At iMore: Game Porting Toolkit won’t fix what’s broken with Mac games

Game Porting Toolkit is Apple’s latest developer-facing games effort introduced at WWDC. The new tool marries together Wine, the not-emulator, with some Apple Metal graphics API wizardry. Developers get a real-time look at their Windows game on the Mac to help speed the porting process. But getting games running on the Mac platform has never been the issue. I take a look at the historical and modern landscape of this in a guest oped for my alma mater, iMore.

The conventional narrative around Apple and games is that Steve Jobs didn’t like games, discouraging their development on the platform early in its existence, fearing that the Mac would be dismissed as a toy and unsuitable for business use. That original sin cascaded throughout the decades to leave the Mac a barren wasteland for games. Jobs has been dead since 2011, however, and Apple’s managed by living people making those decisions today.

That also conveniently ignores the fact that Microsoft weaponized DirectX to create the Xbox, making certain by result that Apple would always be an also-ran when it comes to games. Decades of Windows game dev tech debt means a developer culture that’s not Mac-friendly, along with a business culture that doesn’t see value in chasing the meager scraps of the Mac market when there are bigger fish to catch, like consoles and mobile.

Game Porting Toolkit tells developers that Apple has performant gaming hardware. But in some ways, Apple needs a Game Porting Toolkit for the rest of the game business. That’s a much taller order, and not something that Apple can fix with patches to Wine and Metal.

Space Javelin: Apple financials, a Mac game rant, and more

The fine folks at Space Javelin featured me on a new podcast, in which we discussed Apple’s surprisingly robust Q2 financial results and a whole host of other topics. When the subject turned to Valve Corp.’s decision to axe SteamVR support on the Mac, I went on a rant. To be frank, I don’t care about SteamVR – it’s very niche. But Valve’s decision to walk away from SteamVR Mac support illustrates fundamental problems. Outside of Apple Arcade and the work of a few indies, the Mac game business is utterly moribund. Mac App Store discoverability is a joke. Catalina ended 32-bit app support which stops older games in their tracks. Apple’s graphics API switch from OpenGL to Metal has created issues too. Anyway, more after the jump.

In a Few Minutes: How smart should my home be?

There’s so much talk these days about smart homes. And there’s a lot of effort to push devices and accessories that work with Siri, Alexa, Google Voice. But when everything from doorbells to air purifiers get “smart,” it’s time to step back and see where having a smart home actually makes sense, and where it might be gilding the lily. Ken Ray and I hash out the details in this installment of “In a Few Minutes.”

Thoughts on a virtual WWDC 2020

Apple earlier this month announced that WWDC 2020 would be an online event only, ending weeks of speculation about what the company might do in the wake of COVID-19’s spread and the corresponding containment efforts. It’s led some in the blogging community to wonder if Apple has the ability to pull it off. From where I’m sitting, it already has.

In a Few Minutes: The ARM-based Mac

Ken Ray and I pontificate for a few minutes in this segment about Apple switching to a different CPU architecture for the Macintosh. Analysts have predicted it. Industry folks have speculated about it. What will a Mac with an ARM chip instead of an Intel microprocessor look like? How would Apple handle the transition? Listen in for details.