Nelson's Weblog: tech / mac / valve-stats


Mastodon @nelson@tech.lgbt Linkblog Tue 2024-04-23 Awesome Balatro Tracker Beeper Android Biometrics Fri 2024-04-19 Balatro Immolate Turning Point voting fraud Thu 2024-04-18 Bicycles of World War II AI-ese Mon 2024-04-15 Butterick’s Practical Typography Wicked Bible Sat 2024-04-13 Normalization of Jan 6 Followgraph for Mastodon South Yuba Canal Fri 2024-04-12 Waffle House order marking Wed 2024-04-10 Boy Meets Boy Meets Boys’ Love Termux Tue 2024-04-09 Netflitwitter Nigeria’s Scrabble King Internet eclipse traffic Electric rickshaws Mon 2024-04-08 Eclipse power dashboard Search Archives 2023 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2022 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2021 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2020 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2019 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2018 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2017 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2016 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2015 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2014 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2013 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2012 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2011 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2010 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2009 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2008 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2007 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2006 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2005 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2004 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2003 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2002 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2001 12 11 10 09 08 07 One good site MDN Nelson Minar nelson@monkey.org Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License		Stats on MacOS as a gaming platform Some interesting stats on MacOS and gaming, from Valve's Steam hardware survey. The population is self-selecting but somewhat representative of the gamer community. Steam has been available on the Mac since May 2010. 5% of Steam installs run MacOS. 48% of Macs are MacBookPros. 31% are iMacs. The most common GPU (24%) is the NVidia 9400M. Or not: the MacBook Pro contained both a 9400M and a 9600M GT and Valve may not report that accurately. This benchmark database says the 9400M is dog slow but the 9600M is somewhat reasonable for low-end games. 29% of Mac users have 512MB of VRAM or more (compare 86% of Windows users) 74% of Mac users have 4GB of RAM or more (compare 52% of Windows users) What does this mean? 5% is a tiny minority of desktop computer gamers. And very few of those 5% have serious gamer graphics capabilities. Given that, it's hard to see how it's cost effective for mainstream games to support the Mac. No surprise, honestly, but there's some data to back up the assumption. I'm loving my new Mac but I'm coming to the conclusion MacOS is not suitable for an omnivorous gamer. Blizzard and Valve have both committed to the Mac but most PC games never make it over and the few that do are often low quality ports that come out months late. And graphics libraries are a mess. Of course DirectX is a non-starter, but even OpenGL and OpenCL support are years behind. tech • mac 2011-08-10 18:23 Z Nelson's Weblog • tech • mac