I mean, Apple's refusal to license their OS for non-Apple hardware is unambiguously the correct decision. From Apple's perspective there are countless downsides and zero upsides to doing otherwise.
Apple is going to be huge in gaming in the mid-term future. If you have a limited, controlled hardware range, developers can tune Apple-targeted games in the same way that they tune console games. They can guarantee that everything works exactly as intended, which has been the achilles' heel of PC gaming since time immemorial.
I grew up a hardcore gamer and vehement apple-hater, but over the past decade, Apple has become the most competent consumer hardware company on earth and I'm super excited for the future here.
Game devs already support their primary mobile platforms, that make them the most money. Macs are basically for work and low intensity recreation at this point. Gamers don't buy Macs, due to low customizability.
Sure, Apple has created a platform, but at which cost? You are obliged to develop for iOS, OSX only having an Apple computer.
The platform has no escape rooms.
Windows has extended the .Net to run even on Linux and you can build Windows applications from other OSes as well.
The flexibility is in the tooling and MS knows it - see how dramatically improved Visual Studio in latest releases and now compare it with Xcode: what's new in Xcode 10? The Dark mode, what else?
The author still forgets that actually the ultimate gaming platform is still a PC with Windows. Mobile gaming has improved, but the best gaming experience (VR and not) runs on bare metal PCs.
Apple just decided to ditch OpenGL and OpenCL in favour of Metal - this will backfire in the near future, because developers look for easy tooling which allow them to use fewer but high quality APIs and not three thousands (e.g. Vulkan, UWP).
If I weren't a gamer I'd use Apple for everything. But I am, so my desktop is a PC because I couldn't buy a Mac with competitive specs. And then I chose Spotify over Apple Music because it works better with my PC. Why not buy AirPods? They don't work well with my PC. Apple might dislike gaming for whatever reason, maybe they think gamers have a bad image that will dilute their brand value or something, but in my opinion ignoring that market puts a real dent in their ecosystem. I have a Mac provided to me for work and that's the only Apple device I even have at this point which is a shame.
Well, I guess Apple will continue being a 3rd rate gaming platform then. Fuck ‘em. People who want a good gaming platform have never wanted anything to do with Apple anyway.
I’m glad that these games will not come to iOS. That means people will continue using and making games for better platforms. Apple tech is boring and sterile by comparison. The children that grew up on iOS will realize that soon enough.
Apple is justified doing whatever they want. I even agree with apple's stand that traditional gaming market doesn't matter to them. But from the traditional developers' perspective, Apple system is hostile and they have no reason to develop for Apple. Valve go out of their way to develop proton which is based on vulkan. Apple could utilize it if they have supported vulkan. Valve actively expand the linux support for old and current games. Apple has to work for it to court the traditional developers. Superior hardware doesn't mean much when the alternatives are good enough
And it's justified, because it's really not that important in money making in grand scheme of things.
There’s another problem with Mac gaming: even though Macs have a higher marketshare than they’ve ever had before, they aren’t owned by people who are expecting to use them for games.
Someone who is into the PC gaming scene already owns a gaming PC by now. If they own a Mac it’s probably their productivity machine.
It’s obviously an anecdote but that’s how I do things. I have a gaming PC and all it does is gaming. My Mac is for portable computing and general productivity. Even though I own a Mac and some of my games work on Mac (like Baldur’s Gate 3), I rarely if ever use that Mac for gaming.
I think it’s on Apple to put real money into changing that perception (and to make the OS a little better for gaming - for example, Windows handles window management for games better, Mac handles mice with scroll wheels terribly unless you get third party software).
I think it's a self-fulfilling prophesy at this point. The Mac was never really a good gaming platform (and I say this as a long-time Mac user and occasional gamer) and by now the reputation is entrenched. People who want to buy a computer for games won't buy a Mac pretty much no matter what, so Apple has no reason to court them, so they won't buy Macs, so....
Apple has made special efforts to distance itself from PC gaming, doesn't court publishers/devs, and is otherwise a troublesome platform for gaming entirely. Why would they get into gaming peripherals? What version of OpenGL does OSX ship with now anyway? What milquetoast videocard is shipping with the current gen of devices? Things like the Rift require something on the level, on a MINIMUM of the Nvidia 370, which is a near $400 card that eats up watts like no one's business.
The few OSX gamers I know just gave up and run parallels or bootcamp.
As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether.
Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.
I don’t follow that Apple doesn’t want people to play games on Macs. Of course they do. But the question becomes “Do developers want to make games for the Mac?” And the answer has been “no” most of the time because it’s expensive to develop for a small platform. You won’t get a lot of sales out of it.
Apple just recently released a porting toolkit to make it easier to get Windows games running on macOS. Frankly, not unlike the work that Valve has put in to running Windows games on Steam.
In typical Apple fashion, they want you to do things their way. Instead of bolstering OpenGL (for instance) or Vulkan they developed Metal.
Apple does want games on the Mac, but games are a bonus for Apple at this point. They’re not going to define the platform, or drive adoption.
Why would the vision pro have games? I'm still waiting for the damn iPhone to be the gaming platform they promised over a decade ago. I watched over the last few years as Mac computers somehow got more powerful than they ever were but also have lost just about all support for modern games. The truth is, despite what apple says out of their mouth at their pressers, they don't really care about gaming or have any interest in establishing a viable development environment for this platform. Valve isn't even porting their games to mac anymore despite how much fanfare the relationship with this company and apple had for years.
At that point I'd rather that regular old desktop Mac OS X got an app store of sorts and a bunch of conventions so that awesome games could be quickly developed for computers that already have better speakers, better input devices, and what not. Gaming on OS X sucks and it's a shame Apple seems to focus solely on the iPhone in that regard.
So Apple's making more profit than Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony in gaming and somehow they're doing it wrong? You're right that the Mac is a horrible gaming platform. But we're talking profits here. Apple's bread is buttered on the iPhone side, and that's where Apple is looking. They're trying to get the Mac to gain steam, but it's clearly very difficult and their heart's not in it.
In the end it's a business, whoever makes the most money is the market leader. Until the government steps in. You are right that antitrust action is the most credible threat to Apple's positon in gaming. The fact the leadership at Apple has not moved an inch to satisfy governments will be Tim Cook's black mark on his tenure.
Honestly, given the crappy direction that windows is taking, I'm ready to abandon it the minute apple can run games seamlessly. And I doubt I'm the only one.
I am now having a brief fantasy of a world where Apple pulls Proton into the OS as a Windows emulation layer for games and starts pushing their changes upstream just like Valve does.
I can think of many reasons why it would never happen but it sure would be nice. Not that I haven't been voting against Mac games with my wallet for years, I've had a Mac to get shit done with and a rotating set of consoles to play games on since about 2000, and very occasionally bought a point-and-click adventure for the Mac.
Apple is going to be huge in gaming in the mid-term future. If you have a limited, controlled hardware range, developers can tune Apple-targeted games in the same way that they tune console games. They can guarantee that everything works exactly as intended, which has been the achilles' heel of PC gaming since time immemorial.
I grew up a hardcore gamer and vehement apple-hater, but over the past decade, Apple has become the most competent consumer hardware company on earth and I'm super excited for the future here.
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