I mean, Apple's refusal to license their OS for non-Apple hardware is unambiguously the correct decision. From Apple's perspective there are countless downsides and zero upsides to doing otherwise.
Apple is going to be huge in gaming in the mid-term future. If you have a limited, controlled hardware range, developers can tune Apple-targeted games in the same way that they tune console games. They can guarantee that everything works exactly as intended, which has been the achilles' heel of PC gaming since time immemorial.
I grew up a hardcore gamer and vehement apple-hater, but over the past decade, Apple has become the most competent consumer hardware company on earth and I'm super excited for the future here.
I just can’t imagine Apple building and selling a replacement for a 4080 gpu and top line amd/intel cpu. And if they do they markup would be insane. Look at what they currently charge for compute as an example. Price vs performance ratio between apple and pc is too high to be viable.
So if apple does get into gaming it’s going to be incredibly gimped and ten years behind the tech curve. (Or at the level of consoles) Which might be competitive against that market.
But I am extremely skeptical that apple will compete with top of the line pc gaming in a meaningful way. Pushing +100 fps at 4k is not easy or cheap, and if apple wants to win enthusiasts (or even have decent looking VR for the vision) they’ll need to offer significant compute at a competitive price. So basically, they’ll need to completely change their economics model… and I don’t think they’ll do that.
Even with Apple's "limited" HW, just on the iPhone it's like Sony releasing a new PlayStation every year. Add Mac in and it's like Sony's past decade in consoles every 12-18 months. Plus you add in the fact iOS users balk at paying $5 for a game, Mac gamers are a blip and Apple's penchant disregard for backwards compatibility and love to overcharge for storage and you really don't get a great recipe for gaming.
Apple is going to be huge in gaming in the mid-term future. If you have a limited, controlled hardware range, developers can tune Apple-targeted games in the same way that they tune console games. They can guarantee that everything works exactly as intended, which has been the achilles' heel of PC gaming since time immemorial.
I grew up a hardcore gamer and vehement apple-hater, but over the past decade, Apple has become the most competent consumer hardware company on earth and I'm super excited for the future here.