The main roadblock for porting the games to Mac has never been the hardware, but Apple themselves. Their entire attitude is that they can do whatever they please with their platforms, and expect the developers to adjust to the changes, no matter how breaking. It’s a constant support treadmill, fixing the stuff that Apple broke in your previously perfectly functioning product after every update. If said fixing is even possible, like when Apple removed support for 32-bit binaries altogether, rendering 3/4 of macOS Steam libraries non-functional. This works for apps, but it‘s completely antithetical to the way game development processes on any other platform are structured. You finish a project, release it, do a patch cycle, and move on.
And that’s not even talking about porting the game to either Metal or an absolutely ancient OpenGL version that could be removed with any upcoming OS version. A significant effort just to address a tiny market.
I still don't get this. Apple is a trillion dollar company. How much does it cost to pay a couple of engineers to maintain an up to date version on top of Metal? Their current implementation is 4.1, it wouldn't cost them much to provide one for 4.6. Even Microsoft collaborated with Mesa to build a translation on top of dx12, Apple could do the same.
> If said fixing is even possible, like when Apple removed support for 32-bit binaries altogether, rendering 3/4 of macOS Steam libraries non-functional.
IIRC developers literally got 15 years of warning about that one.
Apple's mistake was allowing 32-bit stuff on Intel in the first place -- if they had delayed the migration ~6 months and passed on the Core Duo for Core 2 Duo, it would've negated the need to ever allow 32-bit code on x86.
IIRC that didn't convince many developers to revisit their software. I still have hard drives full of Pro Tools projects that open on Mojave but error on Catalina. Not to mention all the Steam games that launch fine on Windows/Linux but error on macOS...
Yes, game developers can't revisit old games because they throw out the dev environments when they're done, or their middleware can't get updated, etc.
But it's not possible to keep maintaining 32-bit forever. That's twice the code and it can't support a bunch of important security features, modern ABIs, etc. It would be better to run old programs in a VM of an old OS with no network access.
> But it's not possible to keep maintaining 32-bit forever.
Apple had the money to support it, we both know that. They just didn't respect their Mac owners enough, Apple saw more value in making them dogfood iOS changes since that's where all the iOS devs are held captive. Security was never a realistic excuse considering how much real zombie code still exists in macOS.
Speaking personally, I just wanted Apple to wait for WoW64 support to hit upstream. Their careless interruption of my Mac experience is why I ditched the ecosystem as a whole. If Apple cannot invest in making it a premium experience, I'll take my money elsewhere.
Especially because Apple has a functional design which means there is nearly no redundancy; there's only one expert in any given field and that expert doesn't want to be stuck with old broken stuff. Nor does anyone want software updates to be twice as big as they otherwise would be, etc.
> Security was never a realistic excuse considering how much real zombie code still exists in macOS.
Code doesn't have security problems if nobody uses it. But nothing that's left behind is as bad as, say, QuickTime was.
nb some old parts were replaced over time as the people maintaining them retired. In my experience all of these people were named Jim.
> there's only one expert in any given field and that expert doesn't want to be stuck with old broken stuff.
Oh, my apologies to their expert. I had no idea that my workload was making their job harder, how inconsiderate of me. Anyone could make the mistake of assuming that the Mac supported these workloads when they use their Mac to run 32-bit plugins and games.
Another big, non-technical reason is most games make most of their money around their release date. Therefore there is no financial benefit to updating the game to keep it working. Especially not on macOS where market share is small.
The company in general never really seemed that interested in Games, and that came right from Steve Jobs. John Carmack made a Facebook post[1] several years ago with some interesting insider insights about his advocacy of gaming to Steve Jobs, and the lukewarm response he received. They just never really seemed to be a priority at Apple.
It's impossible to care about video games if you live in SV because the weather is too nice. You can feel the desire to do any indoor activity just fade away when you move there. This is somehow true even though there's absolutely nothing to do outside except take walks (or "go hiking" as locals call it) and go to that Egyptian museum run by a cult.
Somehow Atari, EA and PlayStation are here despite this. I don't know how they did it.
Meanwhile, Nintendo is successful because they're in Seattle where it's dark and rains all the time.
And that’s not even talking about porting the game to either Metal or an absolutely ancient OpenGL version that could be removed with any upcoming OS version. A significant effort just to address a tiny market.