Okay, the ones using this only for ~~work~~ office work, the browser and Netflix won't mind, but for the rest this presents a huge separation from what is available elsewhere. I must miss something.
Depending on how the announcement and rollout goes I could see myself buying one of the last intel 16” MacBooks, or just being content with my 2018, and either way not upgrading for a while.
I suspect that if the transition is “successful,” the first year or two on ARM will include a few noticeable trade offs, but those will quickly be “washed away” by a substantial performance gap where Apple’s hardware is just a LOT better than everyone else.
And if the transition is “unsuccessful,” well, I may end up finally buying a gaming PC... or just deciding I don’t care about the small handful of PC games I play and sticking to console.
Gaming on Mac has been second class for.... ever, so I would say anyone who really cares already has a windows machine.
But one last thought, keep in mind that while the quality of games is somewhat lower, the quantity on iOS is off the charts, including many games with high end graphics.
In a weird twist of fate, it’s possible that Apple’s decision to merge its desktops and laptops into the same architecture as its mobile phones actually increases the total addressable market so much that game makers are _more_ interested in doing the small amount of extra work it would take to make a game work on Mac as well as iOS. This happened when Firaxis started making Civ for iOS and then ended up updating the Mac version to use Metal, and when they did the performance was worlds better.
Even beyond games, the thing is that nearly every development platform these days is an abstraction above the hardware - be it the JVM, the web browser, etc - and the rest (of the new ones coming out) are built to be cross-platform from the get go. Just look at how smoothly Rust/Cargo can target different architectures. I'm sure the same is true for Go.
I highly doubt that. The architecture difference is too big, and gaming studios are not known to press that button even if it's available. The native Linux gaming support story speaks to that. That they will port existing games is even more unlikely.
Will be funny to re-read that comment in the future, be it right or wrong.
The existence of gaming on Mac I think is largely due to companies that support it by choice, like Blizzard, and I don't see why they would abandon the platform due to a CPU architecture change.
Unity and Unreal do not only exist for their multiplatform target, but because they are premade engines to make games with in general. Many games made with them support one single platform.
There is absolutely a commercial incentive to release Linux games. Developers would not do it otherwise, or at least they would have stopped after one try. They did not.
I highly doubt that Blizzard supports MacOS out of goodwill, and I doubt even more that if it was based on that, they could easily continue doing so after a cpu architecture change. They'd have to port whole custom engines plus middleware. That would not happen in that case.
One thing I assume is correct: If there is money to be made here engine developers and game developers will make it happen. But I don't see why it would be that easy.
So the people the play games on Mac are not the same group that play latest AAA shooters or arcade games, they are people that play some casual games or retro games on their laptops so no "hardcore gamers"
So it is possible that this people when they buy a new laptop would not buy an ARM Mac buy a Windows one to continue playing the casual or old games - sure Apple can ignore them because as percentages is nothing for their giant vault of money.
But the good news it that game life cycles have gotten much longer; where in the past a game was seen as a fire-and-forget project, these days a game may get active updates for five or more years after launch. And not just AAA, but indies too.
Meanwhile I see Mac players upset their 32 bit games no longer work (like the Sims3 players and I also see some Mac users in r/winegaming ). Again Apple can do whatever they make them more money but for example gamers voice was heard in Ubuntu/Linux and Canonical did the work (for free) to continue supporting gamers.
And most software that I depend upon is either 1) open source, or 2) developed for Mac first and foremost with a solid backup app that is open source. The one exception is Microsoft Office, whose Mac versions are second thoughts and second rate software, but necessary for collaboration with a world that has locked itself into closed formats. Office would likely get an Arm version for Mac too, I would think.
I don't buy computers just to read websites (I can do that more comfortably on an iPad), or just to write documents (ever heard of the FreeWrite[1]?), or just to play games (I'd rather use a game console). Rather, I buy a computer because it's a single device that can do all of those things.
I almost added "and switch between them seamlessly" to the end of the last sentence, but of course on a Mac with Bootcamp, that's the one exception—you have to reboot in order to play a game. Still, on a laptop, I consider the ability quite valuable—I don't want to carry around a second computer just to play a quick game of Spelunky from time to time. If I couldn't do that at all on a Mac, it would be a point in favor of Windows.
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2) Macbook Pro & Macbook Air have a total share of 78%. I’m ignoring other models, since we are talking about ARM on notebooks, not towers. That brings the number of players to 3,1MM
3) We can assume that most people still rock macbooks since 2012. But let’s start counting from 2013. (We don’t have unit sales, but only the total amount, so I work with the amount that most websites quote) Apple, on average, sells 18MM Macs per fiscal year. Till today, that is 135MM Macs the market.
4) We need to estimate the amount of Macbooks vs Macs, but I cannot find a single stat on this. I’m gonna pull this out of my ass and say that it’s around 90%. The Macs have always been supplemental to Macbooks and Apple has been “forgetting” about them a lot. This brings the total to 121,5MM
5) That is 2,56% of people who game on Macbook. I would say Apple doesn’t care about ~3%. This stat also doesn’t account for hardcore vs casual players. Eq. Those who won’t care vs those who will switch platforms.
But I have had a pretty nice experience with GeForce Now. I don’t see why that would have to change with macOS ARM.
2) Macbook Pro & Macbook Air have a total share of 78%. I’m ignoring other models, since we are talking about ARM on notebooks, not towers. That brings the number of players to 3,1MM
3) We can assume that most people still rock macbooks since 2012. But let’s start counting from 2013. (We don’t have unit sales, but only the total amount, so I work with the amount that most websites quote) Apple, on average, sells 18MM Macs per fiscal year. Till today, that is 135MM Macs the market.
4) We need to estimate the amount of Macbooks vs Macs, but I cannot find a single stat on this. I’m gonna pull this out of my ass and say that it’s around 90%. The Macs have always been supplemental to Macbooks and Apple has been “forgetting” about them a lot. This brings the total to 121,5MM
5) That is 2,56% of people who game on Macbook. I would say Apple doesn’t care about ~3%. This stat also doesn’t account for hardcore vs casual players. Eq. Those who won’t care vs those who will switch platforms.
I love Apple Arcade's subscription model, but it's still coming up to speed. The offerings it has aren't great yet, but I suspect they will be with time. If Apple can improve its offerings on Arcade, I'll never look back. I don't need to play the latest FPS and I suspect other Mac users also don't fit that demographic. If Valve doesn't want to port Steam to an ARM-based macOS, I'll simply drop Steam. It's that easy because Steam offers very little of value for me, personally. I've heard from others that they feel the same, though I can't say how prevalent that feeling is among Mac gamers.
I welcome competition. I want CPUs to get faster again.
Only 4% of people using Steam are using a Mac, gaming isn't that popular on macOS, unfortunately. And it's getting worse with the OpenGL deprecation.
Think about how many games died when they dropped 32 bit support.
But I can't get behind that argument. If all you sell is 20-25 million, to possibly lose 5 million of that is huge. Think about how much they would have to save with the processor move (or how much performance they'd have to gain to make up for it in new sales) to make it worth it. Also, the effort will be huge to make the transition work.
All while there is the easy alternative to just use AMD processors if they wanted a performance boost?
I mean, I'm happy about this. It will probably further cement Linux as the only relevant gaming OS next to Windows. But I'm still surprised. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, if it happens.
That ought to put things in perspective.
Even if Apple is getting some bulk discount for buying 10000 CPU, I have troubles imagining 50% off. Intel is known for enjoying their margin, not for giving steep discount.
If they were paying even 50% of list price, Intel's revenue coming from Apple would be much higher than what it is right now. Also, laptop CPUs are priced very differently from desktop CPUs.
Besides how many new users might Apple get by selling laptops that are cheaper and have longer battery life.
This is a long term race that Apple will fail because it failed to nurture its roots.
And, Apple's asinine decisions around OpenGL don't tell us anything about what users actually want.
As someone who does web development work on a MacBook Air and plays games on a Windows Desktop it’s good news for me. I think the fraction of Mac users that play games on Mac is pretty slim.
The fraction of people using Macs that care about gaming is tiny, and among them those who care about Steam even more so.
OTOH would Mac users have cared more about gaming if the platform hadn't shipped with obsolete versions of OpenGL and Metal had been introduced much sooner?
Before Metal was introduced in macOS the included OpenGL version was like 4-5 years behind.
Companies that still care will compile an ARM version just as easily.