14 DAY TRIAL // In case you’re wondering how come Oculus Rift only works on Windows computers and no support for Mac is being offering, the creator of the device has the simplest explanation: Apple’s computers are not good enough.
In an interview with ShackNews, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says that, in order for Macs to work with Oculus Rift, Apple needs to install high-end graphic processors that can match the performance of those available on Windows.
“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 spec,” he says.
“It’s not that we don’t want them to work on Macs”
He goes on to explain that, at some point in the future, should Apple introduce Mac models with more powerful GPUs, Oculus Rift could also support them. It’s not that they don’t want to bring Oculus on Mac, but without the necessary hardware, it’s pretty much impossible for the product to work flawlessly on Apple devices.
“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.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Mac doesn’t have powerful GPUs, but Apple builds its devices to be more focused on productivity, video and photo editing, rather than on gaming. The top-of-the-range Mac Pro, for instance, 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 for Oculus Rift to work flawlessly, it needs a gaming-oriented graphics processor, and the tech specs point to GTX 970 or above as the best choice. So, for the moment, Oculus Rift remains a Windows exclusive, and depending on how Apple improves its products, it could work on Macs at some point in the future as well.