Mar 15, 2018  Mac vs PC 7 reasons why now is the best time to upgrade from Mac to a Windows PC Fed up with Apple and Mac computers? Here are a few reasons why you should consider upgrading to a Windows 10 PC. Jan 16, 2016 Apple's Mac computers may be good at a lot of things, but they aren't the best machines for gaming. Here are some big reasons why they suck for games. ★ Evolution of Xbox Hardware: https://youtu. Apr 02, 2013  Why aren't Mac's good for Gaming? A lot of people say Mac's are no good for gaming on, my question is, why? What is it about the Mac that makes it no good for gaming, for example, I have WoW on my iMac at home, it runs great, it's a 27' and I.

Gaming on the Mac is terrible, right? That has been the consensus among gamers for a decade-plus—Ars even declared Mac gaming dead all the way back in 2007. But in reality, the situation has gotten better. And after Apple dedicated an unprecedented amount of attention to Mac gaming at WWDC 2017, things might be looking up for Mac gamers in the coming years.

When Apple announced new Macs and a major update to its Mac graphics API at this year’s developer conference, there was an air of hope amongst Mac gamers and developers. Gaming on a Mac may look more appealing than ever thanks to the introduction and gradual improvement of Apple’s relatively new Metal graphics API and a better-than-ever-before install base. On top of that, discrete Mac graphics processors have just seen some of their biggest boosts in recent years, VR support is on the way, and external GPU enclosures promise previously impossible upgradeability.

Mac Mini For Gaming

So gaming on the Mac is improving, but is it good or still terrible? Are we on track to parity with Windows? Speaking to game developers who specialize in the Mac about the state of Mac gaming in the wake of WWDC, Ars encountered plenty of optimism. Still, there’s plenty to be cautious about.

Decades in a niche

In gamer communities on forums and Reddit, Mac gaming is often the subject of jokes and snarky comments. Again, such snark was not always without justification. There just weren’t many good games on the Mac for years. Nevertheless, a few companies have continuously worked to fill the niche. Two in particular emerged as leaders in the marketplace—Aspyr Media and Feral Interactive.

Aspyr was founded way back in 1996, originally as a retail distributor. The porting aspect of its business came later, with the first game it ported in 1998—Eidos’ Tomb Raider II. Feral got started in 1996, too. And in addition to the Mac, Feral has ported games to Linux and iOS (it plans to expand to Android in the near future).

“We’ve dealt firsthand with all the big changes to the platform that have taken place over the last two decades,” Edwin Smith, Feral’s head of production, told Ars. He cited changes like the advent of dedicated graphics processing units (GPUs), the move to a UNIX-based operating system, and the transition from the PowerPC processor architecture to Intel.

PowerPC-based Macs in the '90s and early '00s used a different processing architecture from the Windows PCs for which most games were primarily developed. It didn’t help, either, that Microsoft’s Direct3D (part of the DirectX suite of APIs) became the industry standard graphics API. The cross-platform OpenGL API used in Apple computers struggled to keep up in the meantime. And frankly back at that point in time, Macs weren’t very popular, so the audience was small. It was abundantly clear to gamers that the Mac was not a competitive platform in the PowerPC days.

“In the years leading up to the transition to Intel CPUs in Macs, the porting process entailed converting games to run on PowerPC hardware,” said Smith. “This was difficult because the existing code was written with x86 architecture in mind, and since this didn’t always have a 1:1 relationship with how PowerPC architecture worked, we had some interesting problems to solve.”

Climbing out into the sun

Players using today’s Mac offerings live within a different landscape. Things became much rosier over the past decade for a number of reasons.

First, there was the switch to Intel. By adopting the same architecture used in most Windows PCs, Apple moved the Mac out of a software engineering wasteland. Second, Mac sales figures grew significantly at the same time. According to data aggregated by Statista, 3.29 million Macs were sold globally in 2004. By 2015, that number had reached more than 20 million.

“Apple today sells in a quarter what they used to sell in a year, so the total market opportunity has grown from what used to be normal,” Elizabeth Howard, vice-president for publishing at Aspyr, told Ars.

The hardware situation looked better, too. Macs enjoyed what Howard called a “halo effect” from the previous generation of consoles. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 remained gaming hardware standards for nearly a decade—longer than many other console generations. That longevity allowed the Mac’s laptop-grade graphics hardware to catch up to this industry standard.

“Most video games are developed with console or PC as the lead platform, and the system requirements are naturally targeted around what those platforms can handle,” she explained. “Since Mac is a downstream port of these versions, and Macs were well-aligned with last-gen console specs, we were able to easily move games from PC and console over to Mac.”

Finally, Howard and Smith cited the shift to digital distribution. While this was disruptive and concerning for the industry at first, it turned out to be a major boon for Mac-centric gamers.

“2011 was the last year Apple carried any physical game boxes in their stores,” Howard said. “There was a time we thought this would mean the demise of Mac gaming.” Within a few years, Apple was no longer shipping computers with physical media drives at all; the platform abandoned them more quickly than the PC market did. But rather than hurt Mac developers, it helped. Digital marketplaces like Steam and the Mac App Store “made it much easier for us to get our games to end users,” said Smith. “And as a result, our customer base has grown.”

Howard also sees the new marketplace as an improvement: “Digital distribution had a huge impact on our business. It’s obviously much easier for people to buy games, we had a big catalog to leverage with this new audience, and it’s much easier on cash flow with no cost of goods. It was a huge shift.”

And all this has made the Mac a more vibrant gaming platform than ever before. Mac games have a substantially larger addressable market, the economics of scale are more favorable, and for a while, the hardware was in a sweet spot. With plenty of great games available on the Mac, gamer snark has been looking less and less applicable in recent years.

Mac and Windows have been a rivalry dating back decades, most famously encapsulated by Apple's somewhat amusing Mac versus PC commercials. It was always said that Windows PCs are built for spreadsheets, can break easily, aren't supported well enough by manufacturers and do not offer a consistent experience. Apple Macs, on the other hand, simply work out the box. Some of this was actually true back in the Windows XP and Vista days, but times have changed and so has Windows.

Microsoft now produces sleek, aluminum-based portable PCs that offer immense performance in a gorgeous form factor, the same goes for vendors like ASUS and HP. The OS has evolved too, offering advanced features like ink and pen support, touch-friendly operation, and even more immersive gaming. I'm going to run through a few reasons why you should at least consider upgrading to a Windows 10-based notebook.

Microsoft has come a long way with Windows over the years. XP was the golden years, Vista brought issues, 7 fixed said problems and 8 completely changed the OS for the worse. Now we have Windows 10, skipping 9 entirely, and things are better than ever. The OS — when installing on an SSD — is blazing fast, especially when booting and waking up from hibernation. It's also super stable.

The OS comes rocking a number of features, including support for Virtual Reality (like macOS) and Windows Mixed Reality — the latter allowing you to bring the desktop experience to life with a compatible headset, running Windows apps in a virtual home. Security has also been improved by Microsoft with Windows 10 and Defender has become quite the package. While it remains true that more vulnerabilities are present for Microsoft's OS, Mac owners aren't safe.

It's an incredibly versitile OS, running on tablets, laptops and powerful desktops. That means it has many usabilitty features ready to go.

An issue with Windows is the design and lack of consistency, mainly in context menus and how software looks. Microsoft is working to address this with the Fluent Design System, which is gradually being rolled out. This will help tie everything together in a sleek-looking package. But until then, you'll have to deal with a few visual issues that wouldn't be experienced with macOS.

Windows 10 isn't perfect, nothing really is, but Microsoft is making strides while Apple seems to be crawling.

Get all your apps

Microsoft added a Store in Windows 8 to allow consumers to purchase and download apps from a centralized location. This allowed for the release of Windows 10 S that restricts access to just the store for installing software, but keeps costs low and improves security for the education sector.

While the store itself may not be perfect (it's far from it), it does mean that macOS users who rely on the App Store can find a replacement and won't need to run through countless installation wizards. Gone are the days when you need to roll out CDs and install ugly software.

Gorgeous on the Surface

Should you be looking to replace an aging MacBook and don't wish to fork out the extra cost introduced in the latest generation, Microsoft has some amazing looking devices. The Surface family of portable PCs include tablets, 2-in-1s, and laptops. The Surface Book is one of our favorite PCs, which offers the best of tablet and notebook worlds. It really is a killer machine.

Purchasing a Windows 10-powered PC from Microsoft (and partner products at the Microsoft Store) will ensure you deal with no bloatware. A clean installation of Windows 10 ready for software and apps to be downloaded and a device that not only sports premium materials like an Apple product but can at times cost a little less while sporting better components. Then you have the Surface Studio, which is a beast for creative individuals.

Attractive third-party hardware

If the Surface line from Microsoft isn't quite what you're looking for, there are a collection of partnered manufacturers who also release Windows 10-powered PCs. Laptops specifically used to come as bulky black slabs that looked horrific when placed next to the MacBook for the day, but vendors like ASUS, Acer, HP and Dell have really stepped up their game to offer some compelling products. Take the stunning XPS 13 laptop as a perfect example of this.

You could even go all out and not purchase an Ultrabook but a machine built for intense workloads. you'd be hard-pressed to find a MacBook that could match something like the MSI GS83VR in raw performance. It has two (yes, two) GTX 1080 GPUs running in SLI, costing around $5,000.

Vendors use different touchpads, keyboards, screens, materials and more. You may prefer the keyboard of a Dell laptop than that of an MSI notebook. The beauty of choice means you can purchase a Windows 10 PC that best matches your requirements, meaning you'll be less likely to endure issues that affect all machines, like that problem MacBook owners are experiencing with the keyboard of more recent MacBook models.

Making all kinds of savings

With Windows 10, there are some serious savings to be had. If you're not after a powerful notebook or PC, nor do you require fancy features like an IR camera that can scan your face and log into Windows or an expensive Core i7 processor, there are some more affordable devices running Microsoft's OS. There are some great little devices that cost you less than $300.

The MacBook can be purchased with an Intel Core m3 processor for a whopping $1,299. The Surface Pro from Microsoft costs just $799 and features the same processor, amount of storage and RAM. It's also made of aluminum. For $1,299 you could upgrade to a Surface Pro model that comes with an Intel Core i5 CPU, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM, or the HP Omen 15 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 GPU, and a 2TB HDD.

Get your game on

Gaming on macOS was being pushed by Apple a few years ago but it seems the steam has run out in the engine. Oculus Rift still isn't officially supporting Apple's computers but Windows users can enjoy a number of VR-ready titles available on the store. The same goes for normal gaming, which continues to take place on Windows.

Most gamers use Windows to play titles on and developers don't develop games with macOS in mind. This likely won't change because in order to get a Mac computer with enough power, you're looking at well into the thousands. You can build a $700 PC and run The Witcher 3 without issue.

Build your own

You can build really cool-looking Windows 10 PCs. That alone is awesome enough. Not only can you use a computer but you'll learn how to build one, troubleshoot and make upgrades as more powerful components are released. You... can't build your own Mac.

Your reasons

Made the switch from macOS to Windows 10? Let us know what made you upgrade in the comments.

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