I both agree and disagree on this point. But reality is, the choice is made by game developers independent upon my agreement as I accept as reality…
Mac users (well more developers/power users) choose both… Windows sits on my right for gaming and testing purposes in my development flow while Mac is my primary development and working environment…
This is precisely for the reason you describe. In the development arena, Mac is used quite frequently simply because I can virtualize Windows for testing on my Mac and I cannot however virtualize Mac on my PC…
Each has its purpose and purpose is completely independent of which is “best” as “best” is always opinion.
Apple is one of the worst companies to deal with when it comes to development. They have only themselves to blame. Their tools for the M-Series Macs do make porting easier (Metal is nearly identical to DirectX 12 and mostly needs just a wrapper to remap functions from the latter), but the biggest problem is support.
You see, unlike Microsoft with Windows, which only ends support for an OS every few years, Apple abandons their OSes on a yearly basis. That means having to constantly shift the goalposts for which hardware is compatible. This is the problem World of Warcraft deals with every expansion. Because of how Apple designed XCode, once Blizzard moves to newer versions of XCode, older OSes get cut off. It wouldn’t really be much of an issue if the OS cadence was every few years, but yearly abandonment forces shifts that screw players constantly. I had to move to Windows instead of macOS, which is my preferred OS for this very reason.
The end result of all of this is that Blizzard no longer wants to develop and support a platform that constantly shifts the goalposts, porting tools or no porting tools. And make no mistake, Apple’s IGPs are still the Achilles’ Heel, even on their M-Series Mac Pro because eGPUs are no longer supported and in the case of the Mac Pro, no graphics cards at all are allowed - they’re blocked at the firmware level. Blizzard doesn’t want to deal with this anymore and now only maintains the previously available games on macOS at a bare minimum. You can see this with Diablo 3’s current issue of a missing dictionary key in the info.plist file inside the Diablo 3 app bundle. It’s the easiest possible fix and Blizzard hasn’t fixed it for months. The only reason WoW gets better treatment is because it’s a continual cash flow, something the Diablo games are not at large (even D4).
I don’t like it anymore than you do, but it is what it is. My 4090 would smoke the everloving crap out of Apple’s IGP. WoW only gets a nice boost on M-Series Macs because the ARM64 CPUs are in fact beast mode and WoW is entirely CPU bound. But you still have to sacrifice quality to get playable framerates due to the weaksauce IGPs and lack of third party GPU options. I’d have scrimped and saved for a Mac Pro if Apple allowed actual good GPUs to be used in conjunction with their CPUs, but they don’t.
Apple played its politics and angered a longtime developer that originally started out with macOS ports alongside their PC versions.
Fun fact: I could upgrade to Sequoia right now on my hackintosh…if I wanted to use just the IGP on my CPU. Apple refuses to sign nVidia’s drivers so my 4090 can’t be used for anything but an unaccelerated 2D raster with no resolution options and D4 does not run on IGPs.
I get where you are coming from, but you explained it yourself in the beginning. That is not their fault. They can definitely be a pain in the rear - I develop for both platforms, but it really isn’t like that anymore.
Yes, they are. The biggest problem is the constant abandonment of their OSes. Once they are done with an OS they will provide security updates for two years, and no bug fixes. None. No driver updates, nothing. And every so often newer versions of XCode move the targeting cutoff for builds.
With Windows at least it’s “OK, you need at least X version of Windows, but the range is much larger than with macOS” (e.g. Diablo 4 requiring v1909 (preferrably v2) as a minimum, 20H2 if we want full functionality on modern GPUs. But at least the games are playable on the minimum OS version. With macOS, you’ve got some aging but very capable Intel Macs that will get zero performance updates or fixes. None. And even worse, those Intel Macs, even with semi-modern GPUs such as the AMD 68xx/69xx family, will see performance degredation if they update the OS past Monterey. Apple broke the AMD drivers significantly, presumably to cajole Intel Mac users into buying a new M-Series machine instead. They’ve got a history of doing just that via planned obsolescence. The first gen M-Series Macs are also in the crosshairs of planned obsolescence.
Apple treats their systems like phone upgrades and people just don’t have the money for that, and developers have even less patience for the constantly shifting support because most bugfixes need to come from Apple and they can only work around them so much before they run out of options. This makes keeping games playable on macOS unbelievably difficult. And Blizzard management is still extremely pissed at Apple refusing to give them help with Metal when it first debuted. Blizzard’s Mac team, already in the process of dwindling to virtually nothing (one guy for nearly a decade now), had to figure it out on their own.
The game porting toolkits have come too late for most companies. Apple just burned way too many bridges. If it gives you any clue as to how much Blizzard doesn’t want to develop for macOS itself outside of the few games that still run on it, Diablo: Immortal is available on iOS, but Blizzard purposely did not set the flag to allow native installs on macOS (ARM64). If you want it there you have to force a sideload.
If Apple were a pleasure to work with Blizzard would probably at least partially reverse course with them. But Apple isn’t a pleasure to work with. You have no idea just how much of a total kludge/hackfest the WoW client is on macOS to deal with all of the bugs Apple will never fix in order to keep the game at least minimally playable for the players that can currently play it but aren’t on the latest and greatest machines. And the only reason it’s being maintained at all on that platform is because it launched on that platform alongside the Windows version, so it’s grandfathered in.
None of this makes for a good development environment.
WoW works on Apple Silicon so Blizzard knows how to dev on this plateform.
You will tell me, yes but WoW uses Rosetta to run.
And ?
For a dev learning a new framework, is now a difficult thing to do ?
You can’t tell, this is due to a specific plateform such as Apple Silicon, cause it’s an ARM processor and the XBox series and smartphones are ARM motorized !
When you look what they have done with the last season or with VoH, the idea is not to give the best user experience but to win a lot of cash.
S8, is the worst season they ever made, with a casual play it’s already done, VoH should be a patch not an extension cause this is empty.
And no, this is not due to MS who bought Blizz, it’s due to the old CEO who think profits and not gaming.
Some others studios are planning to deploy or deploying new games on Mac.
For the record, Blizzard has always manage to create games on Windows AND Mac except for D3 and D4.
For me it’s Lilith 1 and not Diablo 4
But for the op, you can play to D4 with crossover, you won’t have the best experience but it works, there is some memory leaks and sometimes the game become totally unplayable, but it can be used.
The thing is a PC is an open platform. You can build your own PC and hot rod it to your hearts content. Of course this means you are responsible for your computer; You are the master of your machine. If you buy cheap parts you may find it locking up and crashing but if you know what you are doing that will not be a problem. Mac’s are locked up tight. You are at the whims and mercy of Apple. You are not really in control of your Mac the way you are in control of your PC. A PC is like a car you can customize. A Mac will always jut be OEM…
The Battle.net app (a.k.a. “the launcher”) is still using Rosetta and is not ARM64 native, but WoW itself is native. A different team builds the Battle.net app which is why it’s…mostly broken.
I think what it comes down to is money and resources then, yeah? Expanding the player base natively to all of the platforms like they used to could also present the argument that more people would pay for the battle gouge (pass).
It comes down to politics, which is why Blizzard nixed their Mac team over a decade ago and essentially left one person in charge of the games on that platform (whom also builds the Windows clients as well, so he’s got a boatload on his plate). Blizzard has quite a few people internally that use and love Macs / macOS, but management is another story, and it’s management that makes the decisions.
Glad in the end we agree. You made a lot of good points, and the reason the things I mentioned aren’t happening I think we also in the end agree on.
Their management is on some BS lately. Season 8 of D4 is…eh. I love the game’s look and feel. I just hate the repetitious nature of these seasons and losing it all, and starting over - and this season is meh except the boss powers so far. Just kinda fending for yourself with no direction can be a blessing and a curse.
I will say though that D2R has been a lot of fun to (re) play lately. Just got smoked by Duriel and had to take a break to go back to work lmao.
