Apple is easily one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Its products can be found in almost every consumer in the US and nearly every country worldwide.
Apple products have been known for their accessibility and slick design. As a result, many would secure an Apple product regardless of its price. The iPhone is in high demand in China, making it the country’s most prominent brand for smartphones. It is considered to be a must-have for every Chinese citizen.
Such a product dominates both the eastern and western hemispheres of the world. But the brand fails to penetrate a particular industry and demographic: the gaming industry and its gamers.
Gaming and Apple
Gaming and the Apple brand have their share of history. Ever since the first Macintosh was released, people have already wondered if it could play the 4-bit and 8-bit games during its time. Surprisingly, it did, but that was no fantastic feat since any computer at the time could play games.
Fast forward to today, the Macintosh or Mac struggles to become a reliable gaming computer, regardless of how it markets itself. Therefore, it’s vital that we first look into the specs of such a rig and whether if it’s good for gaming or not. Then we will talk about gamer perspectives of such a product. Lastly, we will discuss where the Apple brand can excel in the field of gaming.
Mac Specs
The Mac Pro and its laptop counterpart, the Macbook Pro, are both reliable pieces of hardware. In addition, the Mac Pro can sport the most modern 28-core processor from Intel and AMD’s highly advanced video card, the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo. These are parts specifically made for the Mac, and they are certainly up to gamer standards.
The Macbook Pro, on the other hand, struggles to have gamer hardware embedded within its system. It only has a modest 8-core CPU and has a discrete GPU that works in the background. In other words, you can’t game with it, despite its more than $1,000 price tag.
So how about the desktop with a 28-Core processor and the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo GPU? You can undoubtedly game with that but at a staggering price. For example, the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo GPU costs $5,000 alone, putting the top-of-the-line Mac Pro at a staggering $52,000. You’re not misreading that it’s about a 5000% increase from your typical budget PC.
In comparison, you only need $20,000 to have a high-end PC that can play at a 4K resolution without any hiccups. Talk about a crazy increase.
Consumer Views
So what do people think about Apple and gaming? Unfortunately, the answer to that is not good.
The entry-level Mac Pro and Macbook Pro can’t play any modern games without stuttering into oblivion. The more advanced versions of these two particular brands aren’t any good either. Moreover, the price breakdown of their top-of-the-line gaming PC above certainly does not help their image either.
You’re not going to get the best out of your purchase if you think about it, and you’re going to save a lot more money purchasing any other gaming computer for sale in the market right now. Another problem is that the Mac Pro brand isn’t known to be customizable. Because of Apple’s paranoia about people reverse engineering their products, parts of their computers aren’t replaceable. So if you remove a computer part and replace it with another, chances are, it won’t work.
Because of the listed arguments above, no one in their right gamer minds will purchase a Mac Pro for gaming. So with this in mind, where can the Apple brand excel in gaming?
iPhone and the Mobile Gaming Genre
People still argue about the reality of Mac computers and gaming. However, by the end of the day, many gaming PC configurations are better than any Mac computer regarding performance and price. Many budget gaming computers can outperform Mac computers when built well. However, there is certainly one field in gaming that Apple can easily dominate: mobile gaming.
It seems that Apple’s flagship product is its greatest strength in penetrating the gaming market. The iPhone works so well with many modern mobile games today. It functions way better than any smartphone out there, with minimal stutters from its gaming performance. Moreover, it feels so good in your hands.
However, its main downfall is in the store where you can purchase these games. The App store has been known to sell only top-of-the-line products to its consumers. Although this is good for security reasons, it’s terrible when corporate greed gets in the way.
Games like Fortnite (which has over 300 million players) can’t be purchased in the App store simply because the company won’t budge in lawsuits between them and Epic Games. It’s a shame that this would happen in a product considered the best in mobile gaming.
So there you have it, a breakdown in what makes Apple so bad and good in gaming. The brand has potential, but it’s quite clear that corporate greed is in the way of it becoming one of the best gaming hardware worldwide.
