People are complaining because the hardware is capable but there are other reasons may make gaming on a mac an annoyance. Not because macbooks are not powerful enough to run games. And to be fair, macbooks can perfectly run games, and indeed a lot of titles perform great, even if most have to use some sort of compatibility layer (roseta 2, vulkan to metal etc). Why should I get a PC just for gaming if my machine can handle that? Especially something like a big form factor gaming PC that takes quite a bit of space in a room.

And this is not a matter of laptop vs desktop because most of these issues (not the notch) will be present for a mac studio.

In fact apple itself has started advertising gaming in macs in WWDCs last years. So it is only fair that people will complain about it.

But in general gaming in macs is perfectly feasible (maybe not the latest most demanding graphics game at max settings, but most of the stuff). You may miss certain graphics features that may not be available for macs, but otherwise performance is not bad. Even playing windows versions of games through whisky or CrossOver is perfectly feasible.

>That’s why I’ve never understood why so many people bitch about not being able to game on Macs.

Well that's where you're wrong then. It's perfectly possible to game on a laptop. Over the last decade with the development of the lightning ecosystem and docks it's become a very low friction endeavor as well.

There are a myriad of quality "gaming" laptops out there, but obviously that's not for everybody, and that's one of many reasons why workstation laptops exist (basically the same thing - ability to run at high loads for extended periods of time - without the gamer aesthetic).

There are many casual gamers out there who don't want to shell out for a dedicated gaming device, nor should they win a laptop is a perfectly adequate device to game on. It's not that hard to comprehend.

I mostly agree.

> There are a myriad of quality "gaming" laptops out there, but obviously that's not for everybody, and that's one of many reasons why workstation laptops exist (basically the same thing - ability to run at high loads for extended periods of time - without the gamer aesthetic).

For the last few years, I thought 'gaming' was more GPU heavy and 'workstations' were heavier on the CPU and RAM?

Though I wonder how much that has changed recently or will change soon: after all with the rise of (local) AI, perhaps more work will move to the GPU?

> For the last few years, I thought 'gaming' was more GPU heavy and 'workstations' were heavier on the CPU and RAM?

On workstations you can get both. The Dell Precision 7XXX, HP Zbook Fury, and Lenovo P5x/P7x series are the primary high-end notebook workstations, and they are all nearly infinitely configurable with a myriad of CPU, GPU, memory, storage, display, and connectivity options.

I myself have a Precision 7560 from 2021 that has a Xeon W 11955M, and an RTX 3080 Laptop GPU that's roughly between a desktop 3060 and 3070 in performance due to the power limit of 90 W.

Before that I had a Precision 7530 from 2018 that had a Xeon E 2176M.

Both Precisions have 4 DDR4 slots for up to 128 GB, 3 M.2 slots (and an additional one for the WiFi module), and full repair/service manuals online.

I think you are correct, although some work stations are possible to be specced with the "big" GPUs found in the gaming laptops. On the "gaming" side, the hulking neon plastic gamer aesthetic somewhat gave way to a new popular class of gaming-laptop that is more sleek, and those machines often have the mid-range GPUs that you'd find in a workstation. It's all fairly blurred now.

> There are a myriad of quality "gaming" laptops out there, but obviously that's not for everybody

If you're talking x86, only if you're okay with hearing loss :)

Or really have no choice. Student who has space/funds for one device and it has to be portable, for example.

Modern Ryzen APUs have completely fixed this. Anything that can run on a steam deck can run just fine on your budget laptop. You can play AAA games at HD resolution and 60fps on sub $1000 laptops. It will even beat an older gaming laptop's battery life while doing it.

> If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC.

Push this logic one or two notches further and people should write and build code on desktop only with an e-ink portrait monitor.

Specialization has its place but asking a generic computing device to gracefully handle most applications isn't a big ask IMHO.

They're not running the latest top notch games or anything exotic, it should be fine with no tinkering.

Different people have different trade-offs. Some people like the laptop form factor and want to game on it.

Just like people like the hand held form factor of the Nintendo Switch, but it's still entirely fine for them to complain about the system's low specs. Especially when the Steam Deck and the Rog Ally show that you can do better.

Valid and correct take, but I don’t want to own a Mac and a PC. I’d like to be able to run casual games on my MacBook. I don’t game often or heavily enough to warrant purchasing a rig for it.

Not everyone has the extra money or space to spend on another device just to play games from time to time. I don’t even own a TV, I’m not going to get one, plus a console, plus rearrange my living room and get new furniture to house them, to play games occasionally. Nor will I buy an extra expensive, bulky, and noisy desktop machine and monitor, plus (again) rearrange my furniture.

Additionally, laptops are more than capable of playing demanding games these days.

White-hot take: you are allowed to own an outhouse and a urine only toilet. They aren't like matter and antimatter, and so on.

I so glad someone else was saying what I was thinking.

> If you want to play video games, you should probably buy a console or a desktop PC.

> White-hot take: you’re allowed to own a PC and a Mac.

I do own a console, a pc and two macs. But for what I've paid for the macs Apple should make it easy for me to play games on their hardware if i so choose.

There is some hope: Lies of P is actually very playable on the minimum requirements M2/16G ram. And you get the Mac version on Steam with the Windows version so you're not limited to a single platform.