Apple Silicon Software Development seems slow

It's been about three years since the initial M1-based machines from Apple became reality.  Why is development lagging?

Steam Hardware Survey

The other day, Steam requested my computer's details.  One is an AMD Ryzen 7 with Geforce RTX 3050 Ti (laptop version, of course), and the other is a 2020 MacBook Air M1.  In reporting, Steam shows AppleVirtual processor and 1440x900 resolution, which is far from the truth, unless of course, you don't care to make your software the best and take advantage of the actual power that is available.

I've only had my 2020 M1 MacBook Air for about a year, but it seems as though most applications are only compatible through emulation.

I could understand why Adobe wouldn't be quick about it.  They were dragging their feet on the way to Mac OS X in 2000.  They wouldn't port Premier Pro, and Apple brought out Final Cut and Aperture.

Intuit was also complaining, but then, they wanted us to move to Windows because they told people "the Mac is just too difficult to program" or some such, used to justify the higher price and lower functionality.

What got me over the years was that Microsoft was Apple's enemy and yet, their software was better for Mac OS X than that of Adobe, Apple's friend.

It's 2023, not 2003

It still feels as though little has been accomplished since the M1 and other Apple Silicon processors have been available.  The performance is so good that you might not notice the speed of Intel emulation.  Mouse cursor positioning doesn't seem all that stable, though, as of macOS 12.x.

It's been almost three years and I would expect that developers would want to show what their applications could do on better hardware.

Valve Software might not be doing as well as they want people to believe, but I suspect that they could buy a couple of M1-based Macs and update Steam for Apple Silicon.  If that worked out, they could re-jig Source to 64-bit compatibility, as well as Metal compatibility.  Apple might even help them, just to get more games on M1 Macs.  I should note the rumor that Valve and Apple talked about making Proton work on Macs and Apple refused.  Whether it happened or not, things need to be better than running Windows executables on another operating system.  Steam Deck with Proton works but it's not always wonderful.

It really wouldn't hurt Apple to create a division for games and keep it to help third parties develop outstanding games.  A couple of games I had for Windows are available in Apple Arcade but unavailable elsewhere.

It's interesting that Evernote is a Universal binary, but Dropbox is Intel-only.  Google Drive is listed as Apple Silicon, not Universal.  LastPass is Intel-only, but thankfully, Malwarebytes is Universal.

Serif's Affinity applications are Universal, but it seems a number of creative applications are not.  I'm thankful for Capture One Pro being Universal, as well as Affinity Publisher, Designer, and Photo.

How many years until Intel is completely gone from Apple machines?  When Apple pulls the plug on Rosetta 2 will they step up or step away?

Update 2024.07.29: I just updated to macOS 14.6, a Sonoma release.  I got an update for Steam, but I 99% know that it's Intel-only.  I checked updates on GOG Galaxy some 20 minutes ago and I'm waiting for it to finish.  That's perplexing since the Windows version updated a few days ago and I didn't have to check.  It told me.  It's time for the Heroic games launcher.

Electronic Arts finally got around to retiring Origin for the EA launcher, which is Universal.  Most of my games are still Intel-targeted.  Death Stranding is Apple Silicon only and is not available on Steam yet.  Divinity - Original Sin 2 is Intel only.

I've been reminded in some forums that there are 200+ Mac games.  I've also been reminded that you can use Whisky with the Heroic launcher to play some Windows-only games.  There are a few well-known games coming to Mac, including a new Assassins Creed (Shadows?) game.  I have a few of them but Ubisoft hasn't made a game I've loved since the original Rayman on Atari Jaguar.

Of course, it's not all about games, but they are essential to home users.

Update 2024.08.16: Now that the Qualcomm ARM-based machines using a Nuvia-developed SoC have been released, it should be interesting to see if there will be ARM-based games on Windows.  Apparently, the Windows' equivalent to Rosetta 2 is not so amazing.

Perhaps, if game developers start to design games for ARM on the desktop, they'll be able to target Macs as well as Windows machines.  Considering that the M1-based machines arrived in 2020, it's a bit frustrating waiting for something to happen.

I've downloaded Whisky and the Heroic Games Launcher but I haven't tried much, as I am not restricted to macOS, having a Windows 11 machine and a Steam Deck.  I need to focus.  I probably need more than my 1 TB drive and it might make sense to have a big, external drive for my Windows-based games for Mac since I have 230+ games on Steam alone and only a few are native to Mac.

Update 2024.09.02: I was just taking a look at the Steam hardware survey results.  macOS is around 1.3% of the total.  Is that surprising when Valve went out of its way to kill Counter Strike that was working and develop Counter Strike 2 with no executable for Macs?  All of their 32-bit executables from 2010 (?) still work on older machines but unless Rosetta 2 will run them, what's the point?

Why Apple and Valve couldn't even reach a compromise sends a message that isn't necessarily true.  Mac gaming isn't exactly alive but it's not dead, either.  However, the late 1990s were much better than now.

I tried Heroic Games launcher and downloaded a game that I know runs on Apple Arcade and it was fine on Mac.  I've been a bit slow to download much else because of the storage required.  I tried one of the Resident Evil games, which is native for Apple Silicon, and that was surprisingly good on an M1 MacBook Air.  If they have the RE Engine converted, they should be able to port to the whole series.

Unreal Engine 5 runs on macOS but it's the headlines about how bad its performance is on Windows that got my attention.  Trying new technologies is difficult but bringing a gaming system to a crawl is not good--just ask the Starfield people.