Oculus Rift, a virtual realty system has been out for quite some time now and there have been queries regarding its support for Mac. To set things straight Oculus Rift creators simply state that “Apple’s Computer aren’t good enough”. For them Windows PC are the best bet to handle their sophisticated system.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey had an interview with ShackNews in which he stated that Apple computers needs to install high-end graphic processors that can match the performance of those available on Windows.
And when does that happen? He answers “That is up to Apple and if they ever release a good computer we will do it. It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs”.
He didn’t dismiss Mac support in future and also explained the requirement of powerful GPUs as the reason for no show on Apple PC. Once the Apple devices are equipped with required hardware to run their product flawlessly, the company will surely take steps in supporting the OS.
He adds “If they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it. So even if we can support it on the software side, there’s just no audience of people that can run the vast majority of software out there.”
The thing is Apple Computers do have powerful GPUs but they are more focused on productivity, video and photo editing, rather than on gaming. For example Mac Pro, their top PC product comes with dual AMD FirePro D700 graphics, each with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 2048 stream processors, 384-bit-wide memory bus, 264GB/s memory bandwidth, and 3.5 teraflops performance.
But the minimum requirements for Oculus Rift to work flawlessly are gaming-oriented graphics processor, and the tech specs point to GTX 970 or above as the best choice. Until Apple comes with a PC lineup aimed at gamers, we shall not find Oculus Rift supporting it and it shall remain a Windows exclusive till then.