It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer."
People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig.
I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gaming platform, and the low-key hype around these technologies shows that. These almost seem like "developer 20% projects," compared to the big stuff, like visionOS.
That said, I think that Apple wants the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS to be a gaming platform, so they do dedicate a lot of resources to that.
Let’s be real, we might all be getting more work done as a result but that’s because Apple dropped the ball, hard. They came out with the metal api but refused to support any others, even letting open GL fester. The fact that they couldn’t keep Blizzard of all companies developing games for the mac is all you need to know.
That was Microsoft's doing, not Apple's. Microsoft scooped up Bungie to make Halo an Xbox exclusive (at least initially). This purportedly angered Steve Jobs, who probably wasn't too into gaming himself but understood the appeal it might have to consumers.
Halo was introduced by Steve Jobs at MacWorld. It was always called Halo.
“This is not QuickTime. Everything you’re about to see is being rendered in real time on a Macintosh using OpenGL.” [1]
Then Microsoft bought Bungie and made Halo an Xbox-exclusive launch title. [2]
> de facto anti-gaming in the late 90s going forward
Bugdom, Nanosaur, Cro-Mag Rally and Otto Matic by Pangea as well as Deimos Rising shipped as built-in platform games on various iMacs and iBooks, the G4 Cube, and the eMac. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 came with one model of eMac. Nanosaur 2 and Marble Blast were bundled with later iMacs, iBooks, eMacs and the Mac mini. Previous to that, the Power Mac 6500 shipped with MechWarrior 2 and Descent 2. [3]
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxdgo1rFcxU
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie#:~:text=Microsoft%20a....
[3] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/405405/what-third-...
Oh, I'm so very sorry! I think there was a misunderstanding. I was actually talking about the development of the game and not its public announcement!
Here is the relevant part of the Wikipedia article:
"Days before the Macworld announcement, Blam! still had no permanent title; possible names included The Santa Machine, Solipsis, The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, and Star Shield.[38] Bungie hired a branding firm that came up with the name Covenant, but Bungie artist Paul Russell suggested alternatives, including Halo. Though some did not like the name—likening it to something religious, or a women's shampoo—designer Marcus Lehto said, "it described enough about what our intent was for this universe in a way that created this sense of mystery."[28] On July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo, Jobs announced that Halo would be released for MacOS and Windows simultaneously.[36]"
Mobile AAA games in the iOS App Store, or desktop AAA games in the Mac App Store? There are some AAAs that work on a desktop Mac (e.g. Resident Evil Village), but it's not the norm at all. As for mobile ... modern mobile games can die in a fire for all I care (as they're 95% gacha nonsense).
It's not the top of the line, but it covers a decent swath, even without doing emulation or translation.
Unless you're developing iOS apps or MacOS apps, it's pretty terrible as a work platform too. I guess iWork is OK, but no one uses it, so it's not helpful for collaboration. Maybe people use it for media production? Doesn't the big rendering still happen on Linux though, and hasn't windows caught up?
Having said that, Mac laptops made passable web browser + video phone + dumb terminal in the intel days, and now they're excellent at those things and added "virtualization host" to that list.
I guess I've always thought of them more like glorified vt100s than like computers. They're certainly market leaders for that use case, though WSL is helping windows catch up.
Like most tools, we get used to our main one, and can sometimes get a bit "sneery" about alternate ones.
The Mac is a particularly rich target, because the "snootiness" is actually a deliberate brand ploy by Apple, and pretty much "leads with the chin," so we have that.
I've never been "snooty" about Apple, but it's been my platform for over 30 years, so I'm used to it, and I get a lot done with my Mac.
You realize Microsoft Office has been on the Mac since the mid 80s right?
> Maybe people use it for media production?
Uhh yes?
I know you can use them for media production. Looking around, it sounds like they still own the low-end with iMovie, but it gets questionable as hardware requirements increase. I guess it's a viable platform for that.
I know a lot of CAD software is missing MacOS ports, so they seem to have lost that market.
Anyway, I'll continue to think of my laptop as a dumb terminal with a good hypervisor bolted on the side.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-move...
No it’s also not the year of the Linux desktop either
Sure, you can get access to an office suite at these companies, but people certainly raise an eyebrow when emailed a docx or told to click this office online link to run word in their browser.
In the link you pasted, the studies are limiting the market in strange ways. Like what is a “workstream collaboration tool” (teams, and whatever google workspaces is. I’ve never used either, despite using google docs periodically).
So, if the question is “which wordperfect clone is winning”, then word is a plausible answer. If the question is “what percentage of all documents are created in each tool”, there’s no way office (excluding outlook) + gdocs + iwork sum up to a majority at most companies.
Yes because most of corporate America is doing work in Markdown.
Have you ever thought that your workplace may not be representative of the wider world?
> the question is “what percentage of all documents are created in each tool”, there’s no way office (excluding outlook) + gdocs + iwork sum up to a majority at most companies.
I’m sure you have a citation to back that up?
Ok, uninstall Steam then, I guess? Games do currently exist on Mac, both in the App store and on Steam. It's just that there's a big swath of games that haven't been ported to Apple Silicon in particular, due to difficulty. I grew up playing games on the Mac, so I'm not sure what your point is.
I have no interest in picking fights online, especially in a professional venue, where folks that could have a significant impact on my career are watching how I interact with others.
I guess what appears to be abrasive is just lacking tone. It's just me being mildly exasperated for effect. My point is to stress that the Mac has always been a general purpose computing device. Jobs may have chosen to optimize the Mac for productivity in the 90s, and that probably stemmed from the niches that were available to Apple in the Windows-dominated 90s and 00s (that he learned from running NeXT).
The lack of upgradeable components also held the Mac back in graphics technology which precluded it from premium games market. But the M1/M2 chips are game changers. But since they're newish and the Windows market is so established and ARM chips are different from traditional x86 based chips, it's tough to get devs to port for Mac. If they can provide tooling that automates it, it's a great win for Apple.
Unfortunately, that "pseudo" is rapidly dwindling. I know that there are already AI "decloakers," that look at writing style, and do a damn good job of finding folks, based on that.
I was a UseNet troll, back in my day. It was not my proudest moment.
One of the reasons that I deliberately make myself known, is that it forces me to watch my words, just like IRL.
My career is done. I am retired (not by choice), and continue to work, but at what I want, and the way that I want to do it. Basically, a dream come true. I am not particularly worried about upsetting folks for my career, but I also feel I have a great deal of atonement due, because of my past behavior.
I like the Apple ecosystem. I've been using it to be highly productive since 1986, and have been playing games on it forever. I remember Pathways Into Darkness[0], which I thought was awesome.
When did toys become a bad thing?
"Worst gaming platform in the world" may be something of an exaggeration - Apple Arcade isn't bad, and Macs can also run many iPad games.
Apple may very well be targeting mobile and console gamers rather than PC gamers with gaming rigs.
Personally I would definitely enjoy playing on a high-end gaming PC (especially as GPUs become easier to find at MSRP), but I already have a Mac and a PS5.
I wouldn't mind more of my Steam library working on macOS though.