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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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TL;DR: Apple's restrictions on what software you can install and "our way or fuck off" philosophy have doomed serious gaming on their hardware, and ARM is not great for gaming atm.
Think about it this way - Mac's software frameworks are not the primary focus for the vast majority of game developers (Metal was considered "do not touch" for the longest time for people not making mobile games), and Apple doesn't have an incentive or true motivation to try to move their frameworks more towards the standards on Windows, Linux, etc.
Also, ARM in general (while it can produce great results when software is tuned for it) is just not a good way to play games designed for x86. Valve is trying with FEX, but to do so on a Mac is sort of compounding the misery (translating the x86 game then translating the DirectX/Vulkan framework to something the Mac can use will eat your performance alive).
Additionally, the 100% self inflicted "Think different(tm)" problem on Mac for developers is the mandatory fees and the requirement to use Apple hardware to build and ship software for people to use in the "official channels". That might be something a company like Adobe is willing to stomach, but not most game developers.
Addendum: Also Apple's history with shitty cooling solutions and voltage limits means the CPU/GPU probably wouldn't be able to perform to their greatest potential anyway compared to a traditional desktop pc.
Okay, as someone who owns both Linux PCs and a MacBook, while I fully don’t think anyone should ever get a Mac for gaming specifically, what on earth are you talking about with “restrictions on what software you can install”?
You can 100% install anything you like on your Mac. Yes, if it’s not signed, the OS will decline to run it by default, but you can very much bypass this if you choose to (one time authorization - I.e. clicking ‘open anyways’ and entering your password - in privacy & security settings is all that is needed).
The ‘Mandatory Fee’ for App Store access and the code signing (to prevent users needing to ‘open anyways’ as I described above) is $100/yr, which may indeed shut out some indie game devs, but isn’t any sort of contributing factor to actual game studios not supporting macOS (in fact, many game studios that support iOS still don’t support macOS even though they’ve already paid the fee and macOS can straight up run iOS apps by default). No, the general lack of macOS game support is all down to other policies and priorities at Apple.
So let’s criticize Apple for stuff they actually do (like iOS App Store lock-in, in most markets, and not caring about giving more than the bare minimum of support for any gaming that isn’t mobile generally) and not invent specious claims that aren’t accurate.
Gaming on Mac has been an issue from the very start.
My suspicion is, it's the constraints Apple imposes on software development.
Back in the day, they had this human interface style guide with everything developers had to adhere to if they wanted to make Mac software.
https://blog.prototypr.io/rediscovering-apples-human-interface-guidelines-1987-59731376b39e
Nice picture there
There's no point running games at 1800fps. Steel Nomad might be CPU or bandwidth limited on the PC laptop to make it perform worse, or it might be a Windows problem that manifests at such high frame rates. Gaming is an afterthought at Apple.