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Valve Drops Mac Support for SteamVR Less Than Three Years After WWDC 2017 Announcement

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Valve on Thursday announced that SteamVR no longer supports macOS so that its team "can focus on Windows and Linux."

valve-steamvr-mac.jpg

As noted by UploadVR, Mac users will still be able to use SteamVR by running Windows with virtualization software like Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. Valve says legacy builds of the virtual reality platform will also remain accessible on the Mac by right-clicking on SteamVR in Steam and selecting Properties > Betas.

Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi announced that SteamVR was coming to the Mac at WWDC 2017, but a recent Valve survey indicated that more than 95 percent of Steam users are running Windows or Linux.

Multiple reports have indicated that Apple plans to release a combination AR/VR headset by 2021 or 2022, followed by sleeker AR glasses by 2023.

Article Link: Valve Drops Mac Support for SteamVR Less Than Three Years After WWDC 2017 Announcement
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/01/valve-drops-steamvr-mac-support/
This is not surprising at all. Apple has not been friendly to developers who want to write cross-platform, enduring code, doing things like deprecating OpenGL and 32-bit support and just in general constantly making it difficult for people to keep old code working. Hell, the rumors of transitioning to ARM suggests this is going to get even worse.

Meanwhile Windows can still run binaries from 20 years ago without much issue. Windows is the gold standard for keeping code working for a long time, second only to IBM zSeries (mainframes).

As much as I love MacOS, I hate that Apple has zero respect for old software. I built a gaming machine not too long ago and no longer give a hoot about gaming on MacOS.
 
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Yep, had to update recently and see no need to spend any more money on macOS or any other Apple stuff outside of the iPhone. Apple just does not get it anymore. At least not for me. Their services are terrible and can go away in a heartbeat, just like Apple's software.
 
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DJC631 said:
Not a surprise since Apple's support for Mac gaming is non-existent.
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It is only a question or market share, Macs can be great for gaming. OS is super stable, Metal is pretty fast. Toxic comment like yours are another reason.
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zorinlynx said:
deprecating OpenGL and 32-bit support
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Thanks god they did this, hard choices are ofter the good ones.
 
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ikir said:
It is only a question or market share, Macs can be great for gaming. OS is super stable, Metal is pretty fast. Toxic comment like yours are another reason.
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Thanks god they did this, hard choices are ofter the good ones.
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Remember, these toxic replies are just opinions, useless, irrelevant opinions. For the Apple haters this is just bias confirmation. We’ve listened for decades to the cacophony of the haters and nothing they predicted has ever come to pass.
 
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I tried Steam VR on macOS for work purposes but ended getting a PC with windows 10 just for that. It was just too buggy on macOS and barely worked. It’s a catch-22. Of course,
Most users run it on windows if it’s such a terrible experience… 99% of the time it didn’t even recognize the headset and if it did it would crash almost certainly.
 
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MAC hardware has only recently been able to game at an adequate levels. Software is basically non-existent. Also, with the rumored move of the Mac to ARM and iPadOS, why would anyone develop for the MacOS in its current form?
 
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They should have announced they were discontinuing support at the same time they were announcing support for it. Anyone who is involved with gaming at all knew any type of realistic VR solution on Mac was a pipe dream.

Apple is stubborn in their support for the standards needed for gaming. The big game devs aren't going to rewrite their entire graphics subsystems to Metal and all of the other Apple centric API's for some piece of a 5% market share (most of that 5% of Steam Mac users are laptop users which don't have the horsepower anyway). Apple doesn't have that kind of pull in the Computer gaming ecosystem. Mobile devices sure, but Apple has no ability to get a foothold in desktop / laptop gaming.

And Steam is the computer equivalent of ADHD. They focus on something for a year or two, release a half assed version of it and if it doesn't pull Half Life, Portal, or Team Fortress numbers they kill it off. Similar to what Google does.
 
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ikir said:
It is only a question or market share, Macs can be great for gaming. OS is super stable, Metal is pretty fast. Toxic comment like yours are another reason.
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OS X is stable. Metal is a vast improvement. But I doubt we'll see it's potential on 'Mac' plummed until Apple goes to 'Mac ARM' where the sheer order of magnitude of the iPad/iPhone iOS platform drags the 'Mac' to genuine mass adoption status by virtue of 'quo.'

When the dev's see the $$$ signs, they'll be back.

Azrael.
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lostczech said:
Maybe from a software perspective, but as far as hardware goes, half of the Mac lineup is hamstrung by only having (crap) integrated Intel graphics. No amount of Metal revisions will help that.
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True. True. True.

Azrael.
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Madhatter32 said:
MAC hardware has only recently been able to game at an adequate levels. Software is basically non-existent. Also, with the rumored move of the Mac to ARM and iPadOS, why would anyone develop for the MacOS in its current form?
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Also true.

Azrael.
 
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lunarworks said:
macOS is indeed great for gaming on a purely technical level, but devs don't want to do all that extra work in porting.
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Yes, on paper, the Mac is good for gaming - though, lack of good GPUs certainly is an issue.

What is on paper doesn't reflect the real world. Why don't devs want to invest the time in porting games? Because there's very little demand - it's not worthwhile from a business stand point.
 
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now i see it said:
and clearly no Mac users care
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This Mac user cares. (All '1' of me...?)

But I think it's an old argument. To be replaced with a convincing new argument eg. MAC ARM. That's going to take a bit longer.

But there will be no shame in the iMac launch this year (I'm crossing my fingers...) which should be able to boot camp most PC games just fine.

I liked Marathon but when Apple flushed PPC support? I couldn't play it any longer.

Azrael.
 
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lkrupp said:
Remember, these toxic replies are just opinions, useless, irrelevant opinions. For the Apple haters this is just bias confirmation. We’ve listened for decades to the cacophony of the haters and nothing they predicted has ever come to pass.
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I'm not an Apple hater... Macs have been my daily driver since 2005... But for gaming, and especially VR? It's a dead end. That's what PCs are for. Yes, I can play Civ 6 on just about any Mac. That's great! But almost no Macs support the minimum specs for VR, and the ones that do are very expensive and have either no or very expensive GPU upgrade options, so they have a very short shelf life.
 
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Well after Apple just dropped support for all 32 bit games, I don't think they really care about Mac gaming (and they haven't in the past either). It was a happy few years while a small handful of Steam games ran on Mac at all but it wasn't going to last, and it was only thanks to Valve deciding to support the platform.

Fortunately you can install Windows 10 for free in about half an hour in BootCamp so it's not really a problem.
 
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Stella said:
Yes, on paper, the Mac is good for gaming - though, lack of good GPUs certainly is an issue.

What is on paper doesn't reflect the real world. Why don't devs want to invest the time in porting games? Because there's very little demand - it's not worthwhile from a business stand point.
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Well, the crap iG in the mini and entry iMacs doesn't help Apple's case when you have gpus like the 580x, whilst low end should be accessible to the £800 to £1200 Mac market but aren't.

iG in Macs isn't a pretty sight.


Eg. Check out the link above. £1300 and you get 12 core and Radeon 5700XT.

We don't have a Radeon 5700XT on anything Mac desktop less than £6k. It's ridiculous.

There would be a decent Mac gaming market IF they had maintained a decent tower option over the years. But they've gradually upped it's price all the way to the insane asylum.

Azrael.
 
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ikir said:
It is only a question or market share, Macs can be great for gaming. OS is super stable, Metal is pretty fast. Toxic comment like yours are another reason.
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Toxic? It's not toxic when it's a valid criticism. I want gaming on Mac to thrive. Apple has done little on their end to bring this to reality. MacOS may be ready for prime time, but lets be real the hardware side is very lacking to take advantage of that.
 
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kalafalas said:
Even if you’re one of the very few to own a Mac powerful enough for VR, you’re gonna do it in boot camp to get decent performance. Not even sure why they bothered porting it to macOS anyway.
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Yeah.

To get even mediocre gaming, you're starting with an 27 inch iMac. And then get soaked up the upsell model to get access to the Vega.

So you're well into the £2k price range before you can get access to a decent gpu.

That doesn't help Mac gaming or devs for things like VR.

Azrael.
 
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