Valve abandons the macOS version of SteamVR
Valve has announced that SteamVR will no longer support macOS, although older frameworks are still available in beta form.
SteamVR needed headsets such as this one from HTC, and the ability for the Mac to drive it
Three years after launching a long-rumored Mac edition, developer and Steam platform manager Valve has announced that it is ceasing support for SteamVR on the Mac. The news, which comes ahead of any VR or Augmented Reality announcements from Apple, was made in a cursory community notification.
"SteamVR has ended OSX support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux," it says. "We recommend that OSX users continue to opt into the SteamVR [macos] branches for access to legacy builds."
"Users can opt into a branch by right-clicking on SteamVR in Steam, and selecting Properties... -> Betas," it concludes.
The original launch in 2017 was of a beta version, and it was introduced as macOS High Sierra introduced support for eGPUs over Thunderbolt 3.
Users on the SteamVR community site have so far reacted with predictably mixed responses, but most are pointing to how the Mac has traditionally been poorer at gaming than other platforms. This has really always been the case, ever since the Mac was introduced in 1984, but support for eGPUs did seem to be making a difference.
AppleInsider has been using SteamVR on macOS and Windows with Valve's own VR headset for a few months. We'll be discussing it at more length shortly.
SteamVR needed headsets such as this one from HTC, and the ability for the Mac to drive it
Three years after launching a long-rumored Mac edition, developer and Steam platform manager Valve has announced that it is ceasing support for SteamVR on the Mac. The news, which comes ahead of any VR or Augmented Reality announcements from Apple, was made in a cursory community notification.
"SteamVR has ended OSX support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux," it says. "We recommend that OSX users continue to opt into the SteamVR [macos] branches for access to legacy builds."
"Users can opt into a branch by right-clicking on SteamVR in Steam, and selecting Properties... -> Betas," it concludes.
The original launch in 2017 was of a beta version, and it was introduced as macOS High Sierra introduced support for eGPUs over Thunderbolt 3.
Users on the SteamVR community site have so far reacted with predictably mixed responses, but most are pointing to how the Mac has traditionally been poorer at gaming than other platforms. This has really always been the case, ever since the Mac was introduced in 1984, but support for eGPUs did seem to be making a difference.
AppleInsider has been using SteamVR on macOS and Windows with Valve's own VR headset for a few months. We'll be discussing it at more length shortly.
Comments
Many games and programs are only on the Mac through the virtue of cross-platform APIs, which means the dev can pretty much tick a box and a Mac .app pops out of the compiler, no effort required. But now, many devs have moved onto Vulkan, so that checkbox no longer works. Some devs are using MoltenVK as a translation layer to add Metal support to their programs, but very few devs are writing exclusively in Metal for macOS. This translation layer again makes the Mac experience worse, as it slows the graphics pipeline. Devs can support Win and Linux with one API, but Apple for some reason expects them to use an entirely different one for MacOS. The Mac marketshare is just too small to be worth it, so developers are just dropping support for the Mac instead. Apple seems to be under the impression that the Mac has the marketshare and thus developer profitability that the iPhone does, so they can abuse devs and dictate things at a whim, expecting the devs will follow, like they do on iOS. Only thing is the Mac doesn't have the marketshare of iOS, and so devs don't follow. Yet again this results in a bad experience for Mac users, due to the whims of someone at Apple trying to push their brand of closed-source proprietary API.
More worrying than the loss of games is the eventual loss of cross-platform productivity programs that currently use OpenGL. There are many, many open and closed source CAD, engineering and design programs that use OpenGL. When Apple decides it's finally had enough of OpenGL and removes it from macOS entirely, what happens to the open source programs? People that used Macs for their businesses (as I do) will be unable to upgrade, because the devs who write the open source programs aren't going to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the tiny Mac user base. If I want to work on an up to date OS, I'll be forced to switch to Windows or Linux.
I've said this before, but all this closed source incompatibility is chillingly reminiscent of Apple of the mid-90's and Microsoft in the late 90's and into the Ballmer years. Since Sat Nad has taken over, MS have had a much more open approach and they are being lauded for it, with respect for MS steadily increasing. Apple on the other hand is going backwards compared to the huge amount of open-sourcing and increased compatibility after Jobs' return in the early years of OS X, causing respect to decrease. It really is quite concerning.
Unity has had Metal support for many years.
Apple has always been anti-gaming (their OpenGL stack was several years out of date, and extremely slow), and considering a big chunk of their profit comes from App store games, that must be very embarrassing internally.
Sorry but no, while Apple has at times leveraged and contributed to open source projects, it has never been about open systems. The very nature of Mac and the ecosystem is a walled garden. That hasn’t changed.
Conjecture and rumor. No one on this forum knows what’s up between Apple and Nvidia for certain.
Yes just like the switch to Intel was the beginning of the end of the Mac as we know it...and the switch to PPC, and from macOS 9 to macOS X, etc, etc. Every time Apple makes a major change its the beginning of the end isn't it?
Since Nvidia have publicly stated they're waiting on Apple to sign the drivers, there's not much conjecture. Apple isn't perfect, but wo betide any Apple supplier that doesn't lick the ground Apple management walks on or they'll unceremoniously get the boot. Yet another example of Apple putting its internal politics above their customers. I have a 2019 iMac with a Vega Pro 48. It gets smoked by the much older Radeon 1080Ti. But due to Apple's ridiculous spat with Nvidia, we're all stuck on crap AMD cards.
Eventually Apple will fall out with AMD as they have done in the past, then go cap in hand to Nvidia for a GPU. Or do as they did during the last big spat 7 or 8 years ago and have Intel integrated everywhere. That was wonderful.