Your ideal gaming Mac

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Romeo_RX

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Apple wants AAA gaming back. They are building GPUs, they have a FSR/DLSS competitor, their own version of DirectStorage, the most important game engines all support Metal. VR is near.

Most importantly, they have money. So it’s going to happen, okay?

For starters in an esports focused MacBook Air , I want a high refresh display , lightspeed like wireless mouse tech, good positional audio (hello gaming AirPods) and a more durable keyboard. Please, no RGB.
 
Mac does a lot of things right, but gaming is not one of them. They still have a long way to go before it's a truly viable alternative to a Windows gaming PC
 
Money well spent elsewhere for gaming or wait for M2 chip at least.

You can install iOS on PC.
 
PhireSide said:
Mac does a lot of things right, but gaming is not one of them. They still have a long way to go before it's a truly viable alternative to a Windows gaming PC
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Such as? Linux now has Proton. Miracles happen. Especially if you have aforementioned money.
 
Nike7 said:
the most important game engines all support Metal.
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AFAIK one game, resident evil something, will support it?

Also, I can understand them wanting a piece of the PC gaming pie, but their forced obsolescence model does not work well for it.
Want to play game X, buy a new mac vs a new graphics gard
 
Used to pay Quake 3 on a 800Mhz Mac G4 back in the day.

A mate who just bought "snazzy" new 1.2Ghz Althon XP who also had a Radeon 7500 was shocked the Mac at around half the clock speed of the AMD got around 10 more frame per second.

Around the same amount of frags he got from me. :ROFL:
 
kolaval said:
AFAIK one game, resident evil something, will support it?
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Village, yes. Because it’s getting a VR patch and Apple needs a VR gaming launch lineup for their headset. More will come.
 
Nike7 said:
Such as? Linux now has Proton. Miracles happen. Especially if you have aforementioned money.
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Of the 200+ games I have available to me spread out over Steam and Epic Games, I can probably play 10 - 15% of them. On Windows, I can play 100% of them.

Emulation performance with Rosetta/Crossover is not at an acceptable level just yet, and seeing as Apple are going full-steam with their in-house chips, software support and support from game devs would need to be there first.

I'm not hedging my bets on a 'miracle' in this regard, and the fix is likely not a quick one either. It will take years for developers to port their games to run natively on Apple Silicon, not to mention financial incentive for what is a very small % of the market at the present moment.
 
PhireSide said:
Of the 200+ games I have available to me spread out over Steam and Epic Games, I can probably play 10 - 15% of them. On Windows, I can play 100% of them.

Emulation performance with Rosetta/Crossover is not at an acceptable level just yet, and seeing as Apple are going full-steam with their in-house chips, software support and support from game devs would need to be there first.

I'm not hedging my bets on a 'miracle' in this regard, and the fix is likely not a quick one either. It will take years for developers to port their games to run natively on Apple Silicon, not to mention financial incentive for what is a very small % of the market at the present moment.
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Yes but forget PC gamers for a moment - console gamers have went through the fresh start gaming library many times in the past. I don’t think it’s going to be that much of an issue. The dudes in the PS5 thread are getting backwards compatibility but asking why anyone wants to play old stuff. That’s how they see it.

Surely there’s a market that sits somewhere between PC and console.
 
PhireSide said:
Emulation performance with Rosetta/Crossover is not at an acceptable level just yet
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They just need to support a cross platform subsystem like Vulkan. The small bit of kernel hooks are negligible to port.

So no, no emulation.
 
Watch Twitch for a while - observe how many esports players have a MacBook lying on a pile of dirty laundry in the background
 
Nike7 said:
Yes but forget PC gamers for a moment - console gamers have went through the fresh start gaming library many times in the past. I don’t think it’s going to be that much of an issue. The dudes in the PS5 thread are getting backwards compatibility but asking why anyone wants to play old stuff. That’s how they see it.

Surely there’s a market that sits somewhere between PC and console.
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I think the person who doesn't want to sit at his desk and game, or sit on the couch and game, would probably be the type to game on the go (mobile - think gaming on smartphones or something like the Steam Deck or Switch).

With regards to the gaming library, Microsoft really has a nice solution there with Xbox/PC Game Pass. Having the ability to play Xbox games on your PC is a winning combo for a Microsoft household.

I used to be an avid PC gamer, but I've become a bit lazier since I sold it a few years back - now I mainly game on the PS4 and sometimes play the odd mobile game here and there.

I tried gaming on my MBA, but it was not a very pleasant experience. I get that it's not built for it, but I did imagine it to run nicely with the M1 chip, but it just didn't feel 'right'.
 
Apple TV 4K is already a games console, and that isn’t even its final form.
 
Nike7 said:
Apple wants AAA gaming back. They are building GPUs, they have a FSR/DLSS competitor, their own version of DirectStorage, the most important game engines all support Metal. VR is near.

Most importantly, they have money. So it’s going to happen, okay?

For starters in an esports focused MacBook Air , I want a high refresh display , lightspeed like wireless mouse tech, good positional audio (hello gaming AirPods) and a more durable keyboard. Please, no RGB.
Click to expand...
This is my ideal gaming mac

 
confused-jaguarsfan.gif
 
The pieces are starting to fall into place and it would be fairly easy for them to take AAA gaming more seriously, but until it happens i wouldn't hold out much hope. A more impressive Apple arcade is more likely, if anything.

They seem to more interested in causal gaming.

Just keep a Windows machine around or stick to consoles.
 
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