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Many people blame the lack of OpenGL/Vulkan... but I really don't buy it. It doesn't pass the sniff test as an objection. PlayStation doesn't support OpenGL/Vul

Many people blame the lack of OpenGL/Vulkan... but I really don't buy it. It doesn't pass the sniff test as an objection. PlayStation doesn't support OpenGL/Vulkan (they have their own proprietary APIs, GNM, GNMX, PSSL). Nintendo supports Vulkan but performance is so bad, almost everyone uses the proprietary API (NVN / NVN2). Xbox obviously doesn't accept OpenGL/Vulkan either, requiring DirectX. Understanding of Metal is widespread in mobile gaming, so it's weird AAA couldn't pull from that industry if they wished.

coldpie 1y ago
The primary reason is Apple's environment is too unstable for gaming's most common business model. Most games are developed, released, and then sold for years and years with little or no maintenance. Additionally, gamers expect the games they purchased to continue to work indefinitely. Apple regularly breaks backwards compatibility in a wide variety of ways (code signing requirements; breaking OS API changes; hardware architecture changes). That means software run on Apple OSes must be constantly maintained or else it will eventually stop working. Most games aren't developed like that. No one who was forced to write a statement like [this](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6EF https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6...) is going to be enthusiastic about continuing to work with Apple.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
  I've heard this argument, but it also doesn't pass the sniff test in 2025. 1. When is the next transition on bits? Is Apple going to suddenly move to 128-bit? No. 2. When is the next transition on architecture? Is Apple going to suddenly move back to x86? No. 3. When is the next API transition? Is Apple suddenly going to add Vulkan or reinvigorate OpenGL? No. They've been clear it's Metal since 2014, 11 years ago. That's plenty of time for the industry to follow if they cared, and mobile gaming has adopted it without issue. We might as well complain that the PlayStation 4 was completely incompatible with the PlayStation 3.
  - coldpie 1y ago
    I mean, I worked in this space, and I'm telling you why many of the people I worked with weren't interested in supporting Apple. I'm happy to hear your theories if you don't like mine, though.
    - gjsman-1000 1y ago
      I think the past bit people, but unlike the PS4 transition or gaming consoles in the past (which were rarely backwards compatible), there wasn't enough cultural momentum to plow through it... leaving "don't support Apple" as a bit of a institutional memory at this point, even though the odds of another transition seem almost nonexistent. What would it even be? 128 bit? Back to x86? Notarization++? Metal 4 incompatible with Metal 1?
      - coldpie 1y ago
        Yeah, I buy that, so I think we are actually agreeing with each other. The very rough backwards support story Apple has had for the past decade, which I mentioned, has made people uninterested in supporting the platform, even if they're better about it now, as you claim (though I'm unconvinced about that personally, having worked on macOS software for more than a decade). > What would it even be? 128 bit? Back to x86? Notarization++? Metal 4 incompatible with Metal 1? Sure, I can think of lots of things. Every macOS update when I worked in this space broke something that we had to go fix. Code signature requirements change a bit in almost every release, not hard to imagine a 10-year-old game finally running afoul of some new requirement. I can easily see them removing old, unmaintained APIs. OpenGL is actively unmaintained and I would guess a massive attack vector, not hard to see that going away. Have you ever seen their controller force feedback APIs? Lol, they're so bad, it's a miracle they haven't removed those already.
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        > even though the odds of another transition seem almost nonexistent. You see, the existence of that "almost" is already less confidence than developers have on every game console as well as Linux and Windows.
- galad87 1y ago
  Game developers make most of the money shortly after a game release, so having a 15 years old game not working anymore shouldn't make much difference in term of revenues. Anyway, the whole situation was quite bad. Many games were still 32-bit, even if macOS itself had been mainly 64-bit for almost 10 years or more. And Valve didn't help either, the Steam store is full of 64-bit mislabeled as 32-bit. They could have written a simple script to check whether a game is actually 64-bit or not, instead they decided to do nothing and keep their chaos. The best solution would have been a lightweight VM to run old 32-bit games, nowadays computer are powerful enough to do so.
littlecranky67 1y ago
I don't buy it either, because Apples GPTK works similar as Proton - they have a DX12-to-Metal Layer that works quite well - if it works. And their GPTK is based on wine, just as proton. It is more other annoyances like lack of steam support. There are patched version of steam circulating that run in GPTK though (offline mode) but that is where everything gets finnicky and brittle. It is mostly community efforts, and I think gaming could be way better on Apple if they embrace the Proton-approach that they started with GPTK.
- ldoughty 1y ago
  Apple collects no money from Steam sales, so they don't see a reason to support it. You don't buy Apple to use your computer they way you want to use it. You buy it to use it the way they tell you to. E.g. "you're holding it wrong" fiasco. In some ways this is good for general consumers (and even developers, with limited config comes less unpredictablilty)... However this generally is bad for power users or "niche" users like Mac gamers.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    Apple collects no money from Photoshop, Microsoft, or anything else that runs on the Mac besides the tiny minority of apps sold on the Mac App Store. Not to mention many subscription services on iOS that don’t allow you to subscribe through the App Store.
  - littlecranky67 1y ago
    > Apple collects no money from Steam sales, so they don't see a reason to support it. That is true, but now they are in a position where their hardware is actually more affordable and powerful than their Windows/x86 counterpart - and Win 11 is a shitload of adware and an annoyance in itself, layered ontop of a OS. They could massively expand their hardware sales to the gaming sector. I'm eyeing at a framework Desktop with an AMD AI 395 APU for gaming (I am happy with just 1080p@60) and am looking at 2000€ to spend, because I wan't a small form factor. Don't quote me on the benchmarks, but a Mac Mini on M4 Pro is probably cheaper and more powerful for gaming - IF it had proper software support.
kllrnohj 1y ago
PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all have 10s of millions of gamers each. Meanwhile MacOS makes up ~2% of steam users which is probably a pretty good proxy for the number of MacOS gamers. Why would I do anything bespoke at all for such a tiny market? Much less an entirely unique GPU API? Apple refusing to support OpenGL and Vulkan absolutely hurt their gaming market. It increased the porting costs for a market that was already tiny.
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  > Why would I do anything bespoke at all for such a tiny market? Because there is a huge potential here to increase market share.

coldpie 1y ago

The primary reason is Apple's environment is too unstable for gaming's most common business model. Most games are developed, released, and then sold for years and years with little or no maintenance. Additionally, gamers expect the games they purchased to continue to work indefinitely. Apple regularly breaks backwards compatibility in a wide variety of ways (code signing requirements; breaking OS API changes; hardware architecture changes). That means software run on Apple OSes must be constantly maintained or else it will eventually stop working. Most games aren't developed like that. No one who was forced to write a statement like [this](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6EF https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6...) is going to be enthusiastic about continuing to work with Apple.

gjsman-1000 1y ago
I've heard this argument, but it also doesn't pass the sniff test in 2025. 1. When is the next transition on bits? Is Apple going to suddenly move to 128-bit? No. 2. When is the next transition on architecture? Is Apple going to suddenly move back to x86? No. 3. When is the next API transition? Is Apple suddenly going to add Vulkan or reinvigorate OpenGL? No. They've been clear it's Metal since 2014, 11 years ago. That's plenty of time for the industry to follow if they cared, and mobile gaming has adopted it without issue. We might as well complain that the PlayStation 4 was completely incompatible with the PlayStation 3.
- coldpie 1y ago
  I mean, I worked in this space, and I'm telling you why many of the people I worked with weren't interested in supporting Apple. I'm happy to hear your theories if you don't like mine, though.
  - gjsman-1000 1y ago
    I think the past bit people, but unlike the PS4 transition or gaming consoles in the past (which were rarely backwards compatible), there wasn't enough cultural momentum to plow through it... leaving "don't support Apple" as a bit of a institutional memory at this point, even though the odds of another transition seem almost nonexistent. What would it even be? 128 bit? Back to x86? Notarization++? Metal 4 incompatible with Metal 1?
    - coldpie 1y ago
      Yeah, I buy that, so I think we are actually agreeing with each other. The very rough backwards support story Apple has had for the past decade, which I mentioned, has made people uninterested in supporting the platform, even if they're better about it now, as you claim (though I'm unconvinced about that personally, having worked on macOS software for more than a decade). > What would it even be? 128 bit? Back to x86? Notarization++? Metal 4 incompatible with Metal 1? Sure, I can think of lots of things. Every macOS update when I worked in this space broke something that we had to go fix. Code signature requirements change a bit in almost every release, not hard to imagine a 10-year-old game finally running afoul of some new requirement. I can easily see them removing old, unmaintained APIs. OpenGL is actively unmaintained and I would guess a massive attack vector, not hard to see that going away. Have you ever seen their controller force feedback APIs? Lol, they're so bad, it's a miracle they haven't removed those already.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      > even though the odds of another transition seem almost nonexistent. You see, the existence of that "almost" is already less confidence than developers have on every game console as well as Linux and Windows.
galad87 1y ago
Game developers make most of the money shortly after a game release, so having a 15 years old game not working anymore shouldn't make much difference in term of revenues. Anyway, the whole situation was quite bad. Many games were still 32-bit, even if macOS itself had been mainly 64-bit for almost 10 years or more. And Valve didn't help either, the Steam store is full of 64-bit mislabeled as 32-bit. They could have written a simple script to check whether a game is actually 64-bit or not, instead they decided to do nothing and keep their chaos. The best solution would have been a lightweight VM to run old 32-bit games, nowadays computer are powerful enough to do so.

littlecranky67 1y ago

I don't buy it either, because Apples GPTK works similar as Proton - they have a DX12-to-Metal Layer that works quite well - if it works. And their GPTK is based on wine, just as proton. It is more other annoyances like lack of steam support. There are patched version of steam circulating that run in GPTK though (offline mode) but that is where everything gets finnicky and brittle. It is mostly community efforts, and I think gaming could be way better on Apple if they embrace the Proton-approach that they started with GPTK.

ldoughty 1y ago
Apple collects no money from Steam sales, so they don't see a reason to support it. You don't buy Apple to use your computer they way you want to use it. You buy it to use it the way they tell you to. E.g. "you're holding it wrong" fiasco. In some ways this is good for general consumers (and even developers, with limited config comes less unpredictablilty)... However this generally is bad for power users or "niche" users like Mac gamers.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  Apple collects no money from Photoshop, Microsoft, or anything else that runs on the Mac besides the tiny minority of apps sold on the Mac App Store. Not to mention many subscription services on iOS that don’t allow you to subscribe through the App Store.
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  > Apple collects no money from Steam sales, so they don't see a reason to support it. That is true, but now they are in a position where their hardware is actually more affordable and powerful than their Windows/x86 counterpart - and Win 11 is a shitload of adware and an annoyance in itself, layered ontop of a OS. They could massively expand their hardware sales to the gaming sector. I'm eyeing at a framework Desktop with an AMD AI 395 APU for gaming (I am happy with just 1080p@60) and am looking at 2000€ to spend, because I wan't a small form factor. Don't quote me on the benchmarks, but a Mac Mini on M4 Pro is probably cheaper and more powerful for gaming - IF it had proper software support.

kllrnohj 1y ago

PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all have 10s of millions of gamers each. Meanwhile MacOS makes up ~2% of steam users which is probably a pretty good proxy for the number of MacOS gamers. Why would I do anything bespoke at all for such a tiny market? Much less an entirely unique GPU API? Apple refusing to support OpenGL and Vulkan absolutely hurt their gaming market. It increased the porting costs for a market that was already tiny.

littlecranky67 1y ago
> Why would I do anything bespoke at all for such a tiny market? Because there is a huge potential here to increase market share.