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I love reading the comments on Mac Rumour articles when it's negative news for Apple's platforms or services. To paraphrase: "Vulcan bad!" "Lazy Devs!" "But they support Linux?" and "What a dumb business decision!"
Yes, Apple zealots, Valve is absolutely going to support your vendor-specific graphics API on a platform that they aren't making much money from, and will continue to support and test that platform for years, operating as a charity because they love Apple so much 😂
One of the comments said
You can expect this to continue happening for as long as Apple pushes Metal and refuses to support Vulkan [...] If macOS wants to get anywhere it has to be a case "why not support it" instead of "we need to make a Metal compatible version of our engine".
And I couldn't have said it better myself
Don't forget that Apple actively breaks software build processes quite frequently for their platform and doesn't allow you to fully automate a lot of them because you need accounts to download the relevant tools and can only use them on Apple hardware. That makes supporting it a pain for cross platform projects.
It sucks when you want to port an app to iOS, or an application to MacOS and find out "oh... I need to have a Mac to compile to these platforms.. and there's no way to otherwise test.."
Meanwhile, with android you can just run an emulator.
I am with Valve, who plays games on Mac anyway?
Blizzard used to support Mac very well. Diablo and WoW always supported Mac. Valve as well, most Valve first party titles released for Mac. Played lots of Portal 1/2, CS:GO. Also played Minecraft, Sims, KSP.
Ye, but why? Probably some deals between the two companies.
When Microsoft - Activision deal will finalize, you can forget about that too.
For a while it was Intel and ppc but similar graphics back end. Then it was Intel on both. But Mac had a special graphics back end. Now with Mac it's arm and proprietary graphics back end both. While they've been willing to put up with one or the other in the past. It's just not worth it to deal with both for such a small user base.
Exactly, and they can simply use Windows in a virtual machine anyway.
MS have been pretty good at putting their games in rival stores to appease regulators, I could see them trying to get them on Mac too, especially with apple playing for the games market now too with their new chips.
I do! Lots of modded Minecraft, also Hades, Witcher 3, Tears of the Kingdom and Hollow Knight.
It often requires some tinkering and there isn’t that many games but other than that I love it. Baldur’s Gate 3 released on Mac so I’ll probably play it too eventually. Used to play CS GO, Portal 2 and the other Valve classics back in the day.
If Apple cared about Mac gaming it would actually be great since the recent Macs especially are really capable. But they don’t, so.. it’ll probably stay a niche thing.
I do too! Minecraft and Factorio for sure. BG3 is underwhelming on my M1 MBA, even with the extra RAM, but I mostly use GeForce now for games. I found an adapter from Cable Matters to get that sweet 120Hz at 4k through HDMI. It looks amazing on my TV. The company provides some alternative firmware you can put on the USB-C dongle to make it work, though you need a Windows machine to upgrade the firmware.
I really have no interest in getting another laptop or building a gaming PC I will ignore. I can't justify it. This thing is light, has amazing battery life, and runs everything I need it to. I have a console for other games. If the game isn't on console, osx, or GeForce Now, I just won't play it.
I do agree with some of the others that it would be nice if they got on the Vulcan train.
Ayy, nice! I got a base 14" M1 Pro myself and it's a blast, especially thanks to that display. The refresh rate, brightness and colors are amazing. If you'd like to stay with a single computer, I'd totally recommend upgrading to it as the performance makes a lot more games playable.
Check out the Create mod in Minecraft if you like Factorio, you will love it. It's basically Factorio but in Minecraft. Oh and Hades should run well on your MBA as well, I'd recommend you try it if you haven't already!
though you need a Windows machine to upgrade the firmware.
that's a hilarious detail.
Indeed. They were upfront about it at least. You are literally using their inhouse firmware tool that isn't publicly available. After sending the request, I had the files and guide same day. I used my work laptop for it and it took 5 minutes. Easy peasy.
This is the model I got: https://www.cablematters.com/pc-1485-126-usb-c-multiport-adapter-with-8k-hdmi-2x-usb-30-gigabit-ethernet-and-power-delivery.aspx
Article/Blog Post: https://www.cablematters.com/Blog/HDMI/how-to-get-4k120hz-with-mac
But why? Why would you buy a Mac twice the price for gaming when you can buy other cheaper gaming brands?
You said it right, Apple doesn't care about gaming, and so are their customers.
Apple would not move a finger without return.
They probably use it for many things other than gaming?
That's exactly my point lol
Never said I bought it for gaming. It’s my main computer I use for everything, and if I can use it for games, I will.
I also have a desktop PC I use only for gaming but I rarely turn it on, it’s annoying to switch computers and I would rather play on a laptop most of the times.
Did you buy it for browsing and social media? Watching movies maybe? Lol
Come-on let's be honest here, most Mac users buy a Mac just for the Apple logo and nothing much.
I bought my MacBook Pro 2011, never did anything more than social and consuming medias. Any laptop would have worked out for me (since that model has Intel graphic).
Any integration between an iPhone and Mac can be achieved between an Android and a PC (Windows or Linux).
Typical Lemmy user lmao, come on. I feel like this is the kind of shit I used to read on 9Gag 10 years ago.
I bought the thing for programming, photo editing, graphic design, video editing and general tinkering. And indeed it’s fantastic for media consumption as well thanks to the great display and speakers.
The main reason I enjoy macOS is the third party apps. There are lots macOS only apps I absolutely love to use because of their great UI and features. Things like Transmit, Telegram for macOS, Final Cut, Screenflow, IINA, Alfred, BetterTouchTool, Parallels Desktop and Fantastical come to mind. There are alternatives to these elsewhere of course, but none come close in quality in my opinion.
I don’t even use any of Apple’s services, not even iMessage. I think lots are unreliable (or there are better third party alternatives) and I don’t like the feeling of being in a walled garden.
It’s a great investment because it holds its money really well. My old 2012 MacBook Pro can still be sold for like 400€ whereas most PC laptops of that era would be worthless by now.
Not going to defend Apple’s stupid attitude towards right to repair or any other issue. They’re FAR from perfect.
Not saying you’re wrong about the Apple logo thing when it comes to normies, but as a power user there are many reasons to love Macs. And even normies can enjoy good build and software quality, just let people enjoy their things. As long as it’s not a monopoly like iPhones are starting to become, I don’t see the problem.
So you agreed with me then.
Get a real computer
I don't think I have ever known anyone who has played a game on mac since the 1990's.
I did a ton of years ago, using wine bottles to run pirated windows games... ran like shit on my macbook
Mac locks so many people out of their ecosystem I have little to no sympathy. Apple has the money to bring this game to Mac if they really wanted.
The irony is that volunteers are going to get CS2 running on Apple Silicon before apple purely by reverse engineering their GPUs for Asahi Linux.
Apple really thought they could do what AMD and 3DFX failed to do and randomly push a competitor to Vulkan/OpenGL that only supports a handful of hardware SKUs that aren't dominant in the market anyway.
Metal is incredibly successful... Just not on Mac. It's the graphics API that drives the iPhone and iPad.
It seems like they're worrying about Macs again, but when Metal was released the focus was iOS and it did bring significant performance improvements to that platform.
We can say whatever we want about mobile games, but in numbers, they're dominant and the App Store is one of Apple's biggest revenue sources.
Every 3D game on iOS is Metal.
Sure, metal offered significant improvements over opengl when it released, but now that vulkan exists apple doesn’t have any more excuses.
I don't disagree - I don't own Apple products, and I very much would prefer if all games also dropped DirectX.
But my point is that Metal didn't fail, and it's not "used in a minority of devices" and Apple isn't "crazy for thinking they would succeed with a new graphics API for games" because by all relevant metrics, dominance over mobile gaming is much more important.
The irony is that volunteers are going to get CS2 running on Apple Silicon before apple purely by reverse engineering their GPUs for Asahi Linux
Really? x86 games emulated usably on ARM?
Source 1 engine games like half life are running atm via box_x86
Games "tend" to dominate a single, or very few cores. With modern PCs having 4 or more. You can push an isa-translator off on to a low power core. Since it won't be a constant, heavy lifting task. Then push the translated instructions through your high performance cores. Your biggest penalty on that will generally be a small bit of latency.
Your biggest hit will likely come from having to wrap graphics APIs. But again, that hit is generally what it takes to do the same under Linux with wine/proton.
But as long as your CPUs can push the instructions fast enough. Your data bus can manage the data transfers in a timely manner. And your graphics subsystem can handle the load. It's a doable task.
It's very similar to emulating retro systems in a number of ways.
And also Source 2 engine only supports Directx 11 and Vulkan
Wonder if they’re able to tell how many people are playing it on GeForce now?
Actually runs really well on GeForce Now. Yes you need a strong internet connection but it fills the void for the rare times I want to play.
uninstalled it today, it's really a gameplay downgrade from cs:go and that wasn't my fav cs by far.
really shitty that they basically took cs:go away too. yeah, I dig the levels and lighting and crosshairs but otherwise the experience, both multiplayer and even bot practice gameplay was pretty meh.
I don't think you can even play workshop maps with friends anymore, game's useless now.
That or i couldn't find the option for 10 minutes
Not there yet, but the odds are good that it's gonna return as soon as they're finished fixing the game. For the old Workshop you can switch to the csgo beta branch.