There isn’t a huge catalog of Mac-compatible games to choose from, but thankfully, British developer Feral Interactive specializes in bringing games from top-notch development studios over to the Mac side.
PCMagdecided to find out for themselves and put a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip and a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip up against some of the most popular graphically intense games from recent years. Seeing how well they perform on CPU-intensive workflows when we reviewed the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros got us thinking: Are these seriously powerful new processors equally adept at running graphics-intensive AAA games? Tom Brant, PCMag The question, then, is whether the insane level of power packed into the M1 Max can actually overcome the handicap of being ignored by game developers. In other words, when it comes to gaming, the new MacBook Pro is at a definite disadvantage. The downside to this is that while the M1 Pro/Max may provide the raw power to handle the latest games, game developers aren’t putting any real effort into macOS as a serious gaming platform, so games simply aren’t optimized to take advantage of the M1 architecture - and that’s not likely going to change any time soon. Unlike the kind of apps it shows off at its iPad and iPhone events, games were nowhere on the roster during last week’s Unleashed event.
To be fair, Apple makes it very clear that these new MacBook Pro laptops are for serious professional content creation.