With that being said, this is just my view as someone who uses simple consumer oriented programs, and I'm not sure how well it'll work for more serious purposes.
For non-gaming, Parallels is extremely solid. I use Visual Studio and various productivity apps and they all work perfectly -- although Parallels is enshittified scumware that pops up ads at every available opportunity, so if that kind of thing bothers you, it's worth considering it before buying.
Crossover is paid but has better compatibility: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/ (or see https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility for compatible games)
Whisky is free, and will work just as well for games it supports, but has compatibility with fewer games (no official list, so you just have to download it and try yourself): https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
For the mouse stuff, try a USB mouse if you're not already using one, combined with https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels to disable acceleration and fix the scroll wheel.
That works really well for me to get a Windows-like mouse curve.
TLDR skip the emulation and go for translation layers via Crossover, Whisky, and GPT. It'll be much faster. The mouse thing is separate and has nothing to do with the graphics layer.
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Personally though, I'd just pay $20 a month for Geforce Now. It is much much faster than even the highest end Mac. I don't think WOW is on there, but for supported games, it's a phenomenal experience... sold my 3080 desktop and replaced it with GFN on my Macbook. It's fantastic.
Supported games: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/
From https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/:
- 15 Mbps for 720p @ 60FPS
- 25 Mbps for 1080p
- Up to 35 Mbps for 4k/120 FPS
Input latency is there, yes, but it's not too bad especially if you turn on Nvidia Reflex and use the hardware cursor. Totally unnoticeable in many games. For first-person shooters it's definitely noticeable, but IMO still playable as long as you're not doing it competitively. I play shooters on it from time to time... and put it this way, I would much rather do that (on max graphics) and deal with the minor input lag, than to try to get them running on my Mac, all to get super low graphics with low draw distance, etc.
It's never going to beat a 4090 on your desk, but for $20/mo...? It's an incredible value.
I don't know that there really is a "catch" beyond basic network principles/limitations. Game streaming has been developed for more than a decade now... when OnLive first came out, the technology (home internet and hardware encoding) wasn't quite there. Now 35Mbps is commonplace, Nvidia has hardware encoding in all their cards, AND they control the entire stack of their data center like no one else can. Stadia's failure was IMO a Google management problem more than any technical limitation. GeForce Now is a much much better service, both using your existing Steam library and supporting way more games.
The pricing does seem really good, especially compared to Shadow.tech (where you rent a whole gaming VM with a 3070 Ti for $50/mo, but can run anything you want) or AirGPU (similar service). But the games-as-a-service platforms like Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Streaming, and PS Plus are all comparably priced ($10-$20/mo). There are other third party services like Boosteroid too. Cloud gaming is a maturing technology that's largely already "there", in my experience (have tried nearly all of them over the last 10+ years).
I think Nvidia is uniquely positioned as the only company in this space who can provide the graphics cards first-party instead of needing to buy them from, well, Nvidia. It's possible that the current pricing is a loss leader, but they've already raised the prices from the Founders pricing they had a few years ago, and it's still not too bad. It's not like Nvidia is hurting for cash anyway. My main fear is not that there's a "catch", but that they'll gradually move out of the gaming segment and focus on AI.
In the meantime, while it lasts, GeForce Now really is wonderfully, uh, game-changing :)
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Edit: PS they have a free tier, and you can even use it in a browser tab, no client download needed. That's enough to give you a taste for free, no commitment. If you decide you like it, the Ultimate plan is very much worth it, and the desktop (or mobile) clients offer slightly better UX than the browser tab and higher resolutions.
I will give USW a try. I hadn't heard of that project before.
Also, I'm happy to have read that MS will be making all ActiBlizz titles available once again on GeForce Now once its acquisition is complete.
The only one that I remember is Crusader Kings II. It has a native MacOS version which I tried and it ran pretty rough. Very, very choppy on the map. I didn't tweak any graphics settings from the defaults and put no effort into making it run better, FWIW.
Next, I ran it via Windows ARM in Parallels. Now that I'm writing this I have no idea what I did to test it. I feel like it just ran but I don't think I did anything specific to make an x86 process run on ARM. Maybe Windows ARM does that for you, I forget.
Anyway, it ran really well. Absolutely much, much better than the native app. It felt completely smooth navigating the map, etc. I did NOT play it in a big game that lasted hundreds of years. I probably did 5 turns, mostly checking to see how smooth scrolling the map and the UI/UX stuff was.
I have a 4090'd gaming desktop so it wasn't a big deal to me to be able to game on the mac which is why I put as much effort into this as you can see. lmao.
It's amazing at everything else!
Yeah, Microsoft doesn't get nearly enough credit for this, but Windows for Arm just automagically emulates x86 for you! Kinda like Rosetta, but for Windows.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...