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

[name99]

Yeah it is. I don't think you understand how much faster Nvidia and AMD gaming GPUs are in comparison to mobile GPUs.
Show me an Apple developed chip that can run a resource intensive AAA game at 4K resolution at a playable frame rate which is +30fps at least. Because this is something already achievable by upper mid-range AMD and Nvidia GPUs. High end GPUs like the GTX 2080Ti can run games at 4K 60fps.
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If the A14X is a mobile SOC it will be impossible to even come close to a next gen consoles. Xbox Series X is said to offer around 12 teraflops of GPU performance while the PS5 around 9.2 teraflops .
How will a mobile SOC be able to match that? That's high performance class hardware, Apple would need to develop from scratch a desktop class chip in order to compete with those numbers. And even so you have to take in consideration optimization and support from AAA game developers which Apple lacks.



I don't see how any of this will help them compete with Sony and Microsoft in AAA gaming.

You seem unable to understand that scaling up number of cores and GPU size is easy.

OF COURSE Apple is not going to try to compete with desktops (eg iMac Pro) with their iPad SoC.
(Just like they don’t use their phone SoC in either the high-end iPads or their watches.)

They will use something substantially more powerful, probably based on chiplets. The interesting questions surround things like how they will upscale CPU count (large and small cores), GPU size, number of memory controllers, etc; and whether they will utilize a central IO hub ala AMD (to fab the large IO transistors in a cheaper process).
If you can’t even imagine how Apple can upscale, and if you can’t tell the difference between the easy problems (replicating cores) and the hard problems (creating CPU/GPU with high IPC) you should‘t be in this pontificating business.

 

[M3gatron]

That’s why my speculation isn’t about “gamers”, it’s more about a subset, the streamers. These are people that, day in, day out, will not be tweaking and upgrading their system constantly. For them a rock solid stable system is more important because the more time they spend tweaking their system, the less time they spend online actually streaming (or just capturing their gameplay locally). So, my speculation is that IF a Gaming thingy is coming from Apple, understanding that they’re not likely to produce anything that comes close to what normal gamers expect, I’m thinking of what could someone hear about a “gaming” system from Apple that would actually solve a different problem than just gaming. It could instead be a content creation platform that focuses on use cases that would fit gamers well.

So, I totally understand what you’ve written, but someone who wants to spend their week recording and then editing gameplay video in order to upload to YouTube isn’t really wanting the fastest CPU or heftiest graphics card of the moment. They’re just looking for something they can use to capture the audio / video of their play in... 4k or 1080p, that rarely fails (because a lot of times you can’t re-play that section exactly the same way twice) and makes editing and posting that content a breeze. They’re a gamer, but don’t have exactly the same needs as someone who isn’t producing content.

A custom Windows PC is already perfect for the scenarios you described.

 

[M3gatron]

You seem unable to understand that scaling up number of cores and GPU size is easy.

But I do understand it perfectly.

OF COURSE Apple is not going to try to compete with desktops (eg iMac Pro) with their iPad SoC. (Just like they don’t use their phone SoC in either the high-end iPads or their watches.)

Well for some users here is not that clear.

They will use something substantially more powerful, probably based on chiplets. The interesting questions surround things like how they will upscale CPU count (large and small cores), GPU size, number of memory controllers, etc; and whether they will utilize a central IO hub ala AMD (to fab the large IO transistors in a cheaper process).

So they will spend a lot of time and money to develop something that AMD, Nvidia and Intel already have while having a clear disadvantage in general desktop class software support, software legacy support, desktop class software optimization and while having a negative reputation as a serious gaming platform. Sounds like a splendid plan. Up-scaling a mobile CPU and GPU to compete with performance oriented architectures isn't a very good idea anyway.

If you can’t even imagine how Apple can upscale, and if you can’t tell the difference between the easy problems (replicating cores) and the hard problems (creating CPU/GPU with high IPC) you should‘t be in this pontificating business.

Well you should read my comment more carefully because you obviously didn't understand what I wrote. Anyway Apple can upscale their mobile GPU all they want, it will still only be an up-scaled mobile GPU so not threat to AMD or Nvidia top parts.
If simply up-scaling a mobile oriented GPU would have been enough to compete with AMD and Nvidia high performance GPUs some other company would have done by now and we would have more than 2 GPU vendors on the market.

 

[apolkowski]

and only 1-2 hours to hit your cap!! or run up the bill at about 10 GB /HR with an rate of $10 per GB = $100/HR

I do not have any cap. I pay 25$/month for unlimited LTE with fixed public IP without any small print.

 

[M3gatron]

Apple has way more thermal headroom for CPU, and also appears to have more thermal headroom than AMD and nV for GPU (in part I suspect because they’re willing to use more constrained and expensive packaging — on-interposer GPU chiplets and lots of HBM, rather than PCI cards and socketed VRAM).

I don't understand why you mean by the fact that Apple would have more thermal headroom for some theoretical CPU and GPU because its not clear and what you say doesn't actually make much sense but you are essentially claiming that Apple's strategy could be to develop some extremely expensive unconstrained server parts in order to sell them to general computer users, and if we are talking about gamers, price sensitive computer users.
How is that a good strategy? It sounds like a huge fail. Also, HBM is very expensive, AMD learned this the hard way and the possibility of designing a GPU chiplet solution right now is only theoretically possible. AMD and Nvidia obviously have trouble doing it and nobody has as much experience and GPU related IP then them.

 

[playtech1]

The state of Mac gaming has gotten worse with Catalina, but I am pleasantly surprised how many indie titles are Mac compatible on Steam, but the AAA games are sorely lacking.

In terms of getting AAA games on to the Mac, Apple would need to do a deal with one or two of the major publishers to publish their 2020 / 2021 lineup on Mac.

Ubisoft seems the obvious partner as they publish many games a year and have ported titles to less powerful platforms like the Switch. EA would be a big win, but they seem less amenable to supporting niche platforms.

I see huge challenges though on the software side, as converting the engines used by AAA publishers to run on the Mac means Apple embracing something like Vulkan and then the AAA publishers devoting dev time and resources to get it working well on Mac. I fear that could take a few years given where Apple are starting from.

I think the hardware challenge is probably the easiest to sort out - plenty of companies push out capable mass-market hardware that can play AAA games. A 1050ti or MX150 from years back can still play current AAA games (at low to medium settings) and do so in a tight power envelope. AMD will have something similar soon that Apple could use across its hardware if it has the will to do so.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

I am one such person, but Apple releasing one computer with a decent graphics card isn’t going to change that. They’d have to show commitment to gaming for years and years for Mac to become a first class platform for developers and publishers, and even then the Windows-only back catalogue would be missing. To my mind it’s slightly promising news at best.

Oh, although I suppose you‘ll be able to dual boot. A good gaming Windows computer that’s also a Mac, that’d be good news.

I guess my use case is a bit of a unicorn then. Aside from a handful of games on Steam that I'd hope to be able to run via Parallels or at worst, bootcamp, everything I play is by Blizzard & they have Mac clients.

 

[ipponrg]

I guess my use case is a bit of a unicorn then. Aside from a handful of games on Steam that I'd hope to be able to run via Parallels or at worst, bootcamp, everything I play is by Blizzard & they have Mac clients.

Yeah you’re a unicorn. You left out Overwatch which can’t run in MacOS natively

 

[Unregistered 4U]

A custom Windows PC is already perfect for the scenarios you described.

Just judging by the admittedly very small number of content creators I follow, Windows PC‘s crashing and losing the content is a fairly regular occurrence. Decreasing those occurrences increases the amount of content they can produce. And consider, many of them are ”personalities“ more than they are technically inclined. Giving them a sure fire way to to capture multiple tracks of audio and video in a format that makes editing a breeze would be an amazing enabler. THIS IS A VERY specific subset of gamer and very wild speculation

I don't understand why you mean by the fact that Apple would have more thermal headroom

That could be referring to the idea that some people have ran benchmark tests with their iPhones being actively cooled, in a freezer for example, and have found that the performance stays stable and consistent during that run. That tells you that if Apple had a way to actively cool the processor in the currently thermally constrained confines of an iPhone, the performance we see from day to day could be consistently higher. (Or if Apple didn’t care about how hot it got in our pockets or hands

 

[smulji]

The state of Mac gaming has gotten worse with Catalina, but I am pleasantly surprised how many indie titles are Mac compatible on Steam, but the AAA games are sorely lacking.

In terms of getting AAA games on to the Mac, Apple would need to do a deal with one or two of the major publishers to publish their 2020 / 2021 lineup on Mac.

Ubisoft seems the obvious partner as they publish many games a year and have ported titles to less powerful platforms like the Switch. EA would be a big win, but they seem less amenable to supporting niche platforms.

I see huge challenges though on the software side, as converting the engines used by AAA publishers to run on the Mac means Apple embracing something like Vulkan and then the AAA publishers devoting dev time and resources to get it working well on Mac. I fear that could take a few years given where Apple are starting from.

I think the hardware challenge is probably the easiest to sort out - plenty of companies push out capable mass-market hardware that can play AAA games. A 1050ti or MX150 from years back can still play current AAA games (at low to medium settings) and do so in a tight power envelope. AMD will have something similar soon that Apple could use across its hardware if it has the will to do so.

"The state of Mac gaming has gotten worse with Catalina "

How so?

 

[star-affinity]

The state of Mac gaming has gotten worse with Catalina, but I am pleasantly surprised how many indie titles are Mac compatible on Steam, but the AAA games are sorely lacking.

In terms of getting AAA games on to the Mac, Apple would need to do a deal with one or two of the major publishers to publish their 2020 / 2021 lineup on Mac.

Ubisoft seems the obvious partner as they publish many games a year and have ported titles to less powerful platforms like the Switch. EA would be a big win, but they seem less amenable to supporting niche platforms.

I see huge challenges though on the software side, as converting the engines used by AAA publishers to run on the Mac means Apple embracing something like Vulkan and then the AAA publishers devoting dev time and resources to get it working well on Mac. I fear that could take a few years given where Apple are starting from.

I think the hardware challenge is probably the easiest to sort out - plenty of companies push out capable mass-market hardware that can play AAA games. A 1050ti or MX150 from years back can still play current AAA games (at low to medium settings) and do so in a tight power envelope. AMD will have something similar soon that Apple could use across its hardware if it has the will to do so.

Software challenges indeed. One problem that still seem to remain – despite game titles using Metal in MacOS – is that performance still is significantly better in Windows on the same hardware.

I guess it varies between titles, but here I have compared Tomb Raider (which Feral Interactive has given the Metal treatment) in Mac OS Catalina 10.15.2 on my Mac with AMD RX 5700 XT graphics and in Windows 10 the game still runs vastly better. Now, there is the newer Tomb Raider – Shadow of the Tomb Raider – which requires MacOS 10.15 Caralina to run. How this runs compared to Windows I don't know but I hope the Mac version is closer than this:

MacOS

Windows 10

Not by any means bad in MacOS, but seeing that the minimum frames per seconds in Windows is more or less the same as the maximum frame rate MacOS was able to achieve makes me think there's a long way to go before MacOS will be a good gaming OS when it comes to the more demanding titles and getting the best performance out of the hardware at hand. But let's hope…

I'd also like to add that aside from performance in games I have some stability problems in Windows 10 and gaming with this graphics card (AMD RX 5700 XT) that I didn't see when I had a Nvidia GTX 1070 card. No stability problems when it comes to the graphics in MacOS, so good job there Apple.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

color me skeptical. Apple and gaming have not been in sync for almost ever outside of niche developers.

That said, now could be an good time for apple to increase it's meager graphics chips and gaming priorities. With the new developer system CATALYST. https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/

Now? Apple is enabling ability to develop iOS games and port a desktop version at the same time. With this news... Apple simply making good graphics chips versions of its Mac Lineup could in fact help grow the make gaming/graphics market nicely.

No joking, this could be for real. Time will tell if this is real... possibly it could be a good time again for mac gaming combined with iOS, Apple tv gaming to be a real platform of users.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

If Apple is getting more serious about gaming with arcade - and they're already moving away from Intel with ARM in some yet-to-be-seen way...

Maybe they can build a very powerful, consumer-friendly, ARM gaming laptop using their own hardware stack and have it compete with windows gaming... That way vendors could build for ios/ipados/macos-arm in one code base.

Dude, they announced Catalyst already. this has been under development over a year. They have not announced any ARM Chip usage to replace intel, but some of this ought to go live 2020.

Mac Catalyst | Apple Developer Documentation

Create a version of your iPad app that users can run on a Mac device.

developer.apple.com

Software is already going live, so apple following up with hardware options and making sure their hardware works for a wider range of things. ie games, A.I., A.R. and more.

 

[M3gatron]

Just judging by the admittedly very small number of content creators I follow, Windows PC‘s crashing and losing the content is a fairly regular occurrence. Decreasing those occurrences increases the amount of content they can produce. And consider, many of them are ”personalities“ more than they are technically inclined. Giving them a sure fire way to to capture multiple tracks of audio and video in a format that makes editing a breeze would be an amazing enabler. THIS IS A VERY specific subset of gamer and very wild speculation

Quite a vague explanation, my own experience of actually using different Windows PCs and laptops is different, especially in the last months. Things are not perfect with Windows the same way they are not perfect with MacOS so let's not exaggerate with any of the two systems.
To me it's interesting how you extended this very limited experience to gamers and game streamers. I mean if Windows's stability would be such an obvious and widespread problem, PC gamers and streamers would be quite affected and they are a very big and vocal group, especially online, so we should have heard about it, a lot.

That could be referring to the idea that some people have ran benchmark tests with their iPhones being actively cooled, in a freezer for example, and have found that the performance stays stable and consistent during that run.

If he's referring to that than he's wrong.
What he actually said was that Apple has more thermal headroom than AMD or Nvidia. So in translation according to what he claimed Apple could possibly match AMD's, Nvidia's or intel's performance while running cooler when similar active cooling is used. He is basing this theory on the fact that iphones or ipads start to throttle when the the outside of the phone is at over 40 degrees Celsius at which point the SOC should easily be above 50 degrees Celsius. AMD's and Nvidia's GPU's often run above 80 degrees Celsius with big active cooling systems. But we are locking at different chips architecture, different platforms and software. AMD and Nvidia aren't doing anything wrong they are just hitting the limits of what achievable with current tech, Apple will have to do the same if the want to match AMD's and Nvidia's GPU performance. Simply up-scaling a mobile GPU until they hit a wall definitely won't be enough.

That tells you that if Apple had a way to actively cool the processor in the currently thermally constrained confines of an iPhone, the performance we see from day to day could be consistently higher. (Or if Apple didn’t care about how hot it got in our pockets or hands

It wouldn't really perform better. Current Apple mobile SOCs already reach on a consistent basis their peak performance without any issues. The performance is only affect when high resource intensive tasks run for very long periods and this is what active cooling would fix.

 

[sublunar]

Even if the A14x will triple or quadruple the performance of the A13 in games(which would be quite a feat even with higher power budget and 5nm) it will not be a match for the Xbox One X in gaming performance so forget any next gen console altogether.

My point as above isn't to claim that an imminent Apple ARM CPU could overpower the AMD SoC being laid on for Sony and Microsoft.

'Gaming performance' should not mean that the most triangles per second 'wins'.

For the moment the point would be to get into the same ballpark and publicly demonstrate that Apple's ARM architecture isn't here for just playing Candy Crush.

Nobody expects 50 percent year on year benchmark improvements on an annual basis but Apple can avoid having to pay for a bespoke AMD solution as sold to either of the gaming giants because of their extensive ARM expertise.

There's possibly a few too many people scoffing at a presumed intent by Apple to service gamers by:

a. Somehow creating that xMac for Intel/AMD/NVIdia gaming - something they've been avoiding for years now and people have pointed out that macOS gaming drivers are far behind.
b. Somehow unveiling ARM tech that's going to blow Sony and Microsoft out of the water in terms of on paper benchmarks.

As always, Apple will walk their own path and with the benefit of reflection I'm increasingly doubting the think it depends very much on how seriously they are taking AppleTV+ and Apple Arcade.

Apple will want to sell a box that is capable of streaming AppleTV+ as well as do decent service for games to help the Apple Arcade venture. The current 5th generation AppleTV uses an A10X CPU. A 6th generation model was mooted last year with an A12 cpu (not A12X). When the report was published the A12 was just about to be superseded by the A13 as used in the iPhone 11 and would have been out of date.

This suggests that the 6th generation would have been a like for like incremental upgrade and probably at the same price. If released now the A12 would look long in the tooth given that Apple have an A13 available and could be producing an A13X for iPad Pros.

If they were looking for a boost to AppleTV+ and Apple Arcade then for the former they should have simultaneously launched a new AppleTV box - instead they handed out free 12 month subs for people who buy an Apple Device. This perhaps is an admission that there's not enough content at the moment on the service, they haven't got a library of archival stuff and popular IP to the extent of Netflix or a Disney +. It also might be the reason that Apple decided not to release new AppleTV hardware last year.

Apple Arcade still sounds very much like a casual gamers offering - nothing too complex headlining the service and no big name games to create buzz - unless Apple are saving a compelling headliner for a WWDC style event (see below).

And even then a headliner probably wouldn't be included in Apple Arcade - surely?

Nintendo is a gaming industry veteran which owns some of the most popular game IPs in the industry. This is their secret.

If Apple buy up a software house and pump some serious investment into making good original entertainment software they would boost the iOS gaming ecosystem. But it would be almost unheard of for Apple to make big waves by purchasing Nintendo, Square Enix, or other studio. Unlike TV content a new game development may take some time to get off the ground (like over a year).

Apple are famously reluctant to bring stuff in house but I think they have to do more to give Apple Arcade a shot in the arm. I'm not talking about AAA stuff, but they have a platform with which to create original IP which seems to be what they are doing with AppleTV+.

Last time I did the calculation, roughly an A12X GPU is about 1/6th of an iMac Pro, and an A12X would probably be happy at 10W continuous? So we’re in the ballpark. (IF you consider aniMac Pro GPU good enough...)

But really, Mac mini is just to show what could be done at the low end.
At the higher end we can have iMac at, what, 120W budget? And iMac Pro at what, 200W?

Apple has way more thermal headroom for CPU, and also appears to have more thermal headroom than AMD and nV for GPU (in part I suspect because they’re willing to use more constrained and expensive packaging — on-interposer GPU chiplets and lots of HBM, rather than PCI cards and socketed VRAM).

Apple have a higher bar too, they want things to be quiet. Not just powerful. Unfortunately that usually means things run hot. If they were more serious about games they would have to solve the issue of sustaining maximum performance for hours at a time at a civilised volume (possibly using a large heatsink?).

Perhaps without Jony Ive's Design Group pushing for compromised cases I'd like to think that Apple went back to the drawing board with a new larger case for the AppleTV Pro (6th generation) to allow for a sensible heatsink and fan)

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Quite a vague explanation

Not only vague, completely unmoored from the scientific process! This is anecdotal information at BEST.. and I’m sure some of the streamers SAY they had issues so they won’t face the wrath of their Patreons But, some of the producers like to show the video of when the game crashes or define the effects of the capture software crashing during the recording (no audio here because... IDK!). Sometimes they lose minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes some incompatibility somewhere in the workflow means that things work, but video is out of sync or the capture is causing the frame rate to spike making playing impossible. ALL of these are things that people learn how to fix, and there are some that would be willing to buy into a system that decreases the likelihood of these issues AND makes preparing the upload for YouTube a lot easier.

it's interesting how you extended this very limited experience to gamers and game streamers.

I’m glad you found it interesting, I had a hoot thinking about and writing it And remember this is mainly because this whole convoluted hootenanny in my mind is still more likely than Apple doing anything remotely close to becoming a big player in high end gaming. This... this is all about creating a solid workflow, no huge technological hurdles need to be jumped in order to create something that provide some value.

What he actually said was that Apple has more thermal headroom than AMD or Nvidia.

Yeah, that’s not what I was saying. I mean, that statement is POSSIBLE, but we don’t have enough information about when A-series processors fail and under what conditions. It COULD be that Apple has settled on 2.whatever GHz because that meets their power draw/thermal demands, but each one of them is so well designed that, given enough cooling, they could run reliably at 3GHz or more. Or, it could be that no matter how cool they are, they just cannot run over their stated speed without errors. I think I can say that it’s technically physically possible for them to be clocked significantly higher with cooling, but we have zero data indicating how likely that would be.

Simply up-scaling a mobile GPU until they hit a wall definitely won't be enough.

I agree it won’t be enough, BUT I’d bet that the first step was for Apple to take sample units and clock them until they hit the wall, then iteratively design around what caused them to hit the wall.

It wouldn't really perform better.

By “perform better” I was including the ”long running” scenario, too. Theoretically, I’m guessing if I set two identical iPhones to perform one of those stress test benchmarks, one in a freezer would finish ahead of one sitting at room temperature. Because the one in the freezer would never be triggered to slow down. It would maintain it’s full performance during the entire export. But, now that I think about it, Apple could very well limit certain heavy lift tasks so that they will never take up too much of the CPU.... hmmm, may be something fun to try out over the weekend

 

[dgdosen]

Yeah but Xbox One S is the slow Xbox One, it was slow and disappointing from the moment it was launched(I'm talking about both the Original Xbox One and One S). An old and slow, low end PC GPU like an Nvidia GTX 750Ti offers equal of better gaming performance and this is a GPU launched in 2014.
Xbox One X is like 4-6 times faster than the S and next Xbox will offer at least a 2X performance jump vs Xbox One X.

There's no way an Apple developed ARM based computer could compete in gaming with an optimized box like Xbox or PlayStation which are backed by the entire triple A gaming industry.
Even if the A14X doubles the performance of a theoretical A13X is would still be slower in games than an Xbox One X.

Also Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 will offer real time ray tracing hardware supported and they will be supported by the latest high tech game engines. How is Apple going to compete with that?

You seem much more knowledgeable on the subject than I - thanks for your insight. I still wonder if there's some kind of advancement to be had in:

- Apple's mobile GPUs getting some big thermal gain in 5nm technology vs current competition
- Apple's major focus on machine learning - which, as Nvidia has shown, demonstrates similar compute needs in linear algebra for ML as in linear algebra for graphics

 

[MatrixRabbit]

How about just allowing the games that exist today to be played native in MacOS?! It's annoying as I travel and have a 43" G-Sync monitor at home (Predator) for "real" gaming. I just want to travel light, and play some games in the hotel alongside work, and not restart each time. On Windows, I just Alt-Tab, respond to e-mails or write some docs, and click right back into the game.

 

[Stella]

How about just allowing the games that exist today to be played native in MacOS?! It's annoying as I travel and have a 43" G-Sync monitor at home (Predator) for "real" gaming. I just want to travel light, and play some games in the hotel alongside work, and not restart each time. On Windows, I just Alt-Tab, respond to e-mails or write some docs, and click right back into the game.

Why? It isn't commercially feasible, they aren't enough Mac gamers. Converting windows games to Mac isn't cheap. So, it's not worth the effort or risk for the majority of gaming companies. Also, Macs don't have the quality of graphic cards readily available that Windows PC do, so the Mac counterparts will be compromises.

 

[pertusis1]

My guess is that the reason the hardware for this is totally up in the air is that it is not a piece of hardware at all. What if they expanded the arcade, use server computing, and apple takes responsibility for coordinating porting of a wide variety of games.

 

[PabloSRT8]

so right after I get my first Windows computers (been using Mac since 94) they’ll make a gaming rig????
I just got an Area-51m.
Oh well...

 

[Unregistered 4U]

so right after I get my first Windows computers (been using Mac since 94) they’ll make a gaming rig????
I just got an Area-51m.
Oh well...

I think you’re still in a better place. The reality that existed when you made the decision still exists today, AND this is just a rumor

 

[sublunar]

I wonder if we're approaching this incorrectly. What if Apple are actually considering a Cloud gaming service to go alongside Apple Arcade - like an Apple Arcade+ but for AAA class titles? These titles would be run on high performance servers in the cloud and be served out for paying Apple customers on a subscription.

CNet has a recent article on Cloud Gaming and it may be a reason why Apple won't be overtly making a games console to challenge Sony and Microsoft.

Licensing games to be streamed to less powerful hardware connected to high speed fibre or cable internet? It just needs to be able to display (up to) 4k HDR content at 60-120Hz - would an AppleTV box cope with that?

Maybe Apple wanted to pause the (then) A12 powered 6th generation AppleTV until they could launch the service or use A13/A13X cpu to future proof?

It might then be able to play on a gamer orientated MacBook and/or iMac SKU with the required (variable?) refresh rate but perhaps without the heavy duty CPU/GPU that several folks on here have been suggesting is necessary.

Obviously you'd lose the ability to play local games and I suppose that lag for multiplayer games might be problematic.

 

[VJNeumann]

I wonder if we're approaching this incorrectly. What if Apple are actually considering a Cloud gaming service to go alongside Apple Arcade - like an Apple Arcade+ but for AAA class titles?

The trouble is the "source" of the supposed leak is in the hardware manufacturing chain. So if it were true at all, it'd have to be a piece of hardware.

Personally, I think it sounds like the most absurd Mac-related rumor to be taken remotely seriously in years. I can see Apple making a play in the gaming space, but it'd almost surely begin in the much, much larger casual gaming space that they already have a good foothold in, and then (as the person above noted) something in Cloud gaming that might be sufficiently platform agnostic as to run AAA games on OSX. Although the latency issue would still rule out pro gaming/e-sports for the foreseeable future.

But actually selling a gaming computer right now to AAA gamers with no Nvidia, no AMD, an OS they reflexively hate that also has almost no games on it, no RGB lighting, the Apple tax and all the cultural baggage that the Mac brand has among pro gamers, which I'd liken to trying to sell a business suit to a pro skater... it's frankly laughable. (And for the handful of gamers who don't want that Alienware/RGB aesthetic, there's already options like Lian Li cases.)

Not to mention if any of this were true, Apple would be harassing developers to either port to, or optimize for, Metal. And that's where the leak would come from: dozens of game studios suddenly getting dev kits and support from Apple, and job postings about OSX support.

 

[sublunar]

The trouble is the "source" of the supposed leak is in the hardware manufacturing chain. So if it were true at all, it'd have to be a piece of hardware.

Personally, I think it sounds like the most absurd Mac-related rumor to be taken remotely seriously in years. I can see Apple making a play in the gaming space, but it'd almost surely begin in the much, much larger casual gaming space that they already have a good foothold in, and then (as the person above noted) something in Cloud gaming that might be sufficiently platform agnostic as to run AAA games on OSX. Although the latency issue would still rule out pro gaming/e-sports for the foreseeable future.

But actually selling a gaming computer right now to AAA gamers with no Nvidia, no AMD, an OS they reflexively hate that also has almost no games on it, no RGB lighting, the Apple tax and all the cultural baggage that the Mac brand has among pro gamers, which I'd liken to trying to sell a business suit to a pro skater... it's frankly laughable. (And for the handful of gamers who don't want that Alienware/RGB aesthetic, there's already options like Lian Li cases.)

Not to mention if any of this were true, Apple would be harassing developers to either port to, or optimize for, Metal. And that's where the leak would come from: dozens of game studios suddenly getting dev kits and support from Apple, and job postings about OSX support.

Well, to be fair, they can only speculate on the software based on the hardware clues. Could this hardware clue include more powerful GPU (relatively speaking) tied into a variable refresh rate display - eg 120Hz 4k 24" IPS panel with low latency for an iMac SKU? If tied into a Radeon Pro 5700 - for example - someone in the hardware supply chain might conclude that Apple is suddenly wanting to attract gamers when all they are doing is sampling up for a future video editing Pro SKU.

And clearly if Apple have allowed stepping down refresh rates on macOS Catalina in the MacBook Pro 16" to match video editing frequencies could they be looking to see about doubling up to 48Hz to 96Hz (or 60Hz to 120Hz) for example?

Alternatively, Apple may just be wanting to sample a panel that could allow a Pro-motion type display refresh and trying this on a 27" 5k would be way too expensive both in terms of panel and GPU required to run it acceptably - or maybe they are actually doing it too?

The interpretation of 'gamer Mac' might have come from hardware assemblers making sample devices to Apple specifications who have no idea of the purpose of the software being developed for the hardware under test.

The kind of gaming APIs required to get Apple up to parity with the years of head start that Windows has some headwinds to take notice of: a huge installed user base for DirectX gaming, equipment choice with Nvidia being very much top dog in the horsepower/heat/value/optimisation for several years now, and simple demographic of the average Mac buyer is a lot of negative traction for traditional gamers.

Even if Apple quietly bought a gaming studio to get exclusivity or paid for development time from a huge studio - that news would get out too. And it hasn't.