Dolphin on Macbook Air

[RCBH928]

After further research and reading of Isiollia's articles I come to the conclusion SamsonLongHair mention , I am indeed trying to hammer a nail with screwdriver. It appears that Apple's mentality is not "We are not a dedicated gaming machine" but " If you plan to play games, DO NOT buy our machines" .

The problem is that I am still stuck in 90's mentality, newer machines means it plays newer games better (which is still true on consoles). It appears that Apple are not even thinking about games. What they have in mind is: portability, low noise, cooler system, lighter-weight and if you just happen be able to run a game then... lucky you!

Coming to think of it, I do not blame Apple's strategy it makes sense to a certain extent. You want to play games, then don't buy our machines. Simple as that. If you decide to buy a laptop, then you do not have "gaming" on your mind (makes sense too). If you are rich enough to buy a $1000 laptop, chances are you are rich enough to own a recent console for gaming. I can see where they are going. They do have a GeForce GT 750M on their top model but not sure if its worth shelling the extra bucks for, given I will keep my machine for at least 4-5 years. My guess is that whatever extra bucks I will pay, it will mean I will just meet the minimum requirements of games for just 1 more extra year then my machine will be too old to run anything.


What caused this "misconception" is the App Store on the Mac has pretty recent games like Tomb Raider, Metro, Bioshock Infinite, and Borderlands 2. Probably current day macbooks can not run these games except in medium settings, 2 year old macbooks probably can't run them at all, then who is buying these games? Probably a very small number consisting of iMac users(Desktop macs are also shipped with weak GPUs), who bought their computers in the past 2-3 years. Not sure if porting these games are worthwhile financially.

I guess I should invest in an extremely fast internet to play using OnLive like service (Not happening ) , or cross my fingers and hope for some one to release a GPU I can connect through Thunderbolt which some one already did as an experiement and got Borderlands 2 to run on a Macbook Air!

@Marunrun

I also noticed that mac games (and I believe software too) usually need higher specs and are larger in size but not sure why is this.

I do have bootcamp, but I doubt that running a game in bootcamp in OS X will run better than playing the native Mac OS X version. It is also extremely inconvenient to reboot in Windows to play a game then reboot again to use the computer. If you have a powerful enough machine and you are playing an older game you can use bootcamp. I played Blood II in bootcamp in OS X and it runs smooth! Given that there is a 10 year difference between that game and my macbook, I say its not bad!

@Isiolia

I guess I agree with you on the PC trend part. PCs are splitting in two categories. The trend is going for lighter, quicker, longer battery life, more portable machines. We all realise that Desktop sales are probably no where near their numbers back in 2001. In fact I believe people are even giving up laptops for tablets and phones. I heard couple of my friends say they do not use their laptops any more after getting a tablet.

So you either buy a heavy-duty desktop machine or go with the trend of lighter and long lasting portable computers. The world where a new computer means its "Lighter AND faster AND more powerful AND less expensive AND more portable" is over. I guess maybe we reached that point where the console is more powerful than the average consumer PC.

I had dreams about connecting my new "with no mechanical parts" macbook through HDMI to my HDTV and using a wireless controller to play games

[isiolia]

Quite a lot of Windows laptops and desktops are similarly unable to run games. The difference is you can choose to buy a machine that can, where Apple has a limited product range.

Even when there wasn't as much of a GPU factor though, Mac ports were somewhat niche, so they weren't a great choice for gaming.

Then again, Jobs had John Carmack on stage at one point with Doom 3, and the Quake 3 demo came out on Mac first (I swapped my Voodoo2 into my Power Tower Pro to play it ). It just didn't pan out (and at the time they had consumer-friendly models that you could put a better GPU into).

So you either buy a heavy-duty desktop machine or go with the trend of lighter and long lasting portable computers. The world where a new computer means its "Lighter AND faster AND more powerful AND less expensive AND more portable" is over. I guess maybe we reached that point where the console is more powerful than the average consumer PC.

You do have the choice to buy a gaming laptop as well, they're just pricey for the performance, and often not as mobile. There's a huge variety of devices out there, so it's more about figuring out wants and needs, then finding what fits.

While kind of a tangent, the tablet market is at the kind of place the PC market was in the 90s. You don't buy the "gaming" iPad, it's just the newer/faster one that does everything.

I had dreams about connecting my new "with no mechanical parts" macbook through HDMI to my HDTV and using a wireless controller to play games

Steam has been integrating game streaming, so technically, you could do that, with a gaming PC elsewhere in the house actually doing the heavy lifting. The low end Steam Machines will also be a streaming front end.

[marurun]

@Marunrun

I also noticed that mac games (and I believe software too) usually need higher specs and are larger in size but not sure why is this.

I do have bootcamp, but I doubt that running a game in bootcamp in OS X will run better than playing the native Mac OS X version. It is also extremely inconvenient to reboot in Windows to play a game then reboot again to use the computer. If you have a powerful enough machine and you are playing an older game you can use bootcamp. I played Blood II in bootcamp in OS X and it runs smooth! Given that there is a 10 year difference between that game and my macbook, I say its not bad!

Well, depending on the game, it may actually make a big difference. Windows graphics APIs are better tuned for gaming, and if the game was originally designed for Windows and then later ported to the Mac, it may be making use of some sub-optimal strategies to make up for the different operating environment. As I mentioned earlier, if the game was ported in-line with the PC version, it may be relatively close, but if it was ported later there could be a big difference in performance. When Valve ported Portal to the Mac, there was actually a pretty significant performance delta. It got smaller over time, but I'm not sure they ever really invested enough time and energy to totally even them out.

Basically, if your laptop will meet the specs for the Windows version, it should run just fine in Boot Camp. It's down to the hardware (with a couple exceptions for Boot Camp driver issues).

Which is to say, if the Mac requirements for a title are higher than the Windows requirements, and the game runs, but just runs a bit chunky on the Mac, it should run more smoothly in boot camp. It's up to you whether that's worth the time and money for that improvement.

A better solution might be to buy a little compact PC designed for mid-level gaming. You could probably build something passable for $500 or $600 USD to connect to a TV.

[RCBH928]

thanks isiolia and marurun on helping with this topic. I think I will keep my choice with a macbook laptop. I just do not see my self spending $500 on a gaming PC just to get the gaming part going on.

I already have a backlog that is going to take at least 2 years and most of my gaming is retro or relatively retro (ps3 era?) . I was hoping I would be able to run some next gen. games even on medium resolutions (games released for 2015 and 2016) but it looks that just won't happen. I have to make the choice...

I am slowly pulling out from the videogames world any way, its consuming my life in an unhealthy way. If it was a way for me to make a living (as if I own a gaming store or work for Gamespot) maybe, but it has eaten enough out of life.