably did cause his weight gain though, let's be honest.

Or perhaps it was a "nicer" lifestyle and lots of lunches and dinners out entertaining with his new(er) found wealth. Or maybe he has a kidney issue. Or diabetes. Since you don't know - I think it's a little callous to mock his weight.

 

[ohio.emt]

In all honestly, they are setting the bar way too high for performance of their device. The pre-Facebook Occultist Rift worked fine on a Mac Mini with the rendering speed an order of magnitude or two below what they are specifying now.

IMO, some marketing blowhard is pushing the platform beyond the market expectations trying to start a street fight with Apple. The Cupertino boys know not to play with these street dogs.

This can generate a huge "wow" effect in the marketplace but it can also backfire being too exclusive. Then potential customers are upset they can't buy it. Another game in town shows up at a lower performance level and price, these angry customer buy into that and "Mighty Casey strikes out" again.

They probably are over stating the specs, even most games do. They went with the higher, due to wanting an optimal experience on the games that will be out at launch time.

This is all true but even Apple made a total amaze-balls gaming Mac, there's the problem of the game developers not being proactively engaged by Apple. And the smaller market share, recoding, investment...
Not imposible, but i just don't see happening anytime soon.
Kick ass hardware is great but it needs software development. And it wouldn't happen on it's own like iOS game development i think

True, but also need some hardware fist. Even if it's a midrange gaming machine, if it had a desktop GPU it would be great. I know steam has been working on getting games on Mac and Linux.

 

[952863]

Or perhaps it was a "nicer" lifestyle and lots of lunches and dinners out entertaining with his new(er) found wealth. Or maybe he has a kidney issue. Or diabetes. Since you don't know - I think it's a little callous to mock his weight.

If he has diabetes, he would be losing weight. Because he would be peeing out all his calories. And considering his weight, he's headed towards diabetes--->kidney issues. He's on the VR path.

 

[samcraig]

People need to take accountability and quit using scapegoats as "reasons" for their poor choices. There are SO few traits that make a REAL man (reponsibility, love, compassion, kindness, long suffering, patience, self-control) left in "men" today, it's a sad sad state of affairs that people are frittering away their lives on these ridiculous, time-sucking depressing examples of negativity and "escapism". Have you SEEN THE WORLD OUTSIDE? Why would you want to ESCAPE IT? Only if you think the WHOLE WORLD is like the one you've become deceived into believing is "real", by being stuck inside a video game all your life, would you think REALITY is so terrible... it really isn't.

SO glad not to be a gamer - my idea of gaming is Tetris or Mario, and even then, I'd rather learn something with REAL world, transferrable skills, like how to upgrade the firmware on the latest iPhone, how to change X component in an iMac, or taking photographs OF REAL things - I love photography. NOTHING you learn in these games is OF ANY use, outside of your pretend, fantasy life.

Wow... wake up, deceived people. You are WASTING God's precious gift to you - life.

And yet I am fascinated with my Gear VR for this very reason. I am not a gamer. But I love looking at photos from around the world in an immersive environment. Taking photos (laboriously with my dSLR or more easily right my 360 camera) and seeing the results in VR.

Not everyone into VR is all about gaming. Clearly Oculus' offering is geared for gamers. But that shouldn't make VR a dismissive category.

 

[McCool71]

For those people who think those VR glasses that use cell phones are good enough vs the Oculus - think again!

It is of course two very different things. Even a mid-range gaming PC from 2005 outperforms the most powerful cell phones today when it comes to graphics/rendering power by a huge margin.

The mass market will no doubt be on cell phone powered solutions for the foreseeable future though, much like the number of people gaming on tablets and cell phones today totally dwarf the number of PC gamers. Two very different experiences, but both can be a lot more fun than just gaming on your phone or PC without the VR component.

Also remember that VR isn't purely about gaming - watching movies using the Gear VR is actually a very cool experience where the raw graphics power of the device is not really an issue.

 

[bn-7bc]

5k iMac have gimped GPU's as well. They might be dedicated but they have to run under clocked because of heat issues due to the all in one design :-(

You can not deny what Palmer says - Mac GPU's are crappy especially at the price you have to buy the gay and snobbish macs!
Also Apple should have done something like the Metal API years ago...
Really sad how crappy the GPU situation with mac is.

Well crappy might be somewhat harsh, optimized for otherer things than top performace (heat/power usage) might be closer to correct. Was the a good decision by apple?
For their core marcet: yes
For gaming: not so much
On another note:does the 5k iMac have a fan or did apple actualy use a slower gpu in order not to need a fan?
Ps:this was not posted to defend Apple,these are just my musings on the subject, if I'm wrong please tell me (corrections are allways apreciated)

 

[Stella]

A very ignorant view, I draw a huge sigh every time I see this, which is very regularly. There are good reasons to buy a PC over a console.

The Oculus will have non game applications...

If you want to play games, BUY A GAMES CONSOLE. You guys are beyond incredulous - complaining for the sake of complaining. When did Apple EVER tell you that a Mac was made SOLEY FOR GAMING? Wow... the dumb is freely flowing here. I would go to Boeing and complain that the 747 doesn't have a gun turrett, missile launchers and can't break the sound barrier, if I were to follow your rationale.

A very outdated view of Macs:

Macs are CREATIVE PEOPLE'S TOOLS, they're not gaming computers... so why does that surprise (read: annoy) you?

 

[Opi-Poi]

And yet I am fascinated with my Gear VR for this very reason. I am not a gamer. But I love looking at photos from around the world in an immersive environment. Taking photos (laboriously with my dSLR or more easily right my 360 camera) and seeing the results in VR.

Not everyone into VR is all about gaming. Clearly Oculus' offering is geared for gamers. But that shouldn't make VR a dismissive category.

I agree.

Also I wonder how VR would fit into iOS as well. Im Sure Apple would like to see it across all devices. Ok maybe not the watch. lol

 

[zzLZHzz]

get a hololen, it is untethered

 

[435713]

People need to take accountability and quit using scapegoats as "reasons" for their poor choices. There are SO few traits that make a REAL man (reponsibility, love, compassion, kindness, long suffering, patience, self-control) left in "men" today, it's a sad sad state of affairs that people are frittering away their lives on these ridiculous, time-sucking depressing examples of negativity and "escapism". Have you SEEN THE WORLD OUTSIDE? Why would you want to ESCAPE IT? Only if you think the WHOLE WORLD is like the one you've become deceived into believing is "real", by being stuck inside a video game all your life, would you think REALITY is so terrible... it really isn't.

SO glad not to be a gamer - my idea of gaming is Tetris or Mario, and even then, I'd rather learn something with REAL world, transferrable skills, like how to upgrade the firmware on the latest iPhone, how to change X component in an iMac, or taking photographs OF REAL things - I love photography. NOTHING you learn in these games is OF ANY use, outside of your pretend, fantasy life.

Wow... wake up, deceived people. You are WASTING God's precious gift to you - life.

100% agreed all of that is on the money. COD 6568999 awaits, and benchmarks of course they can put on their youtube channel. Such a betterment to society these gamers, wow. I mean a few donate to charity for the scapegoat response. And MLG! Amazing stuff right there, I thought MJ was fun to watch but that asian kid playing counter strike, wow amazing!!! Such a hero. Let me watch a twitch stream with 100 ads all over the screen and defend it cause thats all they could ever be good at in life is playing a video game. Losers

 

[ohio.emt]

People need to take accountability and quit using scapegoats as "reasons" for their poor choices. There are SO few traits that make a REAL man (reponsibility, love, compassion, kindness, long suffering, patience, self-control) left in "men" today, it's a sad sad state of affairs that people are frittering away their lives on these ridiculous, time-sucking depressing examples of negativity and "escapism". Have you SEEN THE WORLD OUTSIDE? Why would you want to ESCAPE IT? Only if you think the WHOLE WORLD is like the one you've become deceived into believing is "real", by being stuck inside a video game all your life, would you think REALITY is so terrible... it really isn't.

SO glad not to be a gamer - my idea of gaming is Tetris or Mario, and even then, I'd rather learn something with REAL world, transferrable skills, like how to upgrade the firmware on the latest iPhone, how to change X component in an iMac, or taking photographs OF REAL things - I love photography. NOTHING you learn in these games is OF ANY use, outside of your pretend, fantasy life.

Wow... wake up, deceived people. You are WASTING God's precious gift to you - life.

I agree with you. I was trying to make a joke about the Facebook buyout, but it was poorly worded. I Don't game as much as I used to. Did more gaming when in High School, outside of football all my friends were needs since I was in a computer tech program. So on weekends, and during summer when we weren't working we played games. Nowadays I may game an hour here or there. Also when I'm trying escape from a bad day at work. Most of my gaming is now at work when we have downtime between calls.
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get a hololen, it is untethered

If they can make it work like the initial demo, I'd want one. I'd really love it for work. It would be great if we could get all medical records digitized, and connected. Would really be helpfully if I could walk up to a patient and it would pull them up using facial recognition, and then verify by name and DOB. You'd surprised by how many people don't know their medical history, allergies, or medications.

 

[bn-7bc]

The question is why? Does apple feel its users dont play modern games?
I dont get it.

Define modern pleace Does cities skylines (rel mar 2013) and Euro Truch simulator 2 (rel Dec 2014 (mac port)) cont as modern games both of which run perfectky on my mid 2015 mbp ?

 

[\-V-/]

Define modern pleace Does cities skylines (rel mar 2013) and Euro Truch simulator 2 (rel Dec 2014 (mac port)) cont as modern games both of which run perfectky on my mid 2015 mbp ?

No, they don't.

 

[wordup60]

This is exactly the sort of thing Steve Jobs could have said. Remember "we only offer FaceTime over WiFi, not 3G, because their speeds are just too lousy. Give us a good enough mobile network and we'll make it happen" (paraphrased)?

 

[v3rlon]

So a friend of mine with a VERY high end computer (dual overclocked top of the line nvidia liquid-cooled GPUs) got one of the beta units and was emphatically not impressed with the quality of the video. "Screen door effect is awful beyond belief," he said. He loaned it to me, but I only have a 2015 MB Pro (dedicate gfx version).

I loaded it up (Mac was still supported). It was a bit of effort getting the interface to play nice, but the screen door effect is terrible. Each eye is getting 1/2 HD. Note this Macbook will drive 2 5K displays, and certainly any reasonable game in 1080P.

Motion response was really, really good. Resolution was not ready for mainstream. So he can take is crappy comments and try to read them on that low resolution screen until he gets a headache for all I care.

If a MacPro can't run it, there aren't that many PCs that can run it either. Talk about a niche market. How many computers out there are running even ONE $900 video card, much less two Titans or better.

It is worth noting that the 2x Radeon D700 cards exceeds Occulus specs as seen here http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1538726.

So what I read is "We over-promised on what we could give, and we're already so far behind we had to cut corners. OS X was one of those corners, but I can't say that without making it look like we were falling behind (which we were), so I am going to bash on Apple. Oh, and pay no attention to the crummy video quality in our product.

 

[uid15]

The day when Apple lock down the Mac platform as they do with iOS, can't come soon enough. Steve Gibson (GRC, "Security Now") refers to iPhone as "a beatifully designed crypto brick" - it would be trivial for Apple to lock up the Mac as tight as you can imagine, requiring a secure chain of trust, as is the case on 5S and higher devices. The crypto and security verification on iOS is SO incredibly engineered and water-tight, it's just a matter of time before Apple can wave a cheery "bye bye!" to all these hacked up "Hackintoshes". It is, after all, Apple's IP and their property to lock down or leave open, in whichever respect they so choose.

There is no sane reason, as far as I can see, to keep Macs as wide open as they are right now. Locking them up can only benefit the peace of mind of the customer/user. Mind you, I don't think Apple see "hackintoshes" as much of a threat to damaging the sales of Macs - can't wonder at it, but I don't think they're in a rush to do so - hackintoshes are far from a threat to Apple - they only lead to frustration, sooner or later, the user having probably become SO accustomed to OS X and how beautiful it is, they come to a point where they simply relent and go and buy a real Mac. With age comes wisdom, and you get to a certain age where you come to realise how short life is, and too short to be messing about hacking together fragile hard/software combos, JUST to save some money and squeeze a meagre amount of performance out of your machine... and for what - GAMES? Those who would argue "well then I wouldn't buy a Mac, I'll go back to Windows" - well okay - you didn't even need a Mac in the first place, so good bye, farewell.

 

[zone23]

That WAS my point, the oculus rift is just another 3d TV,google glasses technology, etc etc, lots of hype, but in the end no one actually wants it.

I get you know and your probably right. The only thing that threw me off was you said smart tvs and I think they may have a future yet if manufactures take it a little further like with built in android/ATV or some sort of App Store that makes sense.

 

[435713]

Racing game on a Mac vs racing game on a gaming PC. Both in-game shots, the one at the right running at 60fps in 4K resolution (with a beast of a gaming rig of course).

But it is all about how the device itself looks, isn't it? Who cares about what it can actually output to the screen... Only idiots care about details like that.

From iMac. doesnt represent your left photo.