[keyle]

This, once again, misses the elephant in the room.

The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort.

The hardware has been good enough for a while now.

I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very strong IP and you've already targeted the switch2, the PS5 and XBox.

[VCFundedGenYer]

I disagree. When OS X went to Intel, there was an explosion of Mac games on Steam. Valve went all in with big ports of TF2 (complete with exclusive era-appropriate in-game items like the earbuds), and all their other games soon followed.

Apple self-owned themselves by slowly killing off support for this, culminating with the transition to the M chips and the upcoming removal of Rosetta to put the final nail in the coffin. Their negligence to support a major market is their downfall here. The hardware is more than willing, the software and company are causing the fumbles.

[bigyabai]

It could be argued that was a "right place at the right time" situation. macOS supported OpenGL at the same time as Valve was pushing for the original Steam Machine and native Linux ports. Writing a macOS port was a much easier job back then.

Apple's pivot to Metal and mobile-first distribution was the beginning of the end. The iPhone's revenue potential eclipsed the value that Mac gaming could ever provide, and Apple made sure to capture it with the App Store. Once Tim Cook showed everyone how easy it was to make service revenue, the execs probably realized that they could make bank off of a captive, game-deprived customerbase.

[SXX]

Easy fix. Apple can just stop breaking compatibility and partner with Valve to port Proton support to Mac.

But they wont do it because they want to push their own walled garden. And obviously no one will support it because macOS market share is smaller than Linux market share.

[sunaookami]

>macOS market share is smaller than Linux market share

Not true? macOS has like 12-14% and Linux 3-4%

[SXX]

If you check Steam hardware survey you'll see Linux market sgare is 3% against macOS 2%. This is what matter for game studios.

[sunaookami]

That's because it makes no sense to use Steam on macOS because there are nearly no compatible games and Steam itself only has an ARM version on Beta and the Intel version is unusably slow. Overall a catch-22 situation though.

[SXX]

Its not like every single Linux PC have Steam installed either. And if you run Steam client under Wine / Crossover it able to properly detect real platform.

[surgical_fire]

A very big portion of that is corporate.

I have a macbook home, the one issued by my employer. My personal laptop runs Linux.

[numpad0]

That's not the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room for gaming on Mac is Apple's policy non-commitment to traditional gaming. Technical support for non-gambling gaming is just a checkbox item to them for mandatory 45-second segments in product launches. That transcends into their customers and develop into various gaming and Mac related chicken and egg problems.

[matthewmacleod]

Isn’t the point that significantly reducing the effort required changes the “is it worth it” equation?

[ido]

    That isn't worth the effort 

Maybe I'm too unambitious as a small indie, but "porting" my game to mac merely requires building that target (I use unity & have both mac and windows automated building scripts - I press a button and it builds and uploads both to steam). There's nowhere in my codebase where I had to specifically adapt to one or the other.

[larrry]

Some engines nicely support Mac out of the box. I’m making a party fighter in LOVE2D and am having a good time developing and playing on Mac (cross platform online play is working well too, my friends are all Windows).

Maybe Unity or Godot also offer this benefit? If so then Mac gaming could become much better supported, at least from indies!

[Nursie]

I don't get this attitude.

It'll never be enough until it is. Making porting lower-effort and higher performance can only help.

[AnthonyMouse]

Apple is getting kind of a PR problem with developers. In theory they don't do all the same things on Mac as they do on iOS, but as long as they continue to do them on iOS and keep feature creeping the gatekeeper stuff, people are hesitant to end up stuck with Apple taking 30% of their revenue or denying their app for opaque reasons after they've spent big money to develop it.

At which point who is going to spend development resources helping the platform of the company they're most afraid of screwing them if it becomes more popular? Half the reason more game developers are targeting Linux is a hedge against Microsoft doing that sort of thing, and Apple is on the opposite side of where they want to move.

[danaris]

This idea that Apple has been plotting this whole time to turn the Mac into iOS, in terms of limiting the software you can run to their own App Store, is a tired meme that makes zero sense given what we've seen from Apple in the past...checks...19 years.

Like, seriously, do you think they need longer than that to do it if it's really what they plan?

If they were ever going to do it, it would've been when they switched to Apple Silicon chips, and...they didn't!

Perpetuating the idea does no one any favors. It's just pointless paranoia.

[AnthonyMouse]

They've been gradually making it harder to install third party software without their approval.

The Mac App Store hasn't existed for 19 years. Then they started displaying scary warnings for apps downloaded from the internet. Now they require code signing for third party apps. Meanwhile they not only obviously do it on iOS but are adamant that no one even attempt to do otherwise, even in the face of law requiring them to.

It's not paranoia when they're really out to get you.

[bigyabai]

> If they were ever going to do it, it would've been when they switched to Apple Silicon chips, and...they didn't!

They did, though;

- macOS lost support for eGPU and dGPU drivers

- OpenGL support was frozen to focus on Apple's mobile GPU API

- Apple promoted Mac Catalyst apps instead of pushing Mac-native ones

- The iOS and iPadOS App Stores became available on macOS alongside the native store

- The macOS design language was reworked to take cues from overly padded touch-first design

- iBoot became the hardware entrypoint, which Apple has authority over with OTA updates in macOS

- UEFI and ACPI went away, forcing devicetree drivers to be reverse engineered with zero documentation

Old Macs are just computers. None of these limitations apply to them because you can pick one up and install a normal OS if these concessions concern you. Apple Silicon was shipped in a way that deliberately prevented reverse-engineering and gives Apple the ability to revoke boot-time features if alternative OSes ever threaten them. They depreciated vast swathes of functionality that professionals relied on, and eventually depreciated the Mac Pro altogether. Their tentpole desktop products are a Mac Mini, a bigger Mac Mini, and the iMac. There's not any hardware left for real pros.

But you're still unconvinced, right?

Well, look at Apple's revenue breakdown. The Mac is not carrying much water, and it's a huge sinkhole of resources to constantly maintain and update the OS on a yearly update cadence. Conversely, the iPad is doing great, making almost as much money as the Mac does with vastly cheaper hardware (and bigger profit margins, too). If Apple could have their druthers, they'd start polishing the iPad experience, ship "Pro" hardware to entice developers and boundary pushers, slowly roll out support for HID and external display support, and eventually provide a sort of cloud service for building applications within the Apple ecosystem. Oh wait, I've just described things they've already done! https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

Apple has no obligation to their niche pros, anymore. They already cut them out and depreciated their rackmount and short-lived wheeled PC. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Apple is internally laser-focused on depreciating the Mac and macOS both, either with the Vision hardware or by promoting the iPad as a laptop replacement a-la Microsoft's Surface Pro.

[danaris]

> They did, though;

You cite a bunch of changes, but none of them are what people have actually been claiming for the past 19 that Apple will do: preventing us from installing arbitrary software on our Macs.

I still have my MacPorts installation, which works fine, and installs all kinds of command-line tools.

I can still write anything I want on my Mac, compile or interpret it, and run it.

I can still install whatever I want from outside the Mac App Store.

This is a classic example of goalpost-moving.

[puelocesar]

That really doesn’t make any sense. Do you really think Apple will ban steam on macOS overnight?

[tick_tock_tick]

Nah there will be a new model and a new OS version on it that will only lets you use the App Store (30% tax of course). People here will complain and a fuck ton of people will dick ride Apple with bullshit about how they shouldn't buy that new laptop and they should feel privileged for Apple allowing any money to go to the person actually providing you value.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's not how you boil a frog.

If it gets popular enough then they start trying to get games to use their app store instead of Steam, gradually make it easier to use that and harder to use anything else, then the gate closes only after the herd is where they want it.

Better, then, if it never gets popular enough to begin with.

[fortedoesnthack]

Personally I would gladly switch to mac as my actual personal PC if games ran well on it.

[zer0zzz]

I think you are right. I suspect any mac gaming share that gets bootstrapped will have to come the crossover/proton way. Thats probably good enough for starters.

[Havoc]

Gotta start somewhere