How gaming on the Mac is getting better with macOS Ventura

Sounds like they’re 10-16 years behind. Metal 3 is great but if no one wants to use it, who cares?

I think some of this was Apple's design decisions previously. Now that Jony Ive isn't there Apple can design computers that are function over form instead of the latter. You take that along with Apple creating some pretty powerful SoC's Apple can still achieve what they like with efficiency along with a great design people expect from Apple. Apple is only 1.5 releases into its new silicon and they're already approaching what NVIDIA an ATI can do with their high-end cards. I'd like to see what M2 Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme is, and even the new M3. Before, Apple didn't seem interested in designing products to use the higher end NVIDIA/ATI chips that would make a Mac decent for gaming. Now Apple has to better tools to work with so they're not put in a massive thermal box without releasing some big bulky Mac that is not only heavy, but also loud. 

Hopefully M2 and M3 improve on the already impressive GPU gains Apple has seen and long with Metal 3 improvements, AAA gaming studios will be more on board with developing Mac releases in the future.

I certainly would love to see Apple take more action on gaming. Its a great market, one that will be very tough for them to gain traction in, but perhaps they could get some of it. I would love to get rid of my PC. It gets so hot and its like a big space heater. 

macxpress said:

I think some of this was Apple's design decisions previously. Now that Jony Ive isn't there Apple can design computers that are function over form instead of the latter. You take that along with Apple creating some pretty powerful SoC's Apple can still achieve what they like with efficiency along with a great design people expect from Apple. Apple is only 1.5 releases into its new silicon and they're already approaching what NVIDIA an ATI can do with their high-end cards. I'd like to see what M2 Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme is, and even the new M3. Before, Apple didn't seem interested in designing products to use the higher end NVIDIA/ATI chips that would make a Mac decent for gaming. Now Apple has to better tools to work with so they're not put in a massive thermal box without releasing some big bulky Mac that is not only heavy, but also loud. 

Hopefully M2 and M3 improve on the already impressive GPU gains Apple has seen and long with Metal 3 improvements, AAA gaming studios will be more on board with developing Mac releases in the future.

I certainly would love to see Apple take more action on gaming. Its a great market, one that will be very tough for them to gain traction in, but perhaps they could get some of it. I would love to get rid of my PC. It gets so hot and its like a big space heater. 

I don't think Apple is approaching Nvidia or ATI GPU's,
Apple’s charts set the M1 Ultra up for an RTX 3090 fight it could never win - The Verge
Please don't benchmark Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti against Apple's M1 Ultra | Macworld

Beats said:

Sounds like they’re 10-16 years behind. Metal 3 is great but if no one wants to use it, who cares?

Exactly this... There are essentially no big game developers writing their engines in Metal, it's nigh-on irrelevant to 99% of the gaming industry. Pissing about with game centre that is used by 3 people is not going to fix the cause of the Mac gaming problem. Doesn't matter what fancy new features Apple adds because anything that might actually use those features is running everything in Vulkan anyway, with MoltenVK translating it into Metal; causing a performance hit over and above the already dismal level of optimisation devs do for Mac games - causing a vicious circle of less Mac gamers -> less games -> less optimisation -> bad performance -> less mac gamers. Macs are way too small a market for developers to spend vast quantities of cash rewriting their game engine in Metal - and this is 100% Apple's fault for being anti-gaming since pretty much day 1. I imagine they hate the fact that most of the App Store revenue comes from games.

The only AAA games that end up on MacOS are ones that use the Unreal or Unity engines, which do support Metal. And the only reason for support is it is literally a zero cost tickbox. But Apple's spat with Epic is unlikely to be enthusing Epic into pouring resources into UE on Mac, so I wouldn't be that surprised if anti-Mac Cook kicked Mac users in the balls again by goading Epic into dropping Mac support because Cook wants his already solid gold pockets lined further. But that is a different matter.

Apple would do better to abandon Metal - or at least officially support Vulkan. If they did so, the number of Mac games would explode overnight. When OpenGL was newer, the number of games that used it on Windows and Mac was growing, but it became stale (especially so on macOS as Apple refused to maintain a remotely current version) so then devs started dropping Mac support and now almost no AAA games are released on Mac. Unfortunately Apple's so stubborn they always have do things their own way, even if its to the detriment of developers, their platforms, customers, and ultimately themselves, so this is unlikely to improve anytime soon. 

macxpress said:

Apple is only 1.5 releases into its new silicon and they're already approaching what NVIDIA an ATI can do with their high-end cards

They aren't remotely close to what Nvidia and AMD (ATI is long gone) are doing with their high end cards. Not even close. They're streets ahead with efficiency, and what they've managed to cram on a SoC is incredible, but it is not high-end performance. They were hauled over the coals for their misleading "relative performance" M1 GPU comparison.

macxpress said:

I'd like to see what M2 Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme is, and even the new M3. Before, Apple didn't seem interested in designing products to use the higher end NVIDIA/ATI chips that would make a Mac decent for gaming. 

Well part of the reason for that is they fell out with ATI (at the time) and then had a childish spat with Nvidia. The Intel Macs from about 2014 onwards had crappy AMD graphics, which ran hot and performed like a dog. I have a 2019 i9 iMac with a Radeon Pro Vega 48. It was the best GPU Apple installed at the time, and was one of the best AMD GPUs, but Nvidia's GPUs were still in a different league in both efficiency and performance, and they did a much better job of writing the graphics drivers than Apple does for the AMD GPUs. Also, AMD GPUs have always been roasting hot. 

Oh and Apple is being so twattish toward Nvidia that they are shafting their own customers again, by refusing to sign the drivers Nvidia is still releasing (or was) for Nvidia GPUs in Macs. So they won't run and Macs with Nvidia cards were stuck on old drivers.

macxpress said:

Hopefully M2 and M3 improve on the already impressive GPU gains Apple has seen and long with Metal 3 improvements, AAA gaming studios will be more on board with developing Mac releases in the future.

I certainly would love to see Apple take more action on gaming. Its a great market, one that will be very tough for them to gain traction in, but perhaps they could get some of it. I would love to get rid of my PC. It gets so hot and its like a big space heater. 

As I said above, it doesn't matter what Apple does with Metal because no big studio uses it. Apple needs to support Vulkan to get any semblance of parity with Windows gaming.