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Apple Releases Developer Tools to Facilitate Porting Videogames to the Mac→

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

During the WWDC keynote, Apple showed off Game Mode for the Mac, which gives a game priority over a Mac’s CPU and GPU resources. Apple has also reduced the latency of AirPods used while gaming and doubled the sampling rate for connected Bluetooth controllers.

Game Mode promises to improve the overall experience of gaming on the Mac, but it’s not all that was announced at WWDC. Apple has also announced a series of developer tools designed to make it easier to port games to the Mac from other platforms.

Among those tools is a Game Porting Toolkit, which Tom Warren of The Verge says is:

 similar to the work Valve has done with Proton and the Steam Deck. It’s powered by source code from CrossOver, a Wine-based solution for running Windows games on macOS. Apple’s tool will instantly translate Windows games to run on macOS, allowing developers to launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how well it runs before fully porting a game.

The Game Porting Toolkit is meant as a way for developers to quickly see how much work needs to be done to port their games to the Mac, but that hasn’t stopped gamers with developer accounts from downloading the tool and taking everything from Cyberpunk 2077 to Diablo IV for a spin on the Mac according to Warren.

Along with a tool to convert shaders and graphics code to Apple’s Metal framework, The Game Porting Toolkit and other announcements at WWDC mark a concerted effort by Apple to expand the catalog of games available to Mac users. Whether game developers will take advantage of these tools and bring their games to the Mac remains to be seen, but recent announcements that Stray and Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, Director’s Cut are coming to the Mac are both good signs.

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AppStories, Episode 337 – WWDC 2023: Swift Student Challenge Winners, The MacStories Interviews→

Federico and John also had the opportunity to sit down with three winners of the Swift Student Challenge in the Apple Podcasts Studio at Apple Park. It was fun and inspiring to chat with Damian Perez, Henri Bredt, and Maria Eduarda Cabral de Lucena.

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AppStories, Episode 335 – Federico’s Experience with Apple Vision Pro→

In today’s WWDC episode of AppStories, Federico shares his experience with Apple Vision Pro answering questions from John, Alex, and Club MacStories members.

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AppStories, Episode 334 – WWDC 2023: A Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 Deep Dive, Plus Notes, Reminders, Standby, and More→

In the latest WWDC episode of AppStories, Federico, John, and Alex are joined by MacPaw developer Serhii Popov for a developer’s perspective on WWDC before covering iPadOS 17’s Stage Manager changes in depth, along with Notes, Reminders, and StandBy.

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On AppStories+, Federico, John, and Alex take questions from Club MacStories members about the announcements at WWDC.

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AppStories, Episode 333 – WWDC 2023: Keynote First Impressions→

For this special episode of AppStories, John and Federico were joined by Alex live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community to share their first impressions of the WWDC 2023 Keynote.

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On AppStories+, Federico, John, and Alex take questions from Club MacStories members.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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AppStories, Episode 332 - WWDC 2023: Final Thoughts and Predictions→

This week on AppStories, we recorded our last-minute thoughts and predictions for WWDC before a live audience in the Club MacStories+ Discord community.

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On AppStories+, we answered questions from Club MacStories members.

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Reddit Quotes Extraordinarily High API Pricing to Apollo Developer→

I’ve never used Reddit without a third-party app. For a while, that was Narwhal, and most recently, Apollo. Sure, I read Reddit in Safari once in a while when a Google search leads me there, but I’ve never used Reddit’s first-party app because it’s never been as good as third-party alternatives.

In April, Reddit announced that it would start charging users for API access. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s a lot like what played out with Twitter’s API and third-party apps. And just like Twitter, Reddit is charging a price for its API that’s so steep, it’s hard to imagine any third-party apps will be able to pay it.

Christian Selig, the creator of the immensely popular Reddit client Apollo, on the pricing he was quoted:

I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined.

Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.

I hope Reddit reconsiders its pricing, but I’m afraid we may be seeing the end of the era when platforms used free or cheap APIs to accelerate their growth. Reddit may be within its rights to charge so much, but that doesn’t make it any less a slap in the face to app developers like Selig, whose app has helped grow Reddit’s business. Between this and Twitter, it’s hard to imagine new services attracting third-party support as a way to grow their businesses ever again.

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AppStories, Episode 331 – Our xrOS Wishes→

This week on AppStories, we talk about Logic Pro for iPad and our wishes for Apple’s rumored mixed reality OS, xrOS.

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On AppStories+, I need new wired travel headphones and Federico comes through with an excellent recommendation.

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Accounting for What the Apple Watch Ultra Can’t Track→

Every runner who has used a fitness tracker has a moment at some point that is similar to Victoria Song’s at this year’s New York City Half Marathon, where she was unable to beat her time from the year before:

I’d been running for nearly two hours in freezing temperatures, straight into the wind. The Apple Watch Ultra on my left wrist buzzed to tell me I’d just passed mile nine. On my right wrist, the Garmin Forerunner 265S said I’d only run 8.55 miles. A short-ish distance ahead, I could see the official mile nine marker. I had no idea which distance was “true.”

As someone who has had a borderline obsessive relationship with tracking personal fitness metrics at times, I can relate to wondering about the ‘true’ distance of a run. If you run the same route over and over, you’d think the distance would always be the same, but it’s not. As Song explains in her story for The Verge, the truth is much more complicated:

Altogether, the additional L5 signal is cross-referenced with data from Maps and Wi-Fi for what Mayor calls hyper-accurate GPS. It’s important to maintain a healthy skepticism, but it’s hard to argue that this method doesn’t deliver freakishly accurate location data. For instance, the Ultra (plus Series 8, SE, and any watch running watchOS 9) can automatically detect when you arrive at a running track. It also knows which lane you’re running in without calibration. If I hadn’t tried it out myself — multiple times, mind you — I’d be inclined to think it’s too good to be true.

Ultimately, Song attributes her slower 2023 time to the mental exhaustion of losing her mother to ALS in 2021. Her story is an excellent reminder that humans are complicated. We’re not robots, and although the data collected by our devices can help us become fitter, they can’t track everything, so it pays to listen to your body as well as your gadgets.

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