Posted on 03/04/2016 6:33:23 AM PST by ImJustAnotherOkie
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has poured water on the idea of his Rift virtual reality headset supporting the Mac by saying that Apple doesn't make any computers powerful enough to run it.
"That is up to Apple and if they ever release a good computer we will do it," Luckey tells ShackNews when asked about Mac support. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended spec."
Apple's high-end Mac Pro computers come with dual discrete GPUs, but they're designed for professional applications rather than gaming. Advanced VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive require a gaming-focused graphics processor as capable as an Nvidia GTX 970 or above to meet the manufacturers' recommendations.
"If they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac," Luckey continued. "But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it. So even if we can support it on the software side, there's just no audience of people that can run the vast majority of software out there."
Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed an interest in VR, saying on the company's most recent earnings call that "I don't think it's a niche. It's really cool and has some interesting applications." For the foreseeable future, though, Apple's Mac platform won't be able to play host to the most advanced implementations.
Windows is an OS. According to the article this is a hardware issue.
Bias … that’s all this is.
Precisely
Apple doesn’t really cater to gamers. They build computers for users who accomplish things
Mac OS pretty much only runs on Macs, a direct correlation of OS to hardware; hence Mac hardware is just over 6% of the market.
“Apple has a lock on all their hardware so their OS can work.”
Sounds like a fragile Apple ecosystem since PC/Windows systems have all kinds of hardware out there that works just fine.
This claim by Apple that nothing PC/Windows works flies in the face of hundreds of millions of users that use them every day without problems.
“They build computers for users who accomplish things”
Like what? Outside of Photoshop, which actually runs better on a PC, and one video composition application, I have never heard a single app that Mac are known for.
“They build computers for users who accomplish things”
Corporate offices use custom built Windows applications and have for decades. Macs, not at all. The Apple development environment has always been a disaster. Microsoft has had The visual suite of tools for 30 years that work great.
Apple’s Ultra High Profit business model won’t allow it. They sell image.
“IOS is a pretty lightweight OS.”
By engineering standards iOS is considered a pig. It is why Apple was sued for claiming so much memory in iOS devices only for the user to have little left after iOS was installed. The lawsuit claimed Apple mislead customers by making memory size claims when the memory was consumed by Apple’s iOS.
That's true, but you can't assert it's simply a matter of OS market share because the vast majority of the Windows PC's out there don't meet the required hardware specs, either.
Apple’s core OS is Unix, not invented here is their motto.
Apple’s real core expertise is logistics.
I’m assuming the great majority of Windows machines out there also cannot handle the Oculus Rift. I want one bad but I may have to wait for the high end PCs needed to run good VR to come down in price. It may take a year or two.
On the other hand, that slowdown in desktop PC sales may start to reverse itself soon. It might be a good time to buy some shares in MS and Dell.
“Apple’s core OS is Unix, not invented here is their motto.
Apple’s real core expertise is logistics.”
Totally agree. UNIX is not a consumer OS. I have never seen a UNIX environment that wasn’t complicated to configure and keep running. Claims otherwise are by UNIX hacks that do not know any other OS environment. UNIX is constantly needing care and feeding, which is why Apple locks down their configurations and deny most hardware and software products from it.
At least Windows is an open environment where the user can add whatever they want because the environment works. The vast majority of problems in Windows has been from bad software or hardware products, not Windows or the PC itself.
You could buy or build one for about $1000 right now. I did back in Nov.
Corporate offices use custom built Windows applications and have for decades. Macs, not at all. The Apple development environment has always been a disaster.True that almost all Corporate systems use Windows, although I recall recently reading that IBM is switching to Macs, and the amount of end-user support has dropped dramatically because of that.
I would also point out that, from what I've seen, when developers have a choice, they overwhelming choose Macs (although some will run Linux on their Mac hardware). I've been a software developer for over 30 years, and my experience is that it's Windows that's the disaster. My experience includes developing a Windows-base business system (the OS was chosen by my client, not me) that is currently deployed to over 14,000 locations nationwide. Most of our time was devoted to working around shortcomings of Windows.
“I’m assuming the great majority of Windows machines out there also cannot handle the Oculus Rift.”
True, but there are far more PC systems that exist that can, and the typical buyer for the Oculus is someone with one of those systems.
Also, many systems can also be upgraded to handle the Oculus. Merely swapping the video card will do the trick. Can’t do that on a Mac so easily, if at all.
“from what I’ve seen, when developers have a choice, they overwhelming choose Macs “
I’ve never seen that and I have 30+ years at this. Developer HATE the Mac because of how locked down and brain damaged it is. The dev environment has been nothing but hassles for developers.
I’m not, I’m pointing out that the Mac hardware market is so small it is not worth the effort. Pretty much the same reason that most game developers don’t bother with it.
I don't think is as much a matter of market share as it is the nature of the market. Game developers are always looking to take advantage of the "bleeding edge" of graphics technology. Apple's business model (our OS only runs on our hardware) tends to keep them persistently behind that curve.
Anyone who could compare Visual Studio to Xcode and declare they’d rather use Xcode needs their head examined.
I’ve used most of the top IDEs out there - Visual Studio is the best and it’s not even close.
And that doesn’t even get into how nice C# is to actually write in.
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