One thing that I'd love to see is a Proton version for M1/M2 Apple Silicon... UTM is the only thing that runs x86 VMs and for whatever reason its QEMU guest tool drivers are all completely buggy and everything is dog slow (and of course, Windows refusing to load unsigned drivers on Win7 x64 makes trying out different drivers pretty much impossible).
Apple's Game Porting Toolkit (https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10123/) is essentially Proton for macOS. However, they've bizarrely restricted its use to testing your own games, and don't offer it as a general Proton-like solution for playing Windows games on macOS. You can't ship a game that uses it.
Whisky [0] makes it easy to install the Windows Steam client on macOS. I've played a few games on it, mostly flawlessly. Performance is nowhere near native though. Hopefully this improves over time.
Yep, if Apple could get over their stubbornness and work with Valve on this it would be fantastic for customers of both companies.
Apple has done some work with their game porting toolkit to support certain flavors of DirectX games with a combo of Wine and Rosetta. But this isn’t officially pitched as tool for end users to run Windows games.
I mean, they made an entirely new architecture just to keep their vertical integration running. Stubborness is basically in the DNA of the company. They still have enough draw that they can get away with it, so I guess they were pulling off "Valves" before Valve got popular (minus the whole "open source" moniker of course. but then again, Valve didn't exactly care about FOSS per se; just a smart move for independence when you're not yet a billion dollar corportation).
> I mean, they made an entirely new architecture just to keep their vertical integration running.
No, they went for running with their own silicon because Intel couldn't be arsed to provide them with actually power-efficient, performant and new CPUs and they were locked in to AMD for GPUs (because that is something Apple doesn't like).
It speaks volumes about just how badly Intel (and AMD) were stuck in the past when Apple blew them to pieces with the M1 performance.
Why not switch to linux though? You know there's some real cool hardware available out there that looks and feels way better than a mac, and battery aside, can do a lot more, is upgradeable and not locked in. Just a thought.
This is hilariously biased. This is HN, you're not talking to people who don't know what Linux is. Hell, a huge portion of us are linux engineers of various sorts. You're also in a thread literally about a linux app.
Anyway. I would never, ever use Linux as a desktop environment over OSX after the experiences I've had with it over the last 20+ years. OSX GUI applications absolutely blow everything that Linux has out of the water. I don't care if we're talking KDE, i3, dwm, cinnamon. The worst part about OSX applications is they aren't cheap. Even small apps like Soundsource a https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ are usually $30+ but they are fantastic.
The thought of using pipewire and all the configuration hell you have to do to it to make it like Soundsource is a complete turn off. OSX apps work. They integrate. They look great and there are a LOT of them that do pretty unique things that I haven't seen in Windows or Linux.
I work on Linux 8 hours a day from OSX and about 30% of my time is using Win11 on my gaming desktop.
Also, now that I'm on an m1 max there is no way in the world I'm going back to x86 as my productivity machine.
This reply is also biased, maybe we had some bad experience in the past, but the example you made, Pipewire, is one of the things I was stunned that worked out of the box. It is relatively recent but it is already installed by default on most modern distros, and no "configuration hell" required. Linux applications might not be as good-looking as most of Apple store ones, but most of them sure work.
I'm not saying that you should switch to Linux, you do you, and to be honest Linux is not that friendly anyway. But that is not reason to stone linux to death, the parent comment is not even that offensive for MacOS users, it just asks if switching to linux would be an option, as an thought
Of course it comes installed so you can listen to audio. That isn't what Soundsource does - you CAN make Pipewire work like soundsource, though. Of course my post is biased. I gave my opinion as someone who uses both vs someone who only uses linux and doesn't know osx. Any Linux user telling me that "Linux does more than OSX" is getting my biased reply.
Per app audio redirection, per app effects, per app volume control, system-wide effects, headphone equalizer, auto change inputs/outputs etc. I haven't worked with pipewire in a long time but I had to use another app with some complicated GUI of "wires" or pipes to get the same affect. I can't remember the name of it now.
edit: Wireplumber or Mixx/Raysession, I forget. It was a huge pain comparatively.
You sure you aren't thinking of pulseaudio? Pipewire really hasn't even been out "a long time", and does do everything you listed kinda shockingly (to me) easily.
To be fair, I was a fan of pulseaudio even in the early days: being able to set up my desktop, with its decent speakers as just another audio sink for my laptop with its horrible speakers was like magic to me back in the day.
My mac mini and macbook pro would attest that i do know osx and indeed i have been using it for 15 years in work environments. Right after i switched to these from linux, to which i switched from windows and freebsd. Now back to linux. It’s come a long way.
lol. SoundSource looks identical to `pavucontrol` which I've been using for close to a decade, without ever touching a single bit of configuration, ever, for PulseAudio or PipeWire.
Or a single line to install EasyEffects which adds effects in the mix, also with zero configuration.
I'm not exaggerating. Tell me something you think SoundSource can do, and I'll show you me doing the same thing with Pavucontrol or EasyEffects in my entirely stock setup.
But sure. You found a screenshot of the ultimate Pipewire power tool that allows you to do things I guarantee SoundSource doesn't, and ran with it.
>They look great and there are a LOT of them that do pretty unique things that I haven't seen in Windows or Linux.
I love those of you who think an OSX user wouldn't know linux/linux apps.
edit: Yeah, this does nothing that soundsource does. I wish some of you would actually read the features and stop posting these volume control apps. Not to mention Soundsource was just a quick example. I could name 50 more apps that don't have a Linux alternative or one that is of any quality.
Literally - "A simple volume control tool (mixer) for the PulseAudio sound server."
Show me the UI for telling a specific application to redirect its audio output to a specific device automatically.
Show me the UI where I plug in a specific device it switches a specific applications (not all) default automatically to the new device.
Show me it's headphone EQ.
Show me per-app headphone EQ.
Show me per app EQ settings.
Show me the built in 3D/spatial audio for headphones
Then show me the config file you had to edit to set all of this up. And show me how clean and attractive the UI doing all this is. Then show me it in Pipewire because I don't care about Pulseaudio anyway and would never use that in 2023 with my need for low latency due to my DAW/equipment.
Then, in Pipewire, show me how to all this without using Wireplumber or Mixx.
I didn't say you couldn't do things in XYZ. I said the configuration of doing so sucks compared to doing it in another app. Soundsource was just an example. I don't know why you care so much. I could've said Pixelmator (GIMP?) or 30 other apps.
PS: "For all the talk, it should be trivial for you to make me look foolish right now. Like, so easy, right?"
You're this heated up because I like an OSX app more than Linux options? You're acting like I personally care about "winning" this argument. Even if it has these features I still wouldn't use the app. Aesthetics and ease of use is important to my day to day machine. Win the "argument" all you want.
> You're this heated up because I like an OSX app more than Linux options? You're acting like I personally care about "winning" this argument. Even if it has these features I still wouldn't use the app. Aesthetics and ease of use is important to my day to day machine. Win the "argument" all you want.
I use osx myself and do not like desktop linux for multiple reasons. Though, the fanboys like you are exactly the reason I want to migrate just to not have anything in common with that group.
You're so edgy!! I almost got cut with that comment! 2edgy4me!
You want to change your OS and leave m1 processors because random people on the internet think that OSX has better applications than linux. Hilarious. Like we sit with you at the coffee shop with our lit up Apple logos embarrassing you or something.
lol You're 100% right. I don't enjoy fixing linux at all after work. I used to do the VFIO GPU gaming desktop w/ linux + windows passthrough but I finally got over it and just installed windows on my desktop.
> You know there's some real cool hardware available out there that looks and feels way better than a mac
This is obviously a personal opinion, but just isn't close to true for me. I stopped using apple laptops 3 years ago, and I've never found a non-apple device with a trackpad as good as the mac.
I like the asus proart studiobook. It has the option of a 3d display without glasses. Dial doesnt work though, but the specs are pretty decent and build quality is great. Battery life is shit unless you shutdown some cores and apply other scriptable settings. Keyboard feels better than any macbook i ever owned, better than the magic keyboard. Ram, hdds and wifi card are upgradeable and are of pretty good specs. Screen resolution is high, has a touchscreen, high refresh rate, usb, thunderbolt and hdmi ports, etc.
But you know taste is personal and there are plenty other options.
What's different about the mac layout? Looks fairly standard to me, even the labels seem the same, apart from the trivially remappable control/alt/command/meta/whatever keys...
Valve already had Wine on Linux to work with. Although we have Wine on Mac now, it is a subpar experience. Aside from that, Vulkan on MacOS never received official support from Apple
I would say Valve stand on the shoulder of giants with Wine and Vulkan, they just had tl connect the dots between the two.
If Apple itself would respect its gamer users it could spend sometime on these open projects, but knowing Apple, if they do anything it would be on a closed-source vendor lock-in style
I imagine nearly everyone who runs macOS uses the App Store. Some apps are only available on it, and even some that are also available elsewhere are more convenient to install and keep up-to-date via the store.
But compared to the iOS store it’s kind of a ghost town. Tons of popular software isn’t in it. It’s quite normal to just download software instead of even looking to see if it’s in there.
And if it is, App Store software must be fully and tightly sandboxed. Which prevents a lot of useful software from ever appearing in it.
Sorry. I think I misread the tone of your comment.
For a lot of things I’m happy for sandboxing. Why should random games or todo apps need more access? But the fact you can’t get good backup software like Backblaze is a problem. They need more options for levels of sandboxing, including possibly none (with heavy review).
They did care about Linux, which was an even smaller market that doesn't like to spend money and doesn't like closed source and DRM. Yet now everybody is singing their praises.
It stands to reason that Steam on Mac is bad in comparison because of Apple.
> It stands to reason that Steam on Mac is bad in comparison because of Apple.
How? It’s software like any other. There’s TONS of great software on the Mac made by 3rd parties. It can be nice. It can run fast. MS does it. Adobe does it. Indie developers do it. So why is it Apple’s fault?
The story tends that gets passed around is that no one at Valve (more or less) works in it.
I’m not talking about the games Steam sells. I’m talking about the Steam client.
If they rewrote it in Electron (instead of whatever custom thing it uses) they could do a terrible job and it would still be faster.
I’m not even asking for it to be “Mac like”, just act like showing a store page isn’t a Herculean effort.
I’ll credit both sides with the stubbornness. Apple had many years of poor integrated GPUs (arguably Intel’s fault) and even mediocre dedicated GPU options (due to a rift with NVidia).
Apple also fully dropped 32-bit support, breaking a lot of older games that had been ported to Mac on Steam.
Even Windows running on ARM has emulation for 32-bit x86 apps.
On Valve’s side they gave very little love to the Steam client on Mac and didn’t bother to update their own games (Half Life, Portal, Counterstrike, etc) to 64-bit to keep them working on Macs.
The biggest thing that has changed is now Apple ships much better GPU power even in its cheapest Macs. They still aren’t equivalent to dedicated gaming PCs but are plenty to run a huge library of casual and older games, if only there were a convenient and well-maintained path to running them.
Valve often does things because a person employed by Valve wanted to do that thing. And then that person moves on to other things. You don't need any grander explanation for "Valve ported the Steam launcher to OS X and now barely maintains it".
Because they "put customers first"? That seems to be the PR that people feel had them invest in Linux, but they forget it was more of a desperation move in a time where Windows may have been trying to strongarm 3rd party game stores out.
Very smart to leverage that failure of Steam Machine into a portable form factor. A bit ugly and clearly some cut corners, but the price saved on no Windows license speaks for itself.
Because at least CPU-wise, the M SoCs blast a lot of the x86/64 competition to pieces. GPU is another story, although unified memory is inherently better than the current situation on x86/64.
Blame Apple for not implementing Vulkan on their GPUs. If they had a fully compliant Vulkan driver I'm sure gaming on Mac would be at parity with Linux very quickly.
MoltenVK is explicitly not enough for vkd3d-proton. It lacks features that are now mandatory for acceptable performance. So lack of native Vulkan there is surely a deal breaker.
From reading about dev effort to support Mac with DXVK, there are certain things Metal/MoltenVK doesn't support directly. So current compatibility requires more hacking as well as the additional layer of translation to hurt performance.
Metal is fine, Vulkan support as well would be ideal.
That is only a thing on i(Pad)OS. There's nothing to my knowledge preventing anyone from running their own app store on macOS - Steam purchases work fine, the entire Adobe suite does, as do Macports and Homebrew.
But Apple has proved that they will enforce their walled garden if and when they feel like it. Any company building a thriving profitable ecosystem inside Apple's walled garden is at risk of the owner of the garden starting to tax them.
It's a little like licensing Enterprise software from Oracle. You know they'll be looking for reasons to you sue you. You may be able to avoid it, but you know it's in their style.
