Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:31

jigger said:
Apple have the hardware advantage and laptop gaming market is distressed. Why wouldn’t you go after the extra sales and gain some penetration.

Apple have never had much interest in the gaming market when they were running x86. Now they've moved to ARM and all the complications that brings going after the gaming market doesn't seem a likely move.

How do you think Apple would achieve this gaming dominance? They're not likely to try and woo developers to churn out AAA titles running on metal because the sales volumes will be dismal. Parallels is messy and not going to fit with the "it just works" philosophy. They're never going to encourage installing Windows as a viable solution.

I just don't see it happening.

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:37

Minstadave said:
There aren't any games to play and Apple have made no suggestion this is the direction they're heading.

The chip is capable, the overall platform is not.

You are as wrong now as you where when you first said this. Apple said they will push into gaming and they have. Apple have a big presence in gaming already.

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:47

jigger said:
You are as wrong now as you where when you first said this. Apple said they will push into gaming and they have. Apple have a big presence in gaming already.

You haven't answered the question. Where is this big presence you speak of? Apple's biggest market must be iOS games.

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:48

Minstadave said:
You haven't answered the question.

You didn’t ask one, but I did.

You: There aren’t any games on Apple. Me: No, there are. You: Apple don’t have a presence in gaming. Me: No, they do. You: You can’t game on Apple. Me: No, you can. You: Apple don’t have a platform for gaming. Me: No, they do. You: You can’t game on Apple. Me: No you can.

You: I wins!
Me: Congrats

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:52

jigger said:
You didn’t ask one, but I did.

Minstadave said:
How do you think Apple would achieve this gaming dominance? They're not likely to try and woo developers to churn out AAA titles running on metal because the sales volumes will be dismal. Parallels is messy and not going to fit with the "it just works" philosophy. They're never going to encourage installing Windows as a viable solution.

How are people expected to run games on their M1 Macs?

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 14:59

jigger said:
You didn’t ask one, but I did.

You: There aren’t any games on Apple. Me: No, there are. You: Apple don’t have a presence in gaming. Me: No, they do. You: You can’t game on Apple. Me: No, you can. You: Apple don’t have a platform for gaming. Me: No, they do. You: You can’t game on Apple. Me: No you can.

You: I wins!
Me: Congrats

You choose not to respond to the important questions and just keep claiming Macs are the future of gaming. I assume you don't answer because the answer doesn't fit you narrative.

Where are these games? How will AAA titles be brought to Mac?

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 15:02

Minstadave said:
You choose not to respond to the important questions and just keep claiming Macs are the future of gaming.

You keep ignoring everything I’ve said and want me to enter into your Stawman argument. I think your ignorance has been humoured.

Semel · 20 Oct 2021 at 15:39

jigger said:
Apple have the hardware advantage and the laptop gaming market is distressed. Why wouldn’t you go after the extra sales and gain some penetration.

No sane dev company would be bothered wasting time and resources on working with Apple's crappy proprietary Metal API AND ARM architecture in order to target a tiny market of M1 owners willing to spend 4000-5000(!!) euro on a laptop.

Especially considering the primary market is dx12\Vulkan and x86 architecture.

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 15:43

Semel said:
No sane dev company would be bothered wasting time and resources on working with Apple's crappy proprietary Metal API AND ARM architecture in order to target a tiny market of M1 owners willing to spend 4000-5000(!!) euro on a laptop.

Especially considering the primary market is dx12\Vulkan and x86 architecture.

Crappy is an interesting descriptor in this case.
Devs are already doing exactly that BTW.

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 16:05

jigger said:
You keep ignoring everything I’ve said and want me to enter into your Stawman argument. I think your ignorance has been humoured.

You're a laugh.

You've claimed Apple is going to be the gaming laptop of choice going forwards. You can't even answer a simple questions on where the games are or going to be. That's not a strawman argument, games are kind of important if you're going going to recommend this as a gaming laptop (which you've done).

Everyone has told you your position is stupid but you just dodge questions and keep bleating on - the games are there, the platform is ready, the devs are making the games, Apple want's the gaming market. Where is the evidence?

Everyone gets the silicon is good but that is only a small part of the bigger picture when it comes to gaming.

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 16:08

Apple is currently the 4th largest gaming company by revenue. First in mobile gaming ahead of Nintendo.

Minstadave · 20 Oct 2021 at 16:11

jigger said:
Apple is currently the 4th largest gaming company by revenue. First in mobile gaming ahead of Nintendo.

Absolutely, but how much of that is iOS mobile games? Nearly all of it. That doesn't make a 3K Macbook a gaming laptop unless you're happy playing Flappy Birds.

When you sit down to play a game of Warzone or Apex on your shiny new Mac you're going to have a rude awakening.

Just look at this mess:

https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_compatible_games_master_list

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 16:19

I can’t wait to get an M1 Max TBH. It offers exactly what I’d want in an ultra book that no one else has been able to offer.

Minstadave said:
Absolutely, but how much of that is iOS mobile games? Nearly all of it. That doesn't make a 3K Macbook a gaming laptop unless you're happy playing Flappy Birds.

When you sit down to play a game of Warzone or Apex on your shiny new Mac you're going to have a rude awakening.

Just look at this mess:

https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_compatible_games_master_list

You can’t see Apple entering the laptop gaming area for reasons and that’s fine. I feel it’s a natural move for Apple to make for all reasons pointed out.
The question is more one how Apple decides to go about this. As already pointed out, Apple have many avenues to the gaming market.

Apples graphics hardware set is so far ahead of anything Nvidia could produce this decade, so why not capitalise on that and offer the hardware you have on hand to a market looking for exactly what you have on offer. Simply push Nvidia into the lower ends of the segment to fight it out with AMD and Intel, while you cement yourself and take the lions share of revenue.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 20 Oct 2021 at 20:37

Minstadave said:
Absolutely, but how much of that is iOS mobile games? Nearly all of it. That doesn't make a 3K Macbook a gaming laptop unless you're happy playing Flappy Birds.

When you sit down to play a game of Warzone or Apex on your shiny new Mac you're going to have a rude awakening.

Just look at this mess:

https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_compatible_games_master_list

Its not even that - just look at Steam,and you can infer the types of systems most gamers are played on....they are not uber expensive systems.Most popular PC games are developed with the lowest common denominator in mind - consoles,and midrange PCs.

Likewise with smartphones - most smartphones are well under £1000,and a large amount of mobile games are run on older smartphones too(many people use iPhones for years). Plus Android has the largest share of the smartphone market,so tons of games are developed to be able to run on them. Even if faster smartphone SOCs exist,it will be just an extra quality toggle in the menu,etc.

The issue on tech forums,PCMR hardware enthusiasts surround themselves with other PCMR hardware enthusiasts and think everyone is buying £1500+ laptops,£600+ dGPUs,£1000 smartphones,etc and upgrade every year. Just because owners of Ferrari make more noise on social media than Punto drivers(both owned by Fiat),doesn't mean most drivers are using a Ferrari.

Its why RT will take years for it to be an integral part of most PC games - ATM its mostly an extra quality graphics option. This is because the entry level and mainstream dGPUs not only need more RT performance,but so many people are on older generation dGPUs.

V F · 20 Oct 2021 at 22:06

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Its why RT will take years for it to be an integral part of most PC games - ATM its mostly an extra quality graphics option. This is because the entry level and mainstream dGPUs not only need more RT performance,but so many people are on older generation dGPUs.

To think 10 years ago all the buzz was Tessellation.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 20 Oct 2021 at 22:57

V F said:
To think 10 years ago all the buzz was Tessellation.

ATI introduced tessellation with TruForm in the 8000 series in 2001. So that is how long it took for it to become mainstream!!

Sean473 · 20 Oct 2021 at 23:01

Apple has 0 chance with their current stance of breaking into the gaming market - They are refusing to use Vulkan, DX12 etc. so good luck getting anything other than Apple Store games to work on their new Macbooks!

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 23:34

Sean473 said:
Apple has 0 chance with their current stance of breaking into the gaming market - They are refusing to use Vulkan, DX12 etc. so good luck getting anything other than Apple Store games to work on their new Macbooks!

Apple are full Khronos group members etc.

HACO · 20 Oct 2021 at 23:47

Sean473 said:
Apple has 0 chance with their current stance of breaking into the gaming market - They are refusing to use Vulkan, DX12 etc. so good luck getting anything other than Apple Store games to work on their new Macbooks!

Gaming industry don't like that Metal is solely in control of Apple, all the API and driver development is done in-house and Apple won't be tweaking these to optimise for games, something that Nvidia and AMD do all the time. And Metal is quite different to DX/Vulkan, so not that easy to port.

jigger said:
Apple are full Khronos group members etc.

Apple really has been going their own way for the better part of the last decade versus Khoronos. They deprecated their support for OpenCL, OpenGL and OpenGL ES in favour of Metal (good decisions) and will drop WebGL when WebGPU is ready (also good decision). But not supporting Vulkan means game development on Metal is expensive for studios and porting isn't simple.

jigger · 20 Oct 2021 at 23:54

Writing for Metal probably isn’t any more difficult than any other API.