Apple’s Macs are now good for gaming. Who knew?

Once a case of ‘avoid at all costs’ for gamers, Apple’s latest devices are veritable video game beasts.

Apple's Mac range is now a good option for gaming. Source: Supplied.

Throughout my gaming life, consoles have come and gone, fads have arrived and departed, and genres have risen and fallen; but among the few constants has been the refrain “You can’t play video games on a Mac”.

I can now say that is absolutely and unequivocally no longer true.

Historically, there just weren’t nearly as many ‘big release’ games on a Mac – certainly, some AAA PC games did make their way to the platform, but the Wikipedia article on Mac games lists 2,455 titles in total for all versions of MacOS systems, which is a rounding error in comparison to the sheer total of PC and console games out there.

That certainly helped create the idea that Macs ‘weren’t for gaming’, but thanks to advances in technology and games development, they definitely are now.

I’ve been putting a 14in MacBook Pro with M1 Max chipset, 64GB system memory and 3024 × 1964 Liquid Retina display through its gaming paces for the past several weeks, and can comfortably say the gaming experience is easily on par with many Windows-based gaming laptops.

The flagship title for this paradigm adjustment is, oddly enough, Resident Evil: Village, the horror game from Capcom famous for having an extremely tall vampiress antagonist and very impressive graphics. The game looks amazing on the MacBook, running very smoothly at 3024x1964 resolution with HDR support, really showing off the visuals and lighting effects and providing a

Resident Evil: Village looks amazing on the MacBook, running very smoothly at 3024x1964 resolution with HDR support, really showing off the visuals and lighting effects. Source: Supplied.

What really surprised me, however, was when I logged into my Steam account and selected the “filter by Mac compatible” tab and discovered there were a lot of them – including some big titles like Hitman and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, as well as the critically acclaimed Disco Elysium: Final Cut, indie gems like Game Developer Tycoon, and even the latest-release grand strategy game Victoria 3.

So what’s brought about this remarkable (and great for gamers) change in the world?

The short version are the M1 and recently-announced M2 series chipsets the latest Macs (including MacBooks) are running; which are extremely powerful and efficient and have enough grunt to run demanding modern-day games.

The M1 Max chipset in the MacBook I’ve been using, for example, is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU, although an exact comparison is difficult because of the different technology and system architecture involved.

What is apparent, however, is that the MacBook with the higher spec M1 or M2 chipsets can quite happily play modern full-size AAA video games – and the newly announced M2 Pro and M2 Max chips are even more powerful again.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is realising there hasn’t been much of an adjustment (outside of the way the operating system works) to gaming on a MacBook.

Apple's Mac range is now a good option for gaming. Source: Supplied.

All the gaming controls are the same (even the right-click on the mouse works the same), I was using the same launchers, the games looked the same, and they played the same – the main difference from a gameplay experience perspective was that the laptop I was playing it on had a picture of an apple on the lid, rather than an alien or samurai mask or a dragon or whatever.

The last Mac computer I had any experience with was a decade ago as a journalist at The Jimboomba Times and it was old, slow and difficult – running Adobe InDesign was taxing the system; there was absolutely no way it would be running Bioshock Infinite or Metro: Last Light or Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

Fast forward to 2023 and here I am, playing Resident Evil: Village, the Hitman trilogy, and Disco Elysium on a MacBook and having exactly the same experience as I would on a traditional gaming laptop. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.

In addition to the major games like Resident Evil Village and the assorted other titles on Steam, Epic Games and GOG, there’s also Apple’s own offerings in the form of stand-alone games from the App store and the Apple Arcade subscription service.

Apple Arcade has a huge range of games on it, including a number of excellent “full-size” games like the Australian-made Wylde Flowers, the narrative adventure South Of The Circle, and an excellent update of the classic Oregon Trail.

In addition to the gaming chops, the battery life of the MacBook Pro is just phenomenal. On pretty much every gaming laptop I’ve tested in the past few years, 90-120 minutes is the outside battery life while gaming and it’s unusual to get more than about 4-6 hours of general internet, but the MacBook Pro runs for about 10-11 hours on battery for general internet use.

While there’s still a long way to go before Mac gaming is on the same keel as PC gaming, it’s closing that gap very closely and for someone who needs a computer for work first and gaming second, a MacBook with the performance M1 or M2 series chipsets in it is absolutely a viable option.