Why are Macs bad for gaming?
I purchased and used my first Mac device in 2016 when I was 25 years old. To that point, I had only ever worked, learned, or played on Windows devices. The consistent sentiment I had heard was that Apple’s machines—geared toward productivity and creative work—were bad for traditional gaming. My experience with a 2014 MacBook Air’s meager storage and processing ability seemed to confirm that.
Now, after the transition to Apple’s M1 processor and the introduction of a gaming-centric service in Apple Arcade, I began to wonder what the company’s history in the gaming space truly has looked like. Why is macOS not viewed as a go-to gaming operating system, and why aren’t Apple devices more popular among gamers?
When I sat down to write this article, I began from a perspective that Apple historically has been opposed to supporting or optimizing its machines for gaming. As I dug deeper into my research, however, what I found is far more fascinating. If you’re like me and have been solely informed by the Mac gaming landscape of the 2010s, you’re in for a wild ride. In this piece, I not only explore the early promise of gaming on Apple devices, but I also dive into the pitfalls of the recent decade. In a future sequel to this piece, I will look Apple’s planned future with Apple Arcade.
Apple’s business and design philosophy historically has never centered around traditional console and personal computer gaming. Despite being able to run a number of titles on Apple’s hardware, Microsoft's history and investment in the industry illustrate where Apple’s priorities have and have not been.
The Mac(intosh)’s Core Identity
Use the original Stanford press release to talk about Mac’s intention: business professionals, college students, etc. At that time, it wasn’t
For a bit of a history on the effort it took to game on a Mac, a PC Gamer article from 2015 explains that much of the Mac line (Macbook Air, Mac Mini, and Macbook) would not be suitable for the task. "Their CPUs are clocked fairly low, in favour of long battery life. The processor only runs at 1.1 GHz in the case of the entry-level MacBook, and there are no options for discrete graphics cards. Don’t count on it playing anything but old and lightweight games," it writes. The remaining machines (Macbook Pro, Mac Pro, and iMac) would offer better results but with a host of caveates: price of entry, graphics limitations, non-modular design. Regarding the option to use external graphics, the article goes on to say that "it doesn’t work particularly well... Most Thunderbolt enclosures are designed for various PCIe add-on cards other than graphics cards: video capture, audio processing, etc. You could spend nearly as much money on an external enclosure as on a standalone gaming PC."
All of these considerations are on the hardware level before even considering the state of software. A 2010 Valve press release announced a native Steam client for the Mac, seemingly pointing toward a future where Steam games were both supported and avaiable for crossplay between Mac and PC. In the press release, Steam's then-Director of Business Development, Jason Holtman, was quoted as saying, "Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play." That reality never fully materialized. The reasons for this are varied and complex. Some of it falls onto third-party support. Some of it falls at Apple's feet as well, not providing an environment or hardware open and accessible enough for wide gaming adoption.
Regardless of the cause, this gaming landscape left users turning to methods such as Boot Camp or Wine to play games in a Windows environment on Mac hardware. While this was a legitimate option, it did not come without its own drawbacks, as described by PCMag's Whitson Gordon. "It's the easiest way to get games running, and provides the best performance. It does, however, take up a lot of space on your hard drive, and it's annoying to reboot your computer every time you want to play a game. You could install Windows via Parallels or VirtualBox, but you'll sacrifice a lot in performance," writes This is a far cry from the (mostly) plug and play experience of gaming on a windows laptop or desktop PC.
With the introduction of M1, the Apple’s future in the gaming space looks a bit more interesting. Does that future include playing the latest games natively and without jumping through a dozen hoops? No. It's a different type of gaming future but one that aligns with Apple's overall identity and philosophy. See Part 2 of this series for that perspective.