Sketchy Rumor Claims Apple Plans to Announce High-End Gaming MacBook or iMac at WWDC 2020

[MacRumors]

Apple plans to announce a high-end gaming computer at its annual WWDC developers conference in 2020, according to a questionable and as-of-yet unsubstantiated report from Taiwan's Economic Daily News.

Details are slim, but the report claims that the computer may be a large-screen laptop or all-in-one desktop with a price tag of up to $5,000, suggesting that it could be either a MacBook Pro or an iMac Pro. The computer would supposedly be tailored towards esports, aka competitive video gaming.

While this would surely be great news for gamers, this report has yet to be backed by other sources, and the Economic Daily News has a mixed track record as it relates to Apple rumors. Just a few months ago, for example, the publication incorrectly claimed AirPods Pro would come in as many as eight colors.

Over the years, many gamers have been hopeful that Apple would eventually come around to full-fledged gaming on the Mac.

"I grew up playing games Doom, Quake, and Starcraft on Mac computers most of my life," esports journalist Rod Breslau told MacRumors. "Throughout that time as a loyal Apple user since a young age, I always hoped they would give even a the fraction of the attention to gaming that my friends got while they played on their PCs. That day never came, and I switched to a PC in my early teens and never looked back. It's almost 20 years later and Apple has still never cared about the gaming community. They're going to need more than Apple Arcade to make that happen."

"So to read that Apple might be developing a gaming-centric Mac on the heels of the popularity of esports is startling and welcome news, if not a bit bewildering," added Breslau. "I'd love for Apple to make a concerted effort for gaming on a Mac including all of the popular online competitive multiplayer games in esports that are all played on PC. But the skeptical side of me knows it's going to take a lot more than just Apple building a gaming computer to bring people over. They need the developers and publishers to be thinking of porting to Mac as a priority when they create their games, and winning over the industry will be as or more difficult as winning over consumers."

WWDC 2020 should take place in June like usual, so we're just over six months out.

Article Link: Sketchy Rumor Claims Apple Plans to Announce High-End Gaming MacBook or iMac at WWDC 2020

 

[emmab2006]

Yea and Pigs Fly.

 

[Rychiar]

why? no one makes games for Mac... I'm still waiting for Witcher 3...

 

[justperry]

$5000, yeah right, way too expensive for most gamers.

*Actually it says up to $5000 but even then, don't think Apple cares for gamers.

 

[Apple Mac Daz]

what games are out there to play on your 5k mac 🙈

 

[iMi]

Apple has been inching closer and closer toward the gaming community. What I would like to see is a modular Mac that is not "pro." I'd buy that.

 

[puckhead193]

competitive gamers use Macs? lol
maybe updated iMac pro!!

 

[dannys1]

I mean you'd need to build the platform first for devs to program for it.

The problem is there are a number of capable AMD cards in macOS systems right now (granted most of them are in very expensive systems) and things like Fortnite run much better on the same cards under Windows 10 and DirectX than they do under macOS and Metal. Not sure if that's an issue with Metal or because devs are not optimising for it properly.

You'd need things like Unreal Engine and Unity to be totally optimised as well, if not better than it is for Direct X to get any decent performance out of a Mac or pay 2x the price for more powerful hardware to get performance on par with something half as much on the PC side.

 

[Freida]

I think this is very unlikely as Apple is premium brand and I doubt gamers would like to pay premium for something that they can build themselves much cheaper (and faster) just to be on macOS.

 

[ijlakw]

iMac will need a new design to deal with the heat.

 

[Wiesenlooser]

Sounds like a misunderstood rumor. Probably just an iMac Pro with a beefy gpu. Makes sense price wise too

 

[Michael73]

"I'll believe it, when I believe it" Yogi Berra

 

[calstanford]

For what? To install Windows in bootcamp? What's the point?

 

[psingh01]

High end gaming machine? For macOS or for bootcamp? 😆

 

[Pepe4life]

Perhaps they can start by putting games that actually appeal to gamers on the Apple Arcade first.

 

[citysnaps]

Will never happen - not Apple's market.

A good thing.

 

[Glockworkorange]

Come on....

I mean, I guess you have to report it, but no way this happens.

Also, can we please stop calling these "esports?"

These are not "sports." "esports" "players" are not athletes.

Here's the definition of "sports" from macOS: "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment: team sports such as baseball and soccer | (as modifier sports) : a sports center. (emphasis added)."

 

[Lone Deranger]

Will it come with garish multi-color flashy lights on the Ram Dimms, CPU cooler and keyboard?

 

[kanki1985]

On the positive side, incase Apple plans to make this, they will come out with a disruptor and a full fledged eco system utilizing the Arcade.

 

[alphaswift]

No chance this is true.

 

[GalileoSeven]

Not only would devs have to port/reprogram their titles to work on Macs, Apple would have to bring something new to the table in terms of gaming and/or make a value play with any such machine in order to gain traction/be seen as credible.

The chances of them doing so are nil.

 

[BGPL]

I can only see this making sense if this happens hand-in-hand with an ARM-based processor move on macs, so anything in the app store would require less work to make the desktop version. The bionic chips are outperforming some of the 7th gen Intel processors, imagine if they were able to cool them properly.

But still, the games in the iOS world aren't terribly demanding on the GPU.

 

[garylapointe]

Perhaps they can start by putting games that actually appeal to gamers on the Apple Arcade first.

Do you think they'd ever get it to appeal to gamers? (Is that even the target audience?)

 

[SnakeCoils]

A discrete GPU equipped MacMini would make much more sense than an iMac or a MacBook for a game station, the form factor is already much closer to a console. I still use a Mini 2011 with Core i7 and Radeon 6630M dedicated GPU as media center including various console emulators: sadly I was forced to replace OSX with Windows 7 because a MUCH better support for graphics acceleration and now I can run Dolphin (GameCube/Wii emulator) almost at full speed ad 1080p. I am really waiting for that kind of Mini, who cares about the enclosure size? If a better cooling is needed then make it larger, taller and heavier but please Apple, unleash all the power of CPU and GPU within OSX, don't force us to install Windows because of poor hardware support...

 

[Radon87000]

I can build a machine with an i9-9900kf and an RTX 2080Ti for half the price. Without any upgradeability this is hugely overpriced.