[HN Gopher] Whisky: Wine supercharged with the power of Apple's ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Whisky: Wine supercharged with the power of Apple's game porting
       toolkit
        
       Author : robin_reala
       Score  : 372 points
       Date   : 2023-11-26 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (getwhisky.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (getwhisky.app)
        
       | littlecranky67 wrote:
       | I prefer Heroic Game Launcher. It detects GPTK if installed and
       | compiled via homebrew, but also has a built in downloader for
       | different wine binaries (crossover or verbatim wine). You can set
       | each wine runtime for each game. Plus, Heroic can login and
       | download your Epic and GoG games.
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | What about Steam?
        
           | littlecranky67 wrote:
           | Doesn't support steam to my knowledge, that's where Whisky
           | comes in handy.
        
       | Philpax wrote:
       | Pretty neat, but will Apple attempt to shut this down for
       | redistributing GPTK?
        
         | kouteiheika wrote:
         | I doubt it. But they will shut it down eventually, purely by
         | dropping support for Rosetta.
        
           | sgjohnson wrote:
           | What does this have to do with Rosetta?
        
             | asow92 wrote:
             | Doesn't GPTK depend on Rosetta?
        
               | BirAdam wrote:
               | All x86 software being run on macOS relies on Rosetta 2.
               | It effectively does a translation of x86 binaries to ARM
               | binaries. Then, WINE handles the PE to mach-o translation
               | along with providing a system call translation from
               | Windows to *nix. Game porting toolkit then adds in macOS
               | specific stuff as well as Vulkan and DirectX translation
               | to Metal.
        
               | giomasce wrote:
               | Vulkan? Are you sure? Last time I checked it was just
               | only Direct 3D. For Vulkan there is only MoltenVK.
        
             | hmottestad wrote:
             | Most games don't have an ARM version yet, so Rosetta lets
             | you play x86 games.
        
           | mod50ack wrote:
           | I'm unsure that they'd actually do this. As I recall, the
           | original Rosetta required Apple to pay royalties to IBM and
           | it was basically only useful for Mac OS X binary
           | compatibility. Being able to translate x86 binaries is
           | somewhat more general in application and I don't think Apple
           | is paying royalties on Rosetta 2.
        
             | tijtij wrote:
             | There is a cost to maintaining and keeping it functional as
             | macOS gets updated. Apple doesn't care about legacy support
             | or backward compatibility, so they will eventually drop it
             | as they had dropped 32-bit support. I am sure Apple wants
             | developers to view Rosetta 2 as already deprecated and to
             | update their new releases to Universal 2 binaries.
        
             | viktorcode wrote:
             | Rosetta 2 expects certain capabilities from ARM CPU, which
             | exists solely for the purpose of running x86 simulation.
             | Apple will drop that in future versions of their SoCs and
             | Rosetta will go as well.
        
               | danaris wrote:
               | You're speaking very authoritatively about the future
               | plans of a company that is _notoriously_ secretive about
               | its future plans.
               | 
               | Do you have some kind of insider knowledge?
               | 
               | Or are you just claiming things to be definitively true
               | that are, in fact, merely speculation?
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | Based on decades of historical precedent. Apple has
               | migrated from 68k to PowerPC to Intel to ARM. You can no
               | longer run PowerPC applications on current MacOS, as
               | Rosetta v1 was dropped five years after migrating to
               | Intel. Likewise 68k emulation was dropped some time after
               | transitioning to PowerPC. Rosetta v2 is another temporary
               | solution until x86 support is completely gone a few years
               | from now, unless they intend to continue offering the
               | Game Porting Toolkit.
        
               | brandall10 wrote:
               | This is an unprecedented situation given their new push
               | into Mac gaming, seemingly trying to convince AAA studios
               | that there is a market. If successful they can increase
               | their user base and steal some thunder from Steam, and it
               | probably bodes well for their Vision plans.
               | 
               | I'd say they have an incentive to not drop Rosetta until
               | they reach a critical nexus of support from the
               | studios... enough that it will cause the laggards to
               | quickly add support once it's taken away. Maybe that will
               | be there in a couple years, but likely it will take a bit
               | longer.
        
               | danaris wrote:
               | Except that those situations were materially different
               | from the current situation in two _huge_ ways:
               | 
               | 1. The architecture they're migrating away from is _the
               | dominant architecture in the market_ (both now and for
               | the past few decades), meaning that rather than simply
               | losing support for older MacOS software, they 'd be
               | losing access to easy virtualization of everything
               | Windows and Linux can do.
               | 
               | 2. The architecture they're migrating _to_ is their own,
               | 100% in their control, meaning that they can maintain
               | _hardware-level support_ for this translation layer
               | without needing to convince any other company to put that
               | effort in on each subsequent chip generation.
               | 
               | Now, does this mean they're guaranteed to maintain
               | Rosetta 2 forever? No, of course not. I don't know what
               | Apple's going to do any more than you or viktorcode do.
               | 
               | But it does mean that seeing this transition as being
               | _exactly_ a mirror of the past 2 architecture transitions
               | they did is dangerous, at best.
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | Agreed that this is a different situation. If they drop
               | Rosetta then Crossover is gone and Game Porting Toolkit
               | is finished. Also Docker will be limited without x86. I'm
               | using that to run SQL Server on Linux on MacOS for work.
        
             | tinus_hn wrote:
             | Another argument for dropping Rosetta (2) is that it forces
             | developers to make the transition instead of lingering in
             | dependence of the translation. And if they don't make the
             | transition, get dropped by the wayside.
        
         | isaacryu wrote:
         | Hi there, Isaac here. Early days of GPTK this was definitely a
         | concern, so we required you to download the dmg from Apple's
         | website yourself, but around beta 4, with feedback from the
         | community, they changed the license to allow for redistribution
         | in cases like this.
        
       | BaculumMeumEst wrote:
       | these projects are assaulting my sobriety
        
       | wyre wrote:
       | This seems cool but I can't help but think it should be named
       | Brandy since brandy is distilled wine and whisky is something
       | different.
        
         | lessbergstein wrote:
         | Fortified wine or Thunderbird would be a more accurate simile,
         | I think
        
           | ulizzle wrote:
           | Port was what I was thinking. Can't turn wine into whiskey.
           | That's not only impossible but grounds for a holy war between
           | wine and whiskey aficionados
           | 
           | Plus it goes with the whole gaming port thing
        
             | bloqs wrote:
             | Port - what an amazing name!
        
               | Etheryte wrote:
               | An amazing name that's also completely impossible to
               | search for.
        
               | bloqs wrote:
               | Yes, had i thought about it a minute longer...
        
               | kijin wrote:
               | Sherry, then. Or vermouth. Or any other fortified wine.
               | It shouldn't be any more difficult to search for than
               | whisky.
        
               | filoleg wrote:
               | How about Winegar? Has "wine" in the name, and vinegar is
               | essentially what wine ends up becoming after some time
               | anyway.
        
               | Closi wrote:
               | Kind of already used by MacPorts (Jokes are already there
               | for Port / Cask / Brew etc which would probably confuse
               | things)
        
         | woleium wrote:
         | The dude is not old enough to drink yet, i think we can forgive
         | his naming scheme, lol.
        
           | orf wrote:
           | He's under 18? Impressive!
        
           | andruby wrote:
           | Drinking wine at 17 is fine in many countries. The US is
           | probably among the strictest.
        
             | isametry wrote:
             | In a lot of countries, _drinking_ wine is fine (as in
             | legal) at ANY age.
             | 
             | It's the _purchase_ that is so often regulated.
             | 
             | (And you're right, in many places the latter limit is lower
             | than 18. For example in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
             | Denmark and Belgium, non-spirits like wine and beer can be
             | bought from 16.)
             | 
             | The two (drinking age vs. alcohol _buying_ age) often get
             | confused, but _consumption_ limits per se are actually
             | pretty rare. (Assuming it takes place in private - laws
             | regarding drinking in public are somewhat more common.)
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age
        
           | isaacryu wrote:
           | Haha tbh not a lot of thought went into the name, just went
           | for a drink with a higher alcohol content, and I think Whisky
           | is kinda catchier.
        
         | seanhunter wrote:
         | Maybe he's thinking about the story about how Queen Victoria
         | used to find the claret at state dinners too weak for her, so
         | would take a flask of Royal Lochnagar whisky to supercharge her
         | wine.[1]
         | 
         | [1] https://scotchwhisky.com/whiskypedia/1888/royal-lochnagar/
        
           | ethbr1 wrote:
           | Explains a lot about Queen Victoria. Made of sterner stuff!
        
         | brandall10 wrote:
         | I imagine being stronger than the base technology is what is
         | being conveyed - ie. "wine is fine but liquor is quicker".
        
       | jug wrote:
       | I would love to see a table with level of support and framerate
       | for a few CPU's here. I know it depends on contributions but I
       | think the community would be happy to do so if this takes off.
        
         | cpuguy83 wrote:
         | r/macgaming has had a number of these.
         | 
         | Personally I've had very little luck getting much of anything
         | to work, though.
        
       | karimf wrote:
       | I've been following the scene of Mac gaming for a while. Isaac,
       | the author of this project, is someone who contributes a lot to
       | this space. He created Whisky and contributed to Ryujinx, a
       | Switch emulator that works on Mac, and Playcover, a way to play
       | iOS apps and games on Mac. Also, he's still 17 years old. [0]
       | 
       | [0] https://isaacmarovitz.com/
        
         | Eric_WVGG wrote:
         | This is a tiny detail but boy do I appreciate that he actually
         | bothered to use the real toolkit (AppKit, SwiftUI, whatever)
         | for the GUI... I am so, so tired of projects like Docker
         | Desktop that cram basic UI's into Electron and think that's
         | somehow "fine."
         | 
         | Thank you, Isaac. The details matter.
        
           | viktorcode wrote:
           | If you target latest macOS that's an easy choice.
        
             | saagarjha wrote:
             | Using AppKit to support older versions of macOS is not
             | particularly difficult.
        
               | szundi wrote:
               | Electron is probably cheaper to inplement and works -
               | sadly chrome under the hood outgrows it in resource
               | hungriness
        
               | the_other wrote:
               | You get what you pay for, I guess.
        
         | isaacryu wrote:
         | Hi there, it's been wonderful reading everyone's comments!
        
       | karulont wrote:
       | How is this different from CrossOver?
        
         | hmottestad wrote:
         | It's just an easy way to get started with GPTK. Crossover has
         | support for GPTK now too, so you can use that if you want.
        
           | irusensei wrote:
           | Didt things got better lately? I had very limited success
           | with crossover circa 2021. And that's from a point of view
           | from someone who have no Windows actively running on personal
           | devices. Comparing to what I get in my Linux AMD GPU machine
           | crossover seems to be not as good.
        
             | hmottestad wrote:
             | CrossOver now supports the GPTK, which lets you run DX12
             | games.
        
           | dev_tty01 wrote:
           | Does Crossover use the native Mac interface tools?
        
             | mrpippy wrote:
             | Yes, it's entirely AppKit.
        
         | danaris wrote:
         | They have a handy-dandy little comparison table on their Wiki.
         | [0]
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/Whisky-
         | App/Whisky/wiki/A-Hitchhiker's-Gui...
        
       | runxel wrote:
       | The Apple Gaming thing is the only thing that keeps me tempting
       | to switch to Sonoma, even tho the rest of it is so bad and worth
       | it.
        
       | rtuin wrote:
       | Interesting developments in this space. So how does this work in
       | practice? Do I feed it an ISO? Are Steam games supported?
        
         | als0 wrote:
         | Steam games are sadly very hit and miss. In my case more misses
         | than hits.
        
       | ankaAr wrote:
       | Wine for apple and they called it whisky?
       | 
       | Cider should be the name.
        
         | esquivalience wrote:
         | Wine, fortified with the power of porting? I should say Port
         | was a perfect name.
        
         | Moldoteck wrote:
         | Portwein?
        
         | tapoxi wrote:
         | Cider was the name of a commercial port of Wine to Mac by a
         | company called Transgaming.
        
           | ankaAr wrote:
           | :c
        
         | nzgrover wrote:
         | beer => whiskey
         | 
         | wine => brandy
        
         | isaacryu wrote:
         | Quite a few projects already with Cider as their name, so I
         | decided against it.
        
       | honeybadger1 wrote:
       | I am pretty pleased with it. It has its own set of nuances, but
       | it is simple and works quite well with my needs so far.
        
       | herpdyderp wrote:
       | Neat but... how do I use it? (Currently I'm clicking random
       | things until something interesting happens.)
       | 
       | edit: found a guide on the GitHub repo:
       | https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/wiki/A-Hitchhiker's-Gui...
        
         | hmottestad wrote:
         | Download the windows exe file for Steam and run it from the run
         | button in your flask.
        
           | herpdyderp wrote:
           | Thanks, that's even easier than what I was initially trying
           | (force downloading Windows games via the Steam CLI on the Mac
           | side)
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Why don't we ever get the opposite? I want this but a MacOS
       | emulator (really a library implementing the MacOS apis), so Mine,
       | not Wine. Allowing me to e.g. run Safari on Linux.
        
         | ori_b wrote:
         | https://www.darlinghq.org/
         | 
         | Needs people to contribute to get to the point of running
         | Safari, but the foundation is there.
        
           | garciasn wrote:
           | Someday!
           | 
           | "...we finally have basic experimental support for running
           | simple graphical applications."
           | 
           | But not yet.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Yeah, I know I shouldn't complain but I've lost faith in
             | this project.
        
           | philistine wrote:
           | The work is impressive, but I don't see a future where anyone
           | manages to stay ahead of Apple and emulates macOS. Wine has
           | decades of work, tons of support from companies with a vested
           | interest in its success, and a clear need (running Windows
           | games on Linux and Mac, running Office et al. on Linux). I am
           | an inveterate macOS user and I don't see any benefit to a
           | project like this for Linux. Who wants the very high quality
           | third-party software made for the Mac, but not the OS?
           | There's way too few people with this werid mindset to make a
           | project of this scope viable.
        
             | sandworm101 wrote:
             | >> wants the very high quality third-party software made
             | for the Mac, but not the OS?
             | 
             | Everyone who wants to do video editing on a Linux box. Or,
             | in other words, everyone who doesn't want to buy and
             | maintain a $$$$ apple machine just for occasional video
             | editing. The same people who don't want to keep windows
             | boxes running just because one random client needs them to
             | use some random Windows only software
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | Most of those folks, in my experience, just have a
               | Windows computer, or dual-boot.
               | 
               | I use the Photoshop part of my Adobe subscription mostly
               | on a Mac, but I boot my desktop over to Windows if I need
               | to use Premiere and After Effects because applying to
               | those problems a GPU that weighs as much as my Mac does
               | counts for something.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | Or has a virtual machine running Windows. The performance
               | hit is there, but for occasional use, it's quite
               | sufficient.
        
               | earthnail wrote:
               | Davinci Resolve runs on Linux.
        
               | philistine wrote:
               | Video editing falls into the category of running Office
               | and the rest.
               | 
               | What's wrong with running Adobe Premiere through Wine?
               | 
               | Oh and there's way too few people who would want to video
               | edit with Linux but Mac software. I mean there's probably
               | a hundred people on the planet, no joke.
        
             | littlecranky67 wrote:
             | Replace "Apple" with "Microsoft" and "macOS" with "Windows"
             | in your post, and it is the exact statement I would have
             | written ~2003 when I first played around with wine. Around
             | 2004 I ran CS 1.5 online using wine on a linux box, and
             | changed my mind. Today, in 2023, it seems like Windows
             | games are better run with wine on Linux or macOS (the wine-
             | bottles are basically sandboxed windows editions that I can
             | create or scrub anytime I want). It is incredible how
             | usefully sometimes software becomes 20 years later.
        
               | gtirloni wrote:
               | It's great we can run big games on Linux in 2023 but my
               | laptop with a RTX3050 turns into a jet engine with
               | ProtonGE and often drops frames, has to compile shaders,
               | etc. I've used all tricks I could find to make this
               | better. Some of it is lack of support, but it's mostly
               | not as efficient to emulate things (shocking revelation,
               | I know).
               | 
               | If you boot the same machine in Win11, it's silent
               | playing most games, zero stutter, just smooth.
               | 
               | macOS going through the same means in 2043 they might be
               | enjoying the extra heat dissipation.
        
         | cfcosta wrote:
         | There was a project aiming to do this called Etoile OS[1]. Just
         | went to the website and realized last update was in 2014 :/
         | 
         | [1]: http://etoileos.com/
        
           | timeon wrote:
           | I tough it was/is aim of GnuStep, while Etoile was supposed
           | to be `distrivution` of GnuStep with additional features.
        
         | subtra3t wrote:
         | Unrelated but is there any way to use Safari on windows?
        
           | askiiart wrote:
           | You can either 1) run macOS in a VM, though I'm only familiar
           | with running macOS VMs on Linux, 2) VNC into a real Mac, or
           | 3) run Safari for Windows from 2012 [1]
           | 
           | [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20231006225735/https://www.old
           | ver...
        
         | starcraft2wol wrote:
         | Mac is a system of tightly integrated processes, so emulation
         | requires the whole OS.
         | 
         | Windows games tend to be isolated all in one executables.
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | That's generally not true.
        
         | iforgotpassword wrote:
         | Honest question, but why would you want this? Wine is obvious,
         | there was a lot of software exclusively on Windows with no
         | match on Linux when the project started, and that still is very
         | true today for games.
         | 
         | While there certainly is a handful of exclusive software for
         | the Mac, I don't see anything that would generate broader
         | interest in this.
        
           | satvikpendem wrote:
           | Hackintoshing. I don't want to buy a separate machine just to
           | make iOS apps, but sadly I have had to do so. A few years ago
           | I was able to run Windows, macOS, and Linux in Proxmox, it
           | worked pretty well, but I'm not sure how long that will still
           | be available as macOS moves fully to ARM.
        
       | hmottestad wrote:
       | I've been using Whisky for a month or so to play Hogwarts Legacy
       | on my M1 Max. Lots of fun. Performance is fine. The M1 Max is
       | definitely not a 4090, but it's nice that I can play the game at
       | all!
        
         | MrBuddyCasino wrote:
         | How many FPS do you get?
        
           | okamiueru wrote:
           | From a quick search suggesting somewhat relevant results:
           | 
           | - Using AMD FSR 2 to upscale a 1280x720 render target to
           | 1080p, and all graphic presets set to low they benchmarked
           | ~42 FPS on M1 Pro and 47 FPS on M1 Max.
           | 
           | Around the same ish ballpark as with a GTX 700 series
           | dedicated GPU, released 10 years ago. And around twice the
           | performance of other integrated graphics of other modern
           | CPUs.
        
             | derrasterpunkt wrote:
             | There are multiple translation layers in between the game
             | and the GPU. I don't think this is a fair comparison.
        
             | hmottestad wrote:
             | At those settings I'm getting about 40 fps. If I bump it up
             | to ultra I get about 32 fps. If I go for retina (2304x1490
             | upscaled to 3456x2234) I'm down to 25fps, and when I step
             | inside a building I get around 33fps.
        
           | hmottestad wrote:
           | I'm getting around 25-30fps at ultra with AMD FSR 2 set to
           | quality. Not great, but perfectly playable for me. In Whisky
           | I enabled "Retina mode", otherwise it runs at 1/4 resolution.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | It's good to realize that the Xbox design uses virtual machines.
       | Every game is its own VM, with its own OS.
        
         | jbverschoor wrote:
         | Check out this interview with Dave Cutler by Dave Plummer:
         | https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=9Gh0G-zFh0hX89cA&t=7394 (from
         | 02:03:00)
         | 
         | Oh, and if someone can lipread, the audio mutes at 02:06:55 :-)
        
       | atorodius wrote:
       | Can someone familir with the scene comment on how this compares
       | eith Crossover?
        
         | tomaskafka wrote:
         | Afaik it has a one-version-behind (to still let crossover have
         | some edge and ger money that lets them develop it further)
         | crossover inside.
        
       | solardev wrote:
       | Much props to the maintainers for making this available at all,
       | but I gotta say that as a user (gamer), the experience is a pain.
       | Some games work, sort of, after a lot of configuration (often
       | with outdated instructions, https://github.com/Whisky-
       | App/Whisky/wiki/Game-Support. Many games don't work at all, or
       | only work on some platforms (e.g. Battle.net but not Steam for
       | Diablo 4). Dozens of issues remain unaddressed:
       | https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues
       | 
       | I wish Apple would hire a team to properly maintain this, the way
       | Valve has done with Proton and Steam Deck Verified.
       | 
       | In the meantime, I find that GeForce Now
       | (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/) provides a much more
       | seamless, one-click-and-play experience. It works every time and
       | doesn't break on every update, etc. Its primary downside (aside
       | from a very reasonable monthly subscription fee) is that it has a
       | relatively small game library, with only a subset of
       | Steam/Epic/Xbox title available to play. But of the games it
       | supports, it provides an _overwhelmingly_ better experience than
       | Whisky, GPT, or even native Apple Silicon gaming. The 4080 is
       | dramatically more powerful than even the highest end Mac, and
       | running it in the cloud means no local noise or heat, and much
       | much better battery life. For anyone interested in actually
       | gaming on a Mac without headaches, with good graphics and a good
       | framerate, I 'd strongly recommend GFN and just ignoring the
       | ports or emulation layers. It's just a much better experience.
        
         | derrasterpunkt wrote:
         | >I wish Apple would hire a team to properly maintain this, the
         | way Valve has done with Proton and Steam Deck Verified.
         | 
         | Valve cooperated with Codeweavers, the makers of Crossover, to
         | build Proton. And afaik Apple ,,works" with Codeweavers. Well
         | at least they don't get in the way to incorporate GPTK into
         | Crossover. Apple changed the licence of GPTK so that
         | Codeweavers can include GPTK.
        
           | solardev wrote:
           | Good point! Have you had any experience with CrossOver? Does
           | it tend to work better than Whisky?
           | 
           | Part of the nuance here is that although both can use GPT
           | underneath, there's still a lot of config that needs to
           | happen beforehand (e.g. different "sync" modes that impact
           | not just visual fidelity, but whether the game will even
           | launch at all). Does CrossOver take care of all that for you
           | (with predefined pre-game profiles, perhaps) or do you still
           | have to manually configure every title?
        
             | dantondwa wrote:
             | > Good point! Have you had any experience with CrossOver?
             | Does it tend to work better than Whisky?
             | 
             | It certainly does. It has presets for most mainstream games
             | and it uses the latest version of Wine.
             | 
             | The author of Whisky, in a move that can't be praised
             | enough, has decided to not update further the version of
             | CrossOver on which Whisky relies. This is so that Whisky
             | does not become a free clone of CrossOver, given that
             | CodeWeavers are the ones developing Wine. So, I'd say it is
             | worth using CrossOver! They also have a free trial, so I'd
             | give it a try and compare it with Whisky for a specific
             | game, and see what runs better!
        
             | derrasterpunkt wrote:
             | Not in depth. I'm just a user of Crossover, I haven't had
             | time to try Whisky. I think sometimes Codeweavers
             | incorporates fixes for certain games into the app updates.
             | Especially for the Steam app, for example. These appear in
             | the changelogs. I use Crossover with CXPatcher because I
             | then can use more up-to-date versions of DXVK and GPTK. The
             | update cycle of Crossover is a bit slow for what is going
             | on in that space right now.
        
           | kbf wrote:
           | I think a recent beta of Crossover incorporated a GPTK
           | version before it was released by Apple so that seems
           | promising.
        
       | littlecranky67 wrote:
       | Since a few weeks I've been using the cheapest base model Mac
       | Mini M2 which I got from a major german retailer for 650EUR (all
       | taxes included) brand-new. The gaming capabilities on 1080p are
       | amazing and surprised me. I don't think there is any comparable
       | WIntel machine for that price available (and within same form
       | factor) with comparable gaming performance - mostly because
       | available iGPUs are not powerful enough. I can see how that will
       | change with the release of the new AMD Phoenix Desktop APUs, but
       | we will have to wait if vendors bundle it into this slick, quiet,
       | neat-looking machine that is the Mac Mini. Downside is of course,
       | you have to mess with GPTK and Heroic/Whiskey, the UX is not
       | nearly as slick as Steam+Proton on Linux.
       | 
       | I hope GPTK is just Apples first foray into gaming, they could
       | release a trimmed-down version (less ports, no ethernet, no
       | speaker) of a Mac Mini with a gaming focus and compete with
       | PS5/Xbox on the price. But it needs better software UX for gaming
       | just like Proton did for Linux.
        
         | virtualritz wrote:
         | > I don't think there is any comparable WIntel machine for that
         | price available (and within same form factor) with comparable
         | gaming performance [...]
         | 
         | Check the Xiaomi RedmiBook Pros. You'd be surprised.
        
           | littlecranky67 wrote:
           | There are actually some devices that could complete on paper
           | specs, like the Beelink GTR7 or other small form-factors.
           | Problem is, they are made by some chinese manufacturers, and
           | even though Xiami is not a small company, the build quality
           | can vary, and availability is completely random. Especially
           | the Beelink one with the AMD 7840 chips seems to be vaporware
           | - there were youtubers and magazines reviewing it a couple of
           | month back, but I was unable to find a retailer that actually
           | has it, and it seems to have gone away from the homepage.
           | They are also probably not very big on support and returns.
        
             | gtirloni wrote:
             | _> I was unable to find a retailer that actually has it,_
             | 
             | All these Chinese manufacturers are on AliExpress. There
             | are many offers for Beelink SER7 with AMD 7840 chips.
        
           | littlecranky67 wrote:
           | I don't think they will be even close to the gaming
           | performance since they only have Intel iGPUs. No way this
           | does 1080p@60 for some AAA games from 2-3 years ago. And
           | those models with dGPU are way out of the price range of the
           | basemodel Mac Mini.
        
         | jwells89 wrote:
         | I do hope that between M-series SoCs and AMD APUs, it becomes
         | normal and expected for mainstream computing devices across the
         | board to have reasonable graphical capabilities without the
         | unavoidable heat, power hunger, and added cost of a discrete
         | GPU. There's not much reason for iGPUs to be as weak as we've
         | become accustomed to with Intel CPUs.
         | 
         | The benefit from this happening would be twofold: it gives a
         | much wider spread of users access to hardware that can deal
         | well with moderate graphical workloads and it provides a common
         | minimum spec for game devs to keep in mind that's actually
         | powerful enough to deliver a decent experience (as compared to
         | now, where iGPUs are near writeoffs for anything but esports
         | titles).
        
           | gtirloni wrote:
           | _> not much reason for iGPUs to be as weak as we've become
           | accustomed to with Intel CPUs._
           | 
           | It requires more silicon which will increase power
           | consumption and require more heat dissipation... same issues
           | with discrete GPUs. Where would the additional performance
           | come from?
        
             | jwells89 wrote:
             | Somewhat powerful iGPUs do require more silicon, but the
             | design of that silicon is going to differ compared its
             | discrete counterpart -- whereas discrete GPUs are typically
             | designed for most performance possible with the least
             | silicon at the cost of heat and power usage, iGPUs are
             | designed for perf per watt, as seen in Apple's M-series
             | SoCs. There's probably some energy savings to be had from
             | the GPU sharing system memory and moving data around less.
             | 
             | On the software side of things, iGPU drivers tend to better
             | optimized for efficiency compared to discrete GPU drivers,
             | where that's almost an afterthought and in some cases
             | broken (like the laptop I had where the sleep state in the
             | drivers for its Nvidia card was broken for _years_ ).
        
       | cactusplant7374 wrote:
       | Does this trigger any virus alerts?
        
         | isaacryu wrote:
         | There is a known false positive involving Avast
         | https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/465#issuecomment...
        
       | mcfedr wrote:
       | Just found this a few days ago, looks like a nice start, but less
       | developed (so far) than some of the others. I landed on Wineskin
       | for my usage (playing AoE2) as i found it most understandable.
       | Also check out Porting Kit for click and play.
        
         | harrygeez wrote:
         | The other thing is Wineskin using CrossOver as its main engine
         | now performs so much better than vanilla wine.
        
           | mcfedr wrote:
           | Yea and it offers a newer crossover build than whiskey, not
           | sure why whiskey isn't using the latest open source version
           | available
        
         | lippihom wrote:
         | I for the life of me cannot get AoE2 to run on my M1. Somehow
         | always desyncs and/or jitters.
        
       | reimertz wrote:
       | I just tested it and it ran CS2 at 120fps on online servers. All
       | I had to do was install Steam, then installed CS2 on Steam and
       | ran the game.
       | 
       | mind blown that we can get this type of performance knowing how
       | many hops are involved to get this to work (Rosetta2, DirectX ->
       | Metal etc).
       | 
       | I hope these type of things give AAA studios the motivation to
       | check out Apple Game Porting Toolkit.
        
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