Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey

Quoting: ShmerlYour timeline is misleading. Both MS and Apple can be blamed for not supporting Vulkan. They did it very deliberately knowing it's being developed, since they did it out of obvious lock-in intent.

Are you serious? My timeline? We are talking about facts (The way it's a fact, that Apple wants to get games on macOS, because they said so). But to spell it out: Apple released Metal two years before Vulkan was released. Or in other words: To support Vulkan Apple would had to wait two whole years.

To signify how much time two years are: How successful would the Steam Deck be if players had to wait two years for any game to be playable? Steam machine ring a bell?

Quoting: poiuzAre you serious? My timeline?

Timeline starts with Mantle which presented such ideas before Apple and MS rushed to make NIH knock offs of them. And AMD from the beginning expressed the interest to make it a common API. That's why Mantle later was turned into Vulkan. Basically, collaboration on it could have started from the beginning, if Apple and MS weren't arrogant lock-in proponents who benefit from work of others either way.

See also: https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/581086347450007553


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 September 2023 at 6:29 am UTC

Apple runs an app store on their phones and one on their computers. The store on the phone removes old software regularly. They break APIs all the time and software (including games) needs to be maintained and updated constantly to remain usable on new os versions. As far as I can tell they run their computer store the same way.

Gaming is huge on their phones, possibly on their computers as well, but it's not the kind of gaming we think of. Their approach perhaps makes sense for general software and throwaway phone endless runners or farm sims, but "traditional" games (that get updated for a limited time) do not fit this model at all.

I, personally, treat my games very seriously and want to be able to keep playing them after years and years. The Apple ecosystem does not allow for this.

They obviously don't care about Steam and games Mac users buy there. It makes them no money and they made a lot of them useless when they dropped 32-bit support and surely will again as they obsolete APIs.

The only thing they're interested in is keeping the money coming in, which in turn forces developers into constant revenue stream models like subscriptions, micro transactions or ads. And Apple clearly supports gaming in this scope.


Last edited by damarrin on 4 September 2023 at 10:25 am UTC

Apple does care about gaming. I don't own a mac or iWhatever, so I don't have firsthand data, but I know that:

- iOS gaming is *much* bugger than Android gaming
- Some developers prefer to write Vulkan apps on Mac, over MoltenVk, just because the metal debug tools are better than Vulkan's

So, no, metal was not a gimmick for their own internal use. They forced it on iOS, it has great tools apparently, and it *is* successful.

I know, it's unfortunate, and I wish Vulkan was in a better situation, but it is what it is.

So Apple may or may not care about gaming on *mac* (I would argue we don't know, because we don't have numbers from their store). But it very clearly does care about *gaming*, and they are being very successful about it.

Quoting: poiuz(The way it's a fact, that Apple wants to get games on macOS, because they said so)

It's a fact. Because a corporation said so.

I mean, technically, it's no doubt vaguely true, in the sense that I want a pineapple fresh from the tree to drop into my lap. I'm not willing right now to do what it would take to get that to happen (e.g. travel to Hawaii), so it' s a pretty abstract desire. So, sure, Apple want games on MacOS, in the sense that they would be happy if it sort of spontaneously happened, but their main corporate goals dictate doing various things that will make it unlikely; they don't care enough to take platform actions that would help it happen.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 September 2023 at 2:05 pm UTC

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: EikeAnother question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D

Wayback Machine.

Well, that did work!



If it's a trend, it's a new one it seems.
Or I need to dig further down the timeline.

*edit* Fetched some more data, and I don't see a Mac decline between August 2021 (oldest number fetched) and May 2023. Wayback Machine is slow. It must be reading the data from tape. X)


Last edited by Eike on 4 September 2023 at 4:24 pm UTC

Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: ShmerlYour timeline is misleading. Both MS and Apple can be blamed for not supporting Vulkan. They did it very deliberately knowing it's being developed, since they did it out of obvious lock-in intent.

Are you serious? My timeline? We are talking about facts (The way it's a fact, that Apple wants to get games on macOS, because they said so). But to spell it out: Apple released Metal two years before Vulkan was released. Or in other words: To support Vulkan Apple would had to wait two whole years.

To signify how much time two years are: How successful would the Steam Deck be if players had to wait two years for any game to be playable? Steam machine ring a bell?

Your timeline is faulty, Vulkan was first announced in July 2014 at the SIGGRAPH conference. And ofc development had been quicker if say Apple and Microsoft had decided to join the development, one cannot just ignore the massive amount of money and resources that those two have compared with Khronos.

Also I don't see why waiting would have been such a problem, the first wave of games released with Metal came in 2017 anyway since everyone waited to see it stabilize first.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 4 September 2023 at 4:13 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: EikeAnother question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D

Wayback Machine.

Well, that did work!

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If it's a trend, it's a new one it seems.
Or I need to dig further down the timeline.

*edit* Fetched some more data, and I don't see a Mac decline between August 2021 (oldest number fetched) and May 2023. Wayback Machine is slow. It must be reading the data from tape. X)

I went back as far as Liam's Steam Tracker does (since some subset of data before then is hinky):



(Edit: added trend lines)


Last edited by CatKiller on 4 September 2023 at 6:15 pm UTC

Quoting: CatKillerI went back as far as Liam's Steam Tracker does (since some subset of data before then is hinky):

Thanks!
August 2021 was a bad date for my cutoff. :D
Did you fetch all of that manually from the website? It sometimes took like half a minute for it to display the link(s) for a certain day for me...


Last edited by Eike on 4 September 2023 at 6:18 pm UTC

Quoting: EikeDid you fetch all of that manually from the website? It sometimes took like half a minute for it to display the link(s) for a certain day for me...

I did. I've done data hunting for Liam's tracker before. The trick is to load the results into new tabs so that they can be getting on with loading while you wait for the next link to appear. And to make a cup of tea if it's getting too tedious, of course.


Last edited by CatKiller on 4 September 2023 at 6:32 pm UTC